What does “new” mean to you? The MIT dorm called New House opened in 1975. This makes it older than me but younger than my parents, so I'd consider the designation as “new” to be warranted. Now consider New College in Oxford, which is 620 years old and gets its name from the fact that it came after Oriel College (founded in 1324.) It’s all relative!

At MIT, I lived in Next House for my first two years and Baker House for my last two. I was utterly spoiled with gorgeous river views in both dorms. At Oxford I live in Oriel College and the front quad (pictured below) was built in the 1620s, back when Cambridge, MA was just called “Newe Towne.” Maybe people should stop naming things “New"...

2) Classes

I’m really enjoying my immunology program. For a taste of the subject, check out the book “How the Immune System Works” by Lauren Sompayrac; it’s very clear and simple. The intricacies of the immune system will astound you, I guarantee it. For example, the body has evolved a beautiful system to “deliver” white blood cells to the right part of the body at the right time. It works just like the postal system, where an address ensures the delivery of a letter to the right mailbox. White blood cells carry a unique pattern of receptors and proteins on their surface that enables them to exit the bloodstream and enter infected tissues. This cellular delivery system is at work all day, every day to keep you healthy!

My program has at least three hours of lecture every day and the lectures are taught by experts in the field who come from all over the United Kingdom. There are 18 of us in the program and we’re together all day, every day! This is very different from the typical undergraduate schedule at MIT, where I had at least four different classes, usually in completely different fields. Also as an undergrad I had a UROP every semester, so I constantly juggled classes with lab work. Unfortunately I’m in a taught Masters program now where we’re not supposed to do research until the third term (April-July). I miss the lab and all the excitement that comes with it.

3) Formality and traditions

At MIT, you’re likely to see people taking exams in pajamas after rolling out of bed, or possibly after spending all night in the library. Oxford makes you adhere to a dress code for exams, matriculation, and formal hall (which is just a formal 3-course dinner served in your college's dining hall. Not all colleges have them, but mine offers one every night for three pounds, or about $6!) What is the uniform? For women: a white dress shirt, black skirt or pants, black ribbon that's tied around your neck, black gown (for graduate students the gown does not have sleeves and it has these funny tassels), black shoes, and black tights (a girl was almost not allowed to matriculate because she wore nude tights.) For men, “sub fusc” attire consists of a tuxedo and white bowtie. Here’s a picture from our Matriculation, which is a ceremony after the first week of classes where you officially become a member of Oxford. The MIT equivalent occurs during Freshman Convocation, when President Hockfield gives a speech welcoming you to MIT.

4) Social life

Parties at Oxford are called “bops” and often have a theme, like “Back to School”, “When I Grow Up” or even “Fratparty.” People take the themes pretty seriously and dress accordingly. Each college also has common rooms for undergraduates and graduates, where people regularly hang out and relax. A big difference between the US and the UK is the drinking age, so much of the social life revolves around the many pubs of Oxford. The pubs in Oxford each proudly display portraits and plaques commemorating the famous people that have had a pint there. The Eagle and Child was the meeting place of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis’s writers’ group called the Inklings, and the Turf Tavern was a favorite hangout spot of Bill Clinton and Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke.

5) Location, location, location

Oxford is in the middle of England, which makes it really easy to take weekend trips to London, other cities in the UK, and even Paris and Brussels, which are both less than three hours away from London by train. My course is intense so I haven’t had too much time to venture out of Oxford, but the few occasions where I have traveled were great. In November I went to Cardiff, the capital of Wales, on the same day that the highly anticipated Wales vs. Australia rugby game was being played in the Cardiff stadium. The streets were filled with fans sporting red rugby shirts and painted faces. We watched part of the game and skipped the second half to visit the Cardiff Castle, which was closed earlier in the day due to a bomb threat!

That’s basically my life on the other side of the Atlantic. Many aspects are the same as MIT (going to class, attending seminars by prominent scientists, enjoying the company of friends), but the differences help me to appreciate my experiences at both places even more. I have come to appreciate the fact that MIT is a place of innumerable opportunities. Looking back, I am so thankful for all of the activities that I was involved with, the variety and quality of classes that were available, the labs that welcomed UROPs with open arms, the friends that worked hard and played hard by my side, and the professors who pushed us to our limits. It’s surely not easy to drink from the fire hose, especially right before Thanksgiving and Spring Break when deadlines pile up, sleep takes a backseat, and you spend your entire TechCash balance on coffee and candy at the convenience store in the Student Center. Yes, it’s necessary to make sacrifices (people like to say that you have three options: study, sleep, and socialize…pick two) but ultimately MIT will help you to achieve more than you imagined yourself capable of.

