In other news, the last full week of spring classes has come and gone. I spent last night finishing up the last problem sets I will ever do as a freshman, which is a pretty awesome feeling. All that's left to finish up this semester is the final paper for my humanities classes (remember Arrowsmith? yeah, it's on that novel) and, of course, finals.

Easier said than done? Yeah, just a little. But this is MIT - what were you expecting? ;)

I'm actually looking forward to this weekend. Earlier tonight, a handful of friends and I went to a performance of four student-written one-act plays put on Dramashop (the same group that put on Suburbia last year). They were pretty good, especially considering they were all written by actual MIT students. Of course, Dramashop wasn't the only club putting on a show tonight - Dance Troupe, MIT Symphony Orchestra, and the Chorallaries were also out in full force. I wish I'd been able to go to all of these awesome events - but, alas, I haven't perfected the art of being in multiple places at once. (Yet.)

After Dramashop, the aforementioned friends and I headed over to the student center to grab some snacks from LaVerde's, the campus convenience store, and sat around swapping stories and other random humor - including a very fun story about various "giant confectioneries" our group had baked or otherwise encountered recently. Around ten, I met up with another friend Samantha '11 and headed towards Central Square to Toscanini's, everyone's favorite local ice cream store (yes, it was a junk food-filled night and it was DELICIOUS). Sam and I have been friends since we were prefrosh, but for the past few weeks we've both pretty busy with our own lives (and problem sets!), so it was awesome to catch up again.

Finally, I headed across the river into Boston to meet up with Teresa '11, who was hanging out with a bunch of mutual friends at Theta Xi, yet another of MIT's 27 fraternities. And that was also fun. ;)

Now, it's about four o'clock in the morning Boston time and I'm currently sitting in my own fraternity's TV lounge, splitting my attention between blogging, the 2012 Facebook group, and reruns of Scrubs. I should get to bed (and I will, soon), but somehow I couldn't resist the urge to write an entry.

This weekend is shaping up to be, I think, relatively relaxing. Skullhouse is throwing our Spring Formal this Saturday night, and Teresa and I are going together (draw your own conclusions :D), so it should be a pretty awesome night. We also are going to have our house elections (drum roll please) on Sunday morning, but otherwise I'm mostly free - and when I say free, I mean free to keep plugging away at my homework. Ah, the joys of MIT.

In actuality, I have much, much more to say - but for now, I'm off to bed. To the incoming prefrosh, have fun with the Next Big Mailing, which I believe many of you have already received and the rest of you will no doubt be getting shortly. Best of luck, in particular, with choosing your Athena names. Basically, do your best to pick a name you'll still be happy with using four years down the road, and you should be fine.

All right, I'm out. Best of luck to you all with finals, APs, IBs, or whatever it is you crazy kids are up to these days.

Sorry, world.

But as awesome as blogging is, sometimes academics comes first - specifically, I'm referring to my 8.022 pset, my 18.03 pset, my big humanities paper, my 20.020 group final project...and so on. Not to mention, the next issue of MURJ is almost ready to hit the presses, which means the chief editors and production staff - Melis, Dawn '08, Hannah '09, Ivana '11, and me - have been hard at work getting the magazine, which is entirely student-produced, ready to send to the publishers. It's so hosing but so awesome at the same time, and I can't wait to see the issue come out in just a few weeks!

But anyway. As you may already know, last Thursday was Drop Date, which refers to the final day that MIT students can "drop" a class (remove it from their registration) with no penalty. At MIT, Drop Date occurs around the tenth or eleventh week of each academic term...which, as I understand it, is much later than pretty much every other school in the country. Kind of cool.

And with Drop Date, comes Piano Drop!

Piano Drop is a longstanding tradition where Baker House residents drop a piano off the roof of their dorm onto the "testing site" below. According to Matt - who, as a former Bakerite, ought to know - the Drop was first conceived of in 1972 by Charles Bruno '74, "who wanted to bring back the grand old hacks of the past." The drop was performed annually until 1984, followed by sporadic recurrences, including 2005, 2006, 2007, and - of course - this year!

So last Thursday, after my classes were done for the day, I grabbed a few friends and headed over to Baker House to witness my very first Piano Drop. Unfortunately, my camera's currently out of commission, but Ken '11 (one of the ARTalk bloggers and a fellow Simmons resident) was kind enough to let me borrow his rather professional photographs to use instead. You can also check out his coverage of Piano Drop in this entry.