For all of you fretting about submitting your applications, good luck!

Note: I had taken these on a Sunday morning before the gym filled up, to avoid being spotted and identified as the creepy girl who is taking pictures of sweaty people for future blackmail purposes. It's usually more crowded...but as long as you don't go between 4-6pm you won't have to wait for a machine.

A view from outside (it's distorted...sorry, the panoramic feature on my camera doesn't always cooperate):

A dark view of the lobby:

Walk up the stairs from another entrance, and you enter the first of two exercise floors. There are cubbies on the right to put your stuff, and two locker rooms downstairs:

Continuing down the second floor of the Z Center...just a small sampling of the vast collection of treadmills:

Walk a little further and you reach the weight area, as well as more cardio equipment:

If you look out of the windows on this floor, you can see our beautiful Olympic-sized pool (ranges from 7-20 feet, or something like that) and the training pool:

And for completeness, here's a view of the pool from the ground floor, looking through some decorated glass:

On the third floor, there are more weight and cardio machines, another area for floor exercises, an indoor court (called the MAC court) for gym classes/ soccer/basketball, and squash courts. There's also a huge indoor track field, but I couldn't get in because I was taking these pictures right before Finals Week and the courts are used as testing facilities:

Heading back to the first floor, there is a big area called the Rockwell Cage:

This list is by no means complete; there's also the Johnson Athletics Center (which has a huge ice rink in the winter, but was no longer there when I took pictures) and the DuPont gym (which has a huge area for gymnastics and basketball, and smaller rooms for the martial arts, yoga, pilates, etc.)

P.S. You get a clean towel each time you visit using a towel card (for a one-time $5 deposit), and can enter a lottery for a locker in the DuPont locker room. Oh! and I almost forgot to mention that the DuPont locker room has brand new saunas!! :)

P.P.S. I'm probably forgetting some things...feel free to chime in.

Friday June 6, 2008 began in the indoor track. All graduates (undergrads, Masters, and PhDs) were told to report to the gym between 7:45 and 8:15 am. With 2,335 graduates, there was a well-organized system where we reported to a station in order to be lined up properly for the precession (first by school (e.g. Engineering and Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences), then by major (Course 1, then 2, then 6, etc.) then by last name (alphabetically.)) There was free breakfast but the line was ridiculous.

At 7:45 am (most people hadn't arrived yet):

We are, we are, we are, we are, we are, the "gineers" :)

At 9 am:

Ah, the bond of the brass rat:

At 9:45ish, we began to leave the track and the precession began to organize on the artificial turf. The undergrads looked lame in their thin, unsubstantial gowns, while the people receiving PhDs looked very cool in their robes. One day that robe will be mine... hopefully!

On the turf:

Anna, my roommate for the first three years of college (and currently my next door neighbor):

Many members of the MIT community stood on Amherst Alley and Memorial Drive to wave and take pictures of us (including Bryan ).

Down Amherst Alley:

At around 10:15 am, we walked into Killian Court. It was really overwhelming... I felt like a gladiator entering an arena. Luckily, I was not about to fight with a tiger (though sometimes getting through MIT felt even more grueling.) I tried to enjoy the experience while telling myself not to cry.

Family and friends had to arrive as early at 7 am that day to get good seats, but we just waltzed right in. A view from my seat:

The guy on the left is Ali Alhassani, who won the Marshall Scholarship this year and happened to be next to me (our last names both start with A, and we both majored in 2A).

Ali graciously took a picture of us as well:

There were inspirational speeches by Mohammad Yunus , MIT President Susan Hockfield, the graduate and undergraduate class council presidents, and the president of the MIT Corporation.
Then, it was time to call the names....

And after the graduation ceremony, it was time to party! There were receptions EVERYWHERE, with more free food than anyone could ask for.

Also, my cousin (who is a musician in New York City) wrote me a song as my graduation present. If you'd like to hear it, go to: http://songformelis.com/ Yup, it was one of the best presents ever.

This entry is short and not very detailed, but its 7:17 am and I've only slept 3 hours. I hope you enjoyed the pictures, and leave comments with questions if you have any.

The metallic blue hue of morpho butterflies, the super water-resistant Lotus leaf, the highly maneuverable fins of the Bluegill sunfish: all of these natural wonders have inspired scientists to innovate. When a group of MIT researchers wanted to create the next and best surgical band-aid, they turned their attention to the gecko.

Geckos can scale smooth walls at a whopping three feet per second, and in last decade scientists have begun to understand how these little lizards can defy gravity. It turns out that gecko feet have millions of little projections, called setae, that split into hundreds of projections shaped like spatulas. Each of these tips can attach to smooth surfaces by taking advantage of intermolecular forces, which are individually relatively weak and unstable but can combine to generate enough force to allow a gecko to hang upside-down from one foot.

The initial discovery of the science behind the gecko’s stickiness (Nature 405, 681-685 (8 June 2000)) got a lot of attention, and people proposed applications like making tape to stick equipment to the space station. But Prof. Jeffrey Karp, an investigator in the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology program, came up with a different application when he happened to come across the Nature paper on a friend’s desk. He decided to create a better surgical adhesive by mimicking the nanotopography of the gecko’s foot using a strong, water-resistant, flexible, and biodegradable polymer. This innovation would be as simple to use as a band-aid, and would be a huge improvement upon current biomedical adhesives like medical-grade crazy glue that causes inflammation and other, less sticky alternatives.

Like all things, this was easier said than done. Two and half years and a million dollars later, Karp and his collaborators had made a new polymer called poly(glycerol-co-sebacate acrylate), created a mold for the polymer using the same processes that are used to make computer chips, utilized some tricks to make the polymer biodegradable and nearly invisible to the immune system, and tested these nifty band-aids on pig intestine in the lab and in the peritoneal cavity of live rats.

Lo and behold, it worked! Karp attributes the success of the gecko adhesive project to a multidisciplinary team that included nanofabrication experts from Draper Laboratory, Surgeons and biocompatibility experts from the Massachusetts General Hospital, and polymer chemists and mechanical engineers at MIT. They’re now working on taking this invention into the clinic, where it can be used to replace stitches and sutures. Since the gecko-inspired adhesive does not require repeated re-alignment of the tissue being patched together, it can reduce the time a patient spends in surgery. Additionally, it can be utilized to connect pieces of the colon in patients with Crohn’s disease, or to patch lungs without worrying about air leaks, or even to deliver drugs to parts of a heart that might have died after a heart attack. If all goes well, this bio-inspired adhesive will be found in a hospital near you in less than five years.

The translation from bench to bedside is what Jeff Karp’s all about. He focuses on attacking big problems and has a strong commitment to developing solutions that will help patients. Prof. Karp knew that he wanted to be a bioengineer in college, and decided to study Chemical Engineering at McGill University in order to have the opportunity to learn and practice problem solving and also leave the door open to many career paths. As an undergrad, he was actively involved with research and even published a paper. After getting a PhD at the University of Toronto, he came to MIT as a postdoctoral researcher to work in the world-renown lab of biomedical engineer and Institute Professor Robert Langer. (We’ve written about him numerous times on these blogs, including Paul’s experiences with working there. How are Langer Lab alums so successful? Karp attributes it to Langer’s inspirational leadership, his freedom of thought, and creativity.)

Like his role-model, Karp strives to train the next generation of bioengineering leaders. As such, he has many undergraduates and high school students working in his lab. He tries to have 5-10 undergrads in the lab at any given time, and this summer he will be mentoring three high school students who will be coming to MIT from all over the country. In fact, he was recognized as MIT's 2008 UROP Faculty Mentor of the Year! I spoke with one of his UROPs, Shan Tie ‘10, who said she found the lab through the UROP website: “I looked under the project openings and looked for titles that were relevant to my interests and were interesting. I had several interviews with different labs and I finally decided this one because the [Principal Investigator] seemed really personally involved with each project and work itself dealt with techniques I was familiar with and could continue a project.” Since the fall of 2007, she has been studying hydrogel polymers that could be used as micro-environmental sensors.