Ken, Teresa '11, and me. ("Don't masquerade with the guy in shades oh no...")

Oops, who let the sun into this photo?

Piano Drop is kind of a big deal. You can read more about it here, as well as a pretty harsh article by the Boston Globe here.

The final result. I do feel sort of bad for the piano...

I think Ken looks a little too happy here....

Ooh, what could be underneath? A different Teresa '11 investigates.

In closing: A glamor shot of the Green Building, with one of the stately Pyramids of Killian Court in the foreground.

Before I get back to work, one last thought for those of you still working on your final decision about where to enroll next year: remember, when it comes to colleges, there are no wrong choices. Only good ones and better ones.

Anyway. Life at MIT is moving right along at its usual breakneck pace, but I wouldn't have it any other way. Really, my only complaint is that I haven't had all that much time to blog lately. Which isn't to say I haven't been thinking about blogging, or continuously scratching down ideas for all the (hopefully) awesome entries I'll be putting up in the next few weeks. As the old phrase goes, so many blogs...so little time. Yeah, so I'm a little cheesy sometimes - what else is new?

Luckily, I have about half an hour to jot some thoughts down right now, so I figured I might as well capitalize on the opportunity. As it happens, I'm feeling sort of nostalgic and philosophical at the same time, and you're the lucky ones who get to glimpse my innermost(ish) thoughts. And by you, I mean the entire Internet. Doesn't that make you feel special? ;)

Seriously though. As May 1 draws ever closer, I can't believe that it's already been a year since I decided to go to MIT. In some ways, I am still surprised I got in to MIT. That's one thing some people forget upon arriving to MIT, I think: being here is not a right, but a privilege - I might even go so far as to call it an honor. And unlike in high school, where there are a lot of other people (parents, teachers, guidance counselors, and so on) encouraging you and motivating you to "do well," your success in college will, necessarily, have to be almost entirely self-motivated. And I don't say that because professors and advisors here aren't supportive - they are. But at the end of the day, they aren't going to do your psets for you, or call you up and remind you to study for the big physics exam next Wednesday. You're going to be the one who has to take charge of that. And there will, probably, be a few times you have too much going on and forget that you have some HASS paper due in four days and you haven't read the book yet, or that the deadline to officially register for your UROP in the Langer Lab is in about 24 hours, or that you really need to start blogging some more, or...

And that's okay. Because if you're the kind of person who belongs at MIT, you won't just finish the paper (though you may have to sacrifice a few other things to get there) or manage to finish the UROP application in the nick of time, you'll actually learn from the mistake and make sure it doesn't happen again. (Ask me how I know.)

Sorry for digressing. I think we were talking about the National Reply Date being in five days or something, yes? Yes.

When I got into MIT, I was beyond elated. I had applied back in November or something with the philosophy that I would apply to a bunch of schools, find out where I was admitted, and make my choice from that list. I can't pinpoint exactly when things changed - but definitely by mid-February or so, I wanted to get into MIT. I think the blogs may have played a bit of a role in this realization. (And when I say think I mean "I'm sure," and when I say a bit of a role I mean they were a major factor. Thanks a lot, guys.) I waited to find out where else I had gotten into, but in the long run that was kind of a formality. CPW only confirmed my initial suspicion: MIT was, and is, the best school for me.

For many of my friends and classmates, though, it wasn't nearly that straightforward. I even know a good number of admitted 2012's who have only just made up their minds to attend MIT, and many more who are still deciding. So if you're reading this, and you're still making up your mind about where you're going to go next year, rest assured you're not the only one. I can't make the decision for you, obviously. But if knowing more about MIT would help you make a more informed decision, I - along with all the other bloggers, students, parents, and others who read these blogs - are all here to answer any questions you might have or concerns you want to address.

So whether you've already made your choice and want to explain why you chose MIT, or if you're still trying to make up your mind...by all means, comment away. That's what these blogs are here for, after all - to bridge the gap between MIT and you. That's why these blogs exist.

You know that feeling when you wake up right before your alarm goes off, or you put on that favorite sweatshirt you've had since forever, or you get home after a long trip and just put down your bags and sigh because it feels so good to be home?

Yeah. That's kind of what going back to MIT feels like.

So I visited back in February, had probably the second best time of my life (getting accepted and learning Calculus are tied for first - I'm quite serious), and knew absolutely for sure hands down no doubts that this was the place for me. If you want to get technical about it, CPW served no other purpose for me other than meeting new people and eating free food. Both of which I was fine with.