For all of you who fret about not having research experience, have no fear. Dr. Karp hires freshman very frequently and says that experience is not a limiting factor. In particular, he tries to find students who have motivation, drive, passion, the ability to work in a team (e.g. experience on a sports team), and creativity (e.g. mastery of an instrument). Once students join the lab, he pairs them with a senior scientist and encourages them to develop their own experiments, learn from their failures, and regularly exercise critical thinking.

Karp referred to a friend who called Boston the “Academic Hollywood,” where stars in every field could be found. With three of the top hospitals in the world and some of the best universities, Boston is the perfect place to conduct interdisciplinary research that will change the face of medicine, science, and technology. Projects like the gecko-inspired surgical adhesive are a testament to the strength of the faculty and students at MIT, and you can be a part of it!

Another traditional duty of universities is to expose their students to world events and ensure that their graduates are well-informed citizens. Along these lines, I attended an event called: “A Conversation with Noam Chomsky- No More Victims.” I bet you have heard of Noam Chomsky before, seeing as how he is an MIT professor and an expert in both linguistics and politics. I first heard about him in high school, and then learned about his contributions to the field of linguistics in my Intro to Linguistics class (24.900). He’s absolutely brilliant, and I have tried to attend his talks whenever possible (though honestly I’ve found some of them hard to follow…)

This particular talk was sponsored by NoMoreVictims.org, which “works to obtain medical sponsorships for war-injured Iraqi children and to forge ties between the children, their families and communities in the United States. We believe one of the most effective means of combating militarism is to focus on direct relief to its victims.” Present at the lecture was a boy named Omar and his father. You can click on the link to watch videos about his story. It’s really tragic, and the fact that we don’t hear about stories like his in the mainstream media is a lesson in itself.

Chomsky spoke about the current situation in Iraq, the Imperialist mindset that still prevails, the world’s perception of the U.S., and the consequences of U.S. intervention. He also answered the audience’s questions, including his thoughts on the current presidential candidates (to negotiate or not to negotiate?), whether the 9/11 conspiracy theories have any clout (he didn’t think so), and whether the “You break it, you buy it” principle holds for the U.S. intervention in Iraq (he responded by asking whether the Nazis should have stayed in Britain.) Finally, he frequently referred to this article which is in the current issue of the journal Foreign Affairs. It discusses the consequences of the surge in Iraq, and is very interesting.

Whether or not you agree with Chomksy and NoMoreVictims.org, events like this demonstrate that there is more to MIT than just math and science.

Here are the different events and how they contributed to the team’s point total:

Sunday:
- Cake and pie baking contest (pictures below)
- Eating contest (pie tin filled with whipped cream and a gum ball. Find the gum ball using only your mouth and the first person to blow a bubble wins.)
- Participation (team with most cake/pie entries wins points.)

Monday: Salsa night (team with most participants wins)

Tuesday: Community service day
- Made activity books for kinds at Children’s Hospital Boston
- Bake sale where all proceeds went to the Hospital

Wednesday: “Chariot racing” = pushing someone in a shopping cart down the Infinite Corridor

Thursday: Dodgeball tournament, with a small entry fee donated to the Children’s Hospital Boston

Friday: Powderpuff game (where girls play football and guys are the cheerleaders). Points based on how many people came to watch, how many played, and if your team won.

Sunday: Greek Convention

Throughout the week there was a “Jar War”- each team had a jar and you could either put pennies and dollar bills for positive points in your own jar, or nickels and quarters as negative points in the other jars. They raised $1300 for the Children’s Hospital!!!

As you can see, Greek Week harnesses the natural competitiveness of ambitious students while raising money for charity and having a lot of fun!

Here are pictures from the Cake-off competition. What are your favorites?

Believe it or not, several of these cakes were made by guys! Way to go, guys!

Muhahahaha:

Some of my sorority sisters at the event:

ZBT shows their Greek Week spirit:

The lovely judges, who had to try so many cakes that they almost puked. (Sigma Kappa alone submitted 29, and Zeta Beta Tau submitted 20!)

The pie eating contest:

We received the invitation in the mail a month or so ago, and I was surprised to see that it was exactly the same stationary that my high school prom committee used.

The last few months of MIT are tough for most seniors – we are torn between our ever-worsening condition of Senioritis and the stress of knowing that we should be writing our Senior Theses and final reports that are prerequisites to graduation. So the time between receiving the invitation and the actually going to the ball went by really quickly, and before I knew it, it was May 3rd.

In addition to the stress of graduation, we also needed to find dates. Luckily for some, the Senior Ball Committee of 2005 created a Survival Guide (http://web.mit.edu/2008/seniorball/survival.htm) with pointers on how to find a date, things to discuss with your date, etc. They even provided a list of nerdy pick-up lines:

Pick Up Lines for Nerds (from http://askthebeaver.blogspot.com/)
--Hey, baby; wanna test the 'k' of my bedsprings?
--Are you the square root of 2? Because I feel irrational when I am around you.
--How can I know so many hundreds of digits of pi and not the digits of your phone #?
--You are one well-defined function.
--Hey, baby - wanna be sinusoidal functions? We could oscillate horizontally¡K
--Want a hot Euler body massage?
--Oman, I want Djibouti!
--Hey baby, how about I tinker with your software while you turn on my hardware?"
--Hey, you're O positive too? Guess you're my type!
--Remember my species - you'll be classifying it later.
--Why don't you come over later so you can balance my equation?
--Asexual reproduction is for pansies.
--Let's get together later to converge.
--Hey, I'd like to sample your population.
--I think I need to work on the structural formula of your fatty acid.
--I'm just a cute piece of DNA who is still looking for that special transcription factor to help me unwind.
--Hey baby, can I be your DNA helicase? 'Cause I can unzip your genes

(note: I don’t think anyone legitimately uses these lines…don’t assume that we’re crazy nerds. Except, in the spirit of full disclosure, my roommate did buy a t-shirt from the Coop that says “Talk Nerdy To Me.”)

Before heading over the Harvard Bridge (yes, the bridge connecting MIT to Boston is called the Harvard Bridge; it's because it was built before MIT moved to its current location) to the Sheraton Back Bay hotel, most people picked up their dates and met up with a group of friends to take pictures. Here’s a picture of my group:

At 6 pm, hors hors d'oeuvres were served- bread, crackers, cheese, deli meat. Since most seniors are over 21, there was also a cash bar (but they checked IDs and gave wristbands at the door. For some reason they thought it would be a great idea to use blue and white striped plastic bands that made just about everyone’s outfit look tacky.) It was great to see almost the entire class in one place, I even ran into some people that I hadn’t seen since freshman year. I should also note that there were many non-senior present, both younger and older (for example, I had gone to the Senior Ball of 2006 as a sophomore.)

Here’s a picture of some of my Alpha Chi Omega sorority sisters. Gwen, on the left, made her own dress! She’s very artistic, clearly, and I don’t see how she finds the time to sew dresses when she’s on the Varsity Crew team and a Civil Engineering major…

At 7:30, dinner was served and a nice jazz band played in the background. You were allowed to send in the names of people that you wanted to sit with at dinner, and the Senior Ball committee did their best to make everyone happy.

After dinner, there was a dancing… lots of dancing. The music selection was pretty interesting, usually we’re overwhelmed with a continuous stream of hip-hop songs that direct us to get low and throw our hands in the air. But for some reason, the songs alternated between Latin and 80s music. It was great at first, but we quickly exhausted our small cache of dance moves.

At about 11, everyone started to go their separate ways. A few of us decided to go to Top of the Hub for a plate of freshly baked cookies. They’re delicious and I’d highly recommend them, as well as the view from the 52nd floor of the Prudential Building. The weather wasn’t fantastic, but this was the view from a previous visit:

Alas, I am happy to report that Senior Ball was fabulous and I hope you’re all looking forward to going.

I think every MIT student has an intense love-hate relationship with four-day weekends. On one hand, it’s four days off in a row! Imagine the possibilities! You can go home, enjoy Boston, catch up with friends, and hey, maybe even catch up on work and sleep. And yet, there’s never really time for the latter two options; Tuesday night is always so horrendously stressful and work-filled that you vow to never, ever procrastinate again. As a senior, I thought I had learned my lesson, and so I worked on Sunday, was in lab all day on Monday, and worked on Tuesday morning, too. Yet, somehow, I spent all of Tuesday night trying to write a chemistry lab report and listening to “It Sucks To Be Me” from Avenue Q.