About 15.3 other people have already told you all the events that made CPW amazing, though, which sort of makes me repetitive. Of course, there's the

among other things. But those alone doesn't do this place justice, though citrus tastes oh-so-delicious.

The best parts of my CPW were a mix of

And you know what? I ended up at half of them by accident, or they weren't even on the schedule, or I just happened to be walking along and think, "Hey, that looks like fun."

So Class of 2013, even though you're probably all reading this and are thinking, "Ohmygods I can't wait to watch bouncy balls fall out of the sky and play in a ball pit and eat liquid nitrogen ice cream," what you get out of CPW will not be defined by what you read on the schedule - though that part will be awesome, too. You only get one genuinely pre-froshy CPW, so take advantage of it - if you're walking around in Baker and run into a bunch of current students who want to talk to you, stop and talk. You might just be there for an hour. Or if you don't think you're the Greek type, go to a frat party anyway. You might just have an awesome night.

Your CPW is going to be as completely unique as you, so make the most of it. I mean, this was just my CPW. Have it your way.

I had eagerly awaited CPW, and it was heaven. There was this booklet that you got at registration which was basically the bible to free food, free stuff, parties, meetings, and other activities that spanned the course of the four days. Have nothing to do? Look in the bible and there was something going on at that moment.

I stayed in the Alpha Chi Omega (AXO) sorority house with my host, who was also on the tennis team (nice matching job!). I was interested in finding out about the MIT sororities before going to CPW, so this was a perfect opportunity to see what it was like. For all you skeptics out there, MIT sororities are NOT your stereotypical sororities at all. The girls I met were all amazing- driven, motivated, really smart, and fun to be around. The MIT campus sits on the side of the Charles River, and the sororities and fraternities are right across the river, accessible by a short walk or a ride on the MIT Saferide shuttle.

This is the entrance to the AXO house:

It was really really pretty inside:

There were way too many events that I went to at CPW to go through every single one, so I'll just highlight some of them.

The first night at CPW, there was a welcome ceremony and festival, which mostly everyone went to, as evidenced by this picture:

There was liquid nitrogen ice cream there! How cool is that?

There was a lot of free food at the CPW festival, which was just a taste for what was to come later on. You could find free dinners at a lot of the frats, snack/study breaks at the dorms, food at random events like BOBAfest, and refreshments at almost every meeting. I experienced free food at DessertFest at Phi Delts, pancakes at a Simmons Hall study break, wings at PKT, bubble tea/ice cream/pancakes/crepes at various events at McCormick Hall, an Italian dinner with the Society of Women Engineers, junk food at the academic, athletic, and activity fairs, etc. etc. etc. Each CPW-er did get a card with $20.12 to use at various campus eating places, but as they all say, you can survive CPW and still gain pounds without using it.

Last summer, I had gone to the MIT Women's Technology Program (WTP), where I studied EECS for a month with 39 other girls. We had a reunion during CPW, where I got to reunite and hang out with all the WTP girls who went to CPW. Here's a shot of some of us at the brunch (I'm third from the left):

Our summer WTP electrical engineering instructor was also teaching a lab for 6.01 Intro to EECS, so a group of girls and I went to go check it out:

They were designing some type of robot and were focusing on one aspect of it during this particular day. I should know more about it since she explained it to us, but I was too excited about other activities to remember...oops?

You also see seemingly random sites across MIT campus. For instance, roaming the halls one afternoon, we saw big things of nitrogen just sitting in the hallway:

Also a complicated looking, sweet machine:

And then there's this giant, human banana:

(Just kidding! He had gone to my high school and was in a banana costume for his campaign for class vice president.)

My group and I befriended some cool AXO girls, who took us around to some frat parties and events. We went to the Skullhouse Monster Party, the Goldfish party at DTD (err...it was a little disturbing- think about the title of the party- but let's not go there now), a Heaven and Hell party, and hung out at some other frats for various events like dessert, wings, quick bathroom stop, etc. It was all pretty cool (and dry!). So let's debunk the myth now...there IS a social life at MIT out there, at varying levels from which you can pick.

You can also pick from varying degrees of involvement in extracurricular activities. There was an activities fair where tons of organizations set up tables. Once again, free food and free stuff were abound. Here's Paul representing the Undergraduate Research Journal (haha semi-stalkerish!)