But there were several very cool events that happened over the weekend, which I definitely do not regret going to. The first event was the Inaugural Millennium Campus Conference, hosted by MIT’s Global Poverty Initiative (http://gpi.mit.edu/). Forty MIT students got together to organize this amazing three-day conference, which was attended by hundreds of people around the country. The conference schedule is posted on their website and the keynote speakers included Senator John Edwards, Henrietta Fore, Paul Farmer, Ira Magaziner, Jeff Sachs, and a concert by John Legend in MIT’s very own ice rink! If you have an interest in global health, many of these names may be familiar to you.

I was only able to go to two of the keynote speeches. The first was by Paul Farmer, a physician and anthropologist at Harvard. He founded an organization called Partners in Health, which has made ground-breaking changes in the way that people think about delivering health care in developing countries. He spends much of his time in Haiti and Rwanda, and considers Haiti to be his home. Overall, he’s incredibly inspiring and seems like a genuinely nice person who is helping so many people with tuberculosis and AIDS. At the conference, his talk was called “This is not a hobby: taking global poverty seriously.” He told us about the technological abyss between the developed and developing world and two myths that are preventing us from doing more good.

The Sunday morning keynote speaker was Ira Magaziner, who is currently the chairman of the Clinton Climate Initiative and the Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS initiative. He served for six years as Senior Advisor to President Clinton for policy development, and before that he was a successful corporate strategist. Magaziner’s public policy experience is immense, and he talked about the Clinton Foundation and how they were able to bring the price of antiretroviral treatments down from over $1000 to about $100 (a 90% reduction) by changing the economics of drug production and partnering with many groups. Magaziner also talked about climate change and then gave us a set of five principles used to inform the Clinton Foundation (including, the need for respect for local leadership and the need to focus spending directly on people and programs). He ended with advice for us students, like “only unreasonable people accomplish big things because they piss people off.” That’s almost a direct quote =)

After hearing about those complex matters of life and death, it was a little strange to walk with my two friends to Fresh Pond, a reservoir about four miles northwest of MIT. It was a gorgeous day and gorgeous weekend in general. The picture below is actually of Spy Pond, which is ~1 mile away from Fresh Pond.

There were other exciting things that happened, but I’ve got to get back to making pretty pictures for my Senior Thesis… so I will leave you all for now.

It was 2:03 pm when I ripped out the carbon record of my experimental results and dashed out of the 5.310 (Experimental Chemistry) lab. Though the lab period is scheduled to end at 5 pm, today was the end of a four-day experiment and we had finished early. I had two minutes to get to Kresge auditorium, where Julie Gerberding, the director of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), was scheduled to give a talk titled "Health System Transformation: Getting Our Money's Worth of 'Healthness.'" What is healthness (not a typo)? I had no idea, but ever since elementary school I have dreamed of working in the Biosafety Level 4 facilities of the CDC, and I wasn’t about to miss an opportunity to hear an infectious disease expert speak, let alone someone who is basically in charge of protecting the health of our country.

President Susan Hockfield gave an introduction to the talk, citing Gerberding’s experience in medicine and public health and that she was named #12 on Forbes Magazine’s “100 Most Powerful Women” list in 2005. Gerberding was also apparently involved with setting up the Novartis-MIT Center for Continuous Manufacturing (a 10-year partnership between MIT and one of the biggest pharma companies in the world. )

The main problem that Gerberding and the CDC are trying to address is the fact that the U.S. is ranked #37 in the world for its health system (according to the World Health Organization.) This is appalling; we consider ourselves to be a world leader and we spend the most money on healthcare, yet our health outcomes are dismal! The current system spends an inordinate proportion of the money on people who are already sick, instead of preventing sickness from happening in the first place. Gerberding believes that protecting health is a strategic national investment, and that we’re at a tipping point where we can greatly increase the value of the healthcare system if we just invested a little more. Her vision is a “value-based health system.” She also emphasized that we need to find better measures of “healthiness” and we also need to reward good results in the healthcare arena. (If this interests you, consider taking 17.315 (Health Policy) or 17.317 (U.S. Social Policy). I’ve taken them both, they’re great!)

For those of you who think that changing the healthcare system is impossible, she gave the example of Kennedy’s 1961 space challenge. Even though sending men to the moon seemed utterly unattainable to most people, including NASA scientists, the challenge was met eight years and 59 days later. Gerberding hopes that by May 30, 2016 (the same # of days from today), America will become “a healthiest nation” (again, not a typo. She emphasized that all nations need to be healthy, we shouldn’t be the only ones.)