The last night at CPW, I played Underground Capture the Flag. I was a bit disappointed that I didn't have any pictures of the game "in action," but what can I say? I was too distracted... This was the Gatorade break at the end of the first round:

My team (navy, against the red team) had ended up losing the first round, and I had to leave before the second round finished to get some semblance of sleep before my early flight. I was dead tired from three days of an entirely full schedule...this was just a sampling of what I did during CPW!

All in all, CPW was an amazing experience. I learned about the academic programs and opportunities while also having a blast socially with everyone. Probably the most significant thing I discovered was about the people- MIT is full of nerds, yes, but those nerds are also interesting, dynamic, and really fun. While I still haven't made my final decision in regards to where I will be going to college, MIT is a very unique environment that you can't find anywhere else.

CPW was so hugely difficult to take in all at once that it's hard to sum it all up in one blog post, much like it's hard to condense your life into 500 words for the admissions office. But I shall try.

I arrived at CPW on Friday morning and went to the opening lecture. Amy Smith gave an excellent presentation about some of the challenges of living in developing countries and how people could help. She talked about tools and devices that were redesigned to be inexpensive enough for people to afford. A major challenge for many people is finding fuel, usually wood, which smokes and leads to disease. Ms. Smith and her team developed a method of producing charcoal bricks out of natural waste materials in the communities that needed fuel. She works with students on projects that really do help people, which I think is a fantastic thing to be involved in.

For lunch on Friday, I met my awesome friend Daniel and a new friend named Rebecca. We sat in on a geology class which had videos of lava flowing, exploding, and making "pillows" and streams. After getting some free food, we sat in on a 8.02 class (Electricity and Magnetism physics). It had PowerPoint slides on screens all over the room, and the professor could ask questions for the students to answer with clicker remotes, which is what makes it a TEAL (Technology-Enabled Active Learning) class. I'm not sure if the TEAL would help me learn better, but it's an interesting idea. We got to see sparks. Lots of them. Big ones. The best demonstration was a giant switch connected to a giant inductor. A volunteer closed the switch, but nothing happened. You could practically see that inductor snickering to itself, just waiting. When the student opened the switch, there was a HUGE green spark. The student just sat there like he sees huge random green sparks every day - who knows? Maybe he does. The inductor was a little disappointed that no one ran screaming out of the room. I also saw Snively, but he disappeared before I could say hi.

Bouncy balls. Falling from the sky. What more can be said?

I guess we showed up too late for Meet the Bloggers, since there weren't many people left. I got to talk to Ben Jones, who is more awesome in person, if that's possible. I thanked him for setting up such a great admissions process/website/blogs. I really feel that MIT cares about its prefrosh and wants to help as much as possible, and I appreciate that very much. Thanks to all the admissions officers!

I stayed in a suite in Burton 5. My host Sara and her suitemates were very nice. I even got to sleep in a bed instead of the floor I was expecting.

My absolute favorite view near Boston is the multicolored lights of Boston reflected in the Charles River at night, especially if you are high enough so the buildings don't get in the way. We were going to go see Baker House, but we ended up at East Campus, where they were telling stories of some of the hacks that MIT has done over the years. Luckily, we saw no zombies, but we would have been well prepared thanks to the chainsaw hack that Snively and prefrosh already blogged.

Random Hall had pancakes at 2:17 in the morning. In fact, they had lots of, well, random activities at :17 past the hour. Seventeen is supposed to be the most random number because people will pick 17 most often when they choose a random number between 1 and 20. Random Hall's funniest activity was a nerf gun war. They set up the couches to make forts so ten people could fire foam darts at each other, which we did with much drama and laughter. The practical people would crouch behind the couches and wait, and the more daring would leap over to the other side and try to shoot people before they could reload their guns. It was even more funny when the guns didn't work. Best quote of the night: "You shouldn't remember from this that MIT is awesome, but that I am awesome."

When I got to MIT, I felt like a prefrosh, probably because I am one. I had a sleeping bag, very little idea where to go, and I didn't know anyone. On the morning that I left MIT, I had a geeky sweatshirt, I knew my way around campus, and I could hardly tell who was a prefrosh and who was a student. CPW assimilates prefrosh into MIT culture. On the first day, I was an "it", a prefrosh, a visitor. When I left, people knew my name. I had random conversations all weekend. Everywhere, every time, there was always someone who would say hello, whether it was 8:30 AM in the student center or 8 PM at Battle of the Bands or 2 AM at Random Hall. I don't like everything about MIT, but that's because there is so much diversity in the people, the living groups, and the activities. I'm confident that I can find a niche where I fit in. It was a great feeling to eat breakfast before leaving on Sunday and realize that I'll be back in Cambridge in the fall.

]]> http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/youmit/making_the_most_of_your_visit/finding_my_way_around_mit_gues.shtml http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/youmit/making_the_most_of_your_visit/finding_my_way_around_mit_gues.shtml Making The Most Of Your Visit Sun, 20 Apr 2008 16:46:52 -0500 Paul B. '11 By Omar Abudayyeh '12

While I’m not cool enough to enroll at MIT on an iTouch or to dedicate myself to MIT for four years weeks before CPW, I am cool enough to now say, “I am enrolled at MIT!” In fact, I just enrolled moments before finishing this very blog entry and am proud of it.

Now with that out of the way…Hi, I’m Omar! I come from a small Midwestern town located on the lower left side of the palm that is Michigan (I wonder how many people actually get what I mean by palm :-p). After a two-hour flight, during which I met a matriculating Harvard Medical School student who tried to convince me to go to a public university, I was definitely ready for some MIT action. I left the plane and descended upon the luggage claim where I met my first MIT friend, Shubhi. Although I never saw her again during CPW, there's no one like your first MIT prefrosh friend (words of wisdom).

To those who have heard rumors of a clandestine, transcendental chat group full of amazing people, let me assure you. There is an MIT 2012 chat room (commercial: if you would like to be part of this, for a one time only fee of five dollars (just kidding) you can join this interesting bunch by going to your favorite AIM client and joining the chatroom “MIT12”).

And here are our trusty sidekicks:

For the past few months, while waiting for my MIT decision and even after it, the chatroom provided me with my daily MIT fix. We laughed, we cried, we made fun of Harvard and Caltech, and we anxiously awaited CPW. All of us chat people became closeknit and couldn’t wait to meet at CPW. When I stepped off the Peter Pan bus onto MIT’s campus, I looked around hoping to spot someone I "know." As I edged closer to the student center, I saw some people doing an odd version of the cha cha slide and by the time I turned on my trusty, dandy, handheld video camera with laser deathbeam and all, I had realized that they were all MIT12 chatters!

(They are all going to punch me at orientation for posting that picture.)





My first duty on campus after registration, of course, was to find the admissions office. I quickly scanned the doors in the infinite corridor until I found:




After the chat group finished taking pictures we knocked on the door and an MIT student asked, “Are you prefrosh?” and we just giggled and nodded yes and she told us that all of the admissions officers were in the student center. We didn't care though, we got what we came for: a picture of the names.

Now, one of my personal goals during CPW was to collect as many free shirts as possible. While I ended up only getting 4, I still came away feeling like I had somewhat accomplished my goal. Two of the shirts were actually unexpected, while the other two I snagged from the enourmous activities fair. While I do not have a picture of the activities fair, I do have a picture of the CPW festival, which was held in the same place and looks exactly the same as the activities fair minus a naked guy in a box.





At the activities fair, I saw Paul again and he was at my favorite booth. He works on the MIT Undergraduate Research Journal and if I recall correctly is going to be co-Editor-in-Chief next year. This journal rocks and so I did what any prefrosh would do...I put my email address on "the list" to get more information from them.

I ended up obtaining another shirt from the Arab Students' Organization (ASO). This one is my favorite shirt since it spells “Massachusetts Institute of Technology” in Arabic. Yeah, you wish you had one of these. While on the subject of the ASO, let me go off on a tangent and say that I am very impressed with how MIT regards religion on campus. I went to a Muslim Students Association event held in the Religious Activities Center and it was amazing. There was a well-furnished prayer hall filled with everything a Muslim student would need. Out of all the universities I visited, MIT treats religion the best. End tangent here.

Aside from rocking out in Rock Band throughout CPW...



...some of the highlights of my trip at MIT included:

1) CPW Welcome

My favorite part about the welcome was definitely the MIT Logarhythms, MIT’s all-male a cappella group. For your enjoyment, here are two of the songs they performed:




Here in Your Arms:



Thanks to Sam '12 for uploading this second video for me :-).


2) Battle of the Bands



In this event, I received my fourth free shirt as one of the bands threw a shirt and I luckily pushed and shoved people and caught it. At first I was like “Meh another shirt,” but then someone pointed out to me that the band members on the shirt actually spell out “MIT” and then I was like “OMG this shirt rocks!” and I walked around feeling victorious.