How does this apply to MIT? The end of the talk focused on “translating health discovery to health.” She emphasized that bench research (done at places like MIT) ends up becoming clinical practice. We need to use our knowledge of systems to evaluate the health outcomes of these clinical practices. Finally, we need to combat problems like obesity by examining a person’s environment. Otherwise, Gerberding warns, our children may have shorter life spans than we do (!)

I saw President Hockfield slip out of the auditorium at around 3:00, and the talk ended at about 3:05. A friend and I made the decision to skip the Q&A session and see if we could make it over to Tom Brokaw’s talk, which was scheduled to begin at 3:30 pm in the Stata Center. Off we went to follow Hockfield!

Of course, the line outside of the Stata lecture hall was very long (as opposed to Gerberding’s talk, which had plenty of seats to go around.) The MIT news page introduces the event best:

“An internationally respected journalist, Brokaw served as the NBC anchor for 21 years. He was the NBC White House correspondent during the Watergate scandal, advancing to lead NBC's coverage of primaries, national conventions and election nights in 1984, 1988 and 1992. Brokaw, 68, is the author of "The Greatest Generation" (1998) and "A Long Way from Home" (2002).

The Karl Taylor Compton Lecture Series was established in 1957 to honor the late Karl Taylor Compton, who served as president of MIT from 1930 to 1948 and chairman of the Corporation from 1948 to 1954. The purpose of the lectureship is to give the MIT community direct contact with the important ideas of our times and with people who have contributed much to modern thought.”

I got fourth row center seats and couldn’t wait to hear his familiar voice bellow from a few feet in front of me. Again, President Hockfield introduced the distinguished guest, and then Brokaw took the stage. He is the most poised speaker I have ever seen. With a pen in his right hand, he delivered his speech in a way that nobody else could. His pauses were perfectly placed, he emphasized just the right words and captivated everyone’s attention. I have to admit that I was so caught up with thinking about his gravitas that my mind wandered and I didn’t pay all that much attention to what he was saying =) I also didn’t take notes because I wanted to focus on watching him…just like on TV but better!

He began by making a joke that giving the Compton lecture was the only circumstance in which he would be admitted to MIT (according to Wikipedia, “Tom Brokaw dropped out of The University of Iowa, where he says he majored in "beer and co-eds" before receiving his B.A. degree in Political Science from the University of South Dakota in Vermillion in 1962.”) He also joked about how he was afraid that he would also have to speak at Harvard (which he referred to as something along the lines of the’ lesser institution up the street’, which drew much applause) and how he has commiserated with Harvard dropouts like Bill Gates over not being accepted to the college. Anyway, he described how he grew up in South Dakota and then talked about some of his experiences as a journalist. He has met every president since Kennedy, conducted the first American TV interviews with Mikhail Gorbachev, Vladimir Putin, and Yevgeny Primakov, reported the collapse of the Berlin Wall, covered the September 11th attacks, and so much more. He’s been in the midst of almost every conflict that you can imagine and he told some heartbreaking and inspiration stories. Basically, he’s the kind of person that you’d die to have dinner with (incidentally, some MIT students got to have lunch with him earlier today. They said it was amazing!)

The directly MIT-relevant part of his talk was about the role of information technology in our lives. He described the advantages and disadvantages of the Internet as a media outlet, and the advent of the 24-hour news cycle. He warned us that we have to be careful about where we get our information and that, as consumers, our decisions can affect what is covered (like car chases vs. world conflict.) There was more that he discussed… but I’ll leave it to Bryan to fill in the gaps =)

I still can’t believe that they scheduled these lectures back-to-back. What happened to spreading the love? I should have added this to my “10 reasons why I love MIT”: the lectures! We get to hear some of the most amazing people in the world, it’s really a privilege. Incidentally, our graduation speaker will be Muhammad Yunus, winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace prize. I can’t wait!

P.S. Thanks for the Brokaw pict, Bryan!
P.P.S. An example of Brokaw in action:

1. The students
This one is a no-brainer. Thanks to the Admissions people, my classmates are a ridiculously talented bunch with the most diverse interests. There are the pre-meds and the hackers, the thespians and the band geeks, the gear heads and the tissue culture nerds. Everyone is involved with a million activities, which can be frustrating when you’re planning a meeting, but is generally amazing to witness. Additionally, no matter where you live or what your major is, MIT students can always bond over how much work that they have to do. It’s an instant conversation starter. I’m surprised that the song, "It sucks to be me," isn’t more popular (maybe because not enough people have seen Avenue Q.)

2. Rooms with a view and living in Beantown
I love the river. The majority of dorms are by the Charles River and in Baker, for example, 80% of rooms have a river view. I also can’t imagine a better a college town than Boston. For more about the community service and fun opportunities in Boston, read one of my previous entries here

The view from my sophomore year room in Next House (my Baker rooms have better views but I don't have pictures):

View from Baker roof:

3. Nobel laureates are a dime a dozen
According to the MIT website: “Seventy-one present and former members of the MIT community have won the Nobel Prize, including seven current faculty members: H. Robert Horvitz, medicine/physiology (2002); Wolfgang Ketterle, physics (2001); Richard R. Schrock, chemistry (2005); Phillip A. Sharp, medicine/physiology (1993); Samuel C. C. Ting, physics (1976); Susumu Tonegawa, medicine/physiology (1987); and Frank Wilczek, physics (2004).”
These Nobel laureates do not sit perched in ivory towers, there are many opportunities to meet them. Just a few weeks ago, I saw a talk by Carl Wieman (Physics, 2001).

Also, thanks to the UROP program, you can do research for all four years of college and who knows, maybe you'll get to join this elite Nobel club one day!

4. It’s a meritocracy
It doesn’t matter who your great-grandfather was or what year you are, as long as you’re qualified you’ll get a UROP as a freshman, become editor-in-chief of an MIT research journal as a sophomore, and become president of your dorm as a junior. This is a beautiful thing, and not one to dismiss quickly.

5. You have freedom to choose your classes
It is so cool to be able to take pretty much any class, in any department, at any school (MIT, Harvard, Museum of Fine Arts, Wellesley.) There are a few classes that are notoriously difficult to lottery into (like some Management classes offered through the Sloan school and some of the pre-med lab requirements), but in general you can’t whatever interests you. If you don’t feel like working too hard in the class, you can take it on pass/no record or as a “listener.” You can play a fun game by going to the subject listings and making a hypothetical schedule for yourself on WebSIS.

6. Freshman 1st semester pass/no record and IAP
This is proof that MIT is not out to get you. They’re so kind, in fact, that they give you an entire semester to acclimate to the pressure-cooker of MIT. For more info, read the entries on: "Why You Can’t Fail A Class Freshman Year."

I’ve probably talked your ears off about IAP, but it’s such a fun time to do whatever you want. This IAP, I worked on my senior thesis, explored Boston, took a wine tasting class, worked out at the gym, and saw several movies. My classmates traveled around the world, got experience in companies through externships, and shadowed doctors in hospitals. To read more, click here.

7. The professors care about you
One of the reasons that I didn’t go to University "X" was because I heard that the professors were much more concerned about their graduate students than the undergrads. At MIT, I would definitely say that this is not the case. When professors are teaching an undergraduate class, they really dedicate a lot of time to preparing the lectures (I heard that it takes ~10 hours to prepare a 1 hour lecture) and they hold weekly office hours where you can just walk into their office and barrage them with questions. Additionally, you’re automatically assigned to a professor who serves are your advisor, and they’re a tremendous resource.

8. People will assume you can fix their cars and build the next space telescope
This comic, from the Feb. 29, 2008 issue of The Tech, says it all...except the attention is not always negative (especially when it gets you a job)!

9. Everybody loves a nerdy joke (or at least they won’t pellet you with rotten tomatoes if you make one)
Re: my entry on math jokes: here

10. There’s always too much to do: the work hard/ play hard mentality
Sometimes, I’ve had so much work to do that it made me cry. That’s the reality. When it’s 2 am on a Thursday night and you still have half a problem set to do, it’s nice to know that the weekend is just a day away. I’ve never taken the time to count up how many emails I get about events on a particular weekend, but I’d venture a guess that the number is around twenty. There are hundreds of student groups that get money from MIT to host cool events. Consequently, the choices are dizzying.