3) Walking on the Harvard Bridge…like a bajillion times!

I quickly found the Skullhouse fraternity on the other side of the river to be a nice safe haven for breakfast, snacks, Monster energy drinks, and, of course, Rock Band. As a result, I trekked a few times back and forth the Harvard bridge, killing my feet in the process. That’s ok though because otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to stomp on something that relates to Harvard and I wouldn’t have taken this picture below, which adequately describes how I feel now as the orientation approaches and the next four years edge closer.




4) Bouncy Ball Drop

This event rocked. It absolutely rocked. There is nothing like being the target for 10,000 bouncy balls that are being subjected to the cold hearted force that is gravity. One moment it was quiet and calm, the next moment it was raining bouncy balls. I must admit that the strobe light was a nice addition, especially since it helped illuminate the floor in our scramble to collect as many balls as possible. Right as we all began collecting balls though, the fine folks of Senior House began pelting us with water balloons. After being struck by the third water balloon, I decided it was time to high tail it over to the Meet the Bloggers event before I was late.



5) Meet the Bloggers

With wet, soggy pants, I power walked through East Campus and the infinite corridor and reached the student center with time to spare. Inside, Ben Jones himself was preparing all the necessary supplies to make a scrumptious root bear float. The event eventually kicked off and all the bloggers filed in! After each person gave a brief introduction, everyone would clap and it was really funny as Ben and Snively got the loudest clapping/cheering. When the introductions were then, we were able to scoff down root beer floats and converse with the wondrous MIT blogging team. I got to chat with Ben, Matt, Paul, Snively, Melis, Mollie (College Confidential buddies!), and Chris. Chris by the way does look a lot taller in person. I think that is the general consensus. To top off the night, we did the obligatory group picture!









6) Underground Capture the Flag

On the last night, a huge game of capture the flag took place in the vicinity of the infinite corridor. The underground tunnels, the main floor, and second floor were all fair game and made for an interesting battle. While my feet were killing me at this point due to the continuous walking for three days, I toughed it out and played offense with Sam ’12. We snuck around for most of the game, until we were deep in red territory (we were Blue) and were spotted. I made a run for it and somehow ended up out of bounds. Nevertheless, I hid around a corner for five minutes, but just as I felt I was safe again, a red person came out of nowhere and took me to jail where I found Sam ’12 sitting. Then just moments later, we found out the game had ended and everyone walked back to lobby 10 to find out that the Red team had dominated. Well, at least it’s “better dead, than red.”



7) Math until you die

I died after 30 minutes. Here are the poor souls who I left behind:



While I only stayed 30 minutes, the math involving group theory and topology was still fairly interesting.



8) Simmons Hall

After seeing the tour, I absolutely fell in love with Simmons and will be putting it as my first choice (disclaimer: all feelings I express now are subject to change). Let’s start with the basics:

a) Meditation Room




b) Cool architecture



c) Random walls that jut out



d) A very new feel (maybe because it is new)



e) Amazing, hard-to-reach views (can you guess where in Simmons this was?)



If I decide I don’t want Simmons anymore, I would definitely choose Baker. I think Baker made the cut when I saw this board filled with physics. It reminded me of The Big Bang Theory, one of my favorite shows.



If neither Simmons nor Baker work out, I could always live in the best room on campus. The study area within the great dome!



I must say that MIT has really shown itself to be a safe campus. It’s great to know that campus police have thought about every possible situation and have come up with ways to protect the student body. This really puts my parents at ease too.



After walking past this excellent hack, I was innocently rickrolled (yes, I'm streching the meaning of the term) as someone was cruelly playing Rick Astley's music video for "Never Gonna Give You Up" in the hallway. Of all places!



The welcome ceremony was also entertaining, giving us another performance by the MIT Logs and an amusing act by a guy with Chinese Yo-yos. Click here to see their performance of "Save Room" by John Legend.

At the end, I saw none other than Ben Jones himself and got a picture along with Pam ‘12:



Overall, CPW was a great way to experience MIT in a fun way (I hear it's not like this at all next year, go figure). It was so much fun that it persuaded me to enroll. I cannot wait to be a full fledged MIT freshman next Fall. I visited a few classes, such as Physics II (not too bad), Linear Algebra (I understood it all yay :-) ), and Applied Electromagnetics: From Motors to Lasers (cool stuff). The premed panel was also very helpful. I was afraid I'd come to MIT, leave with a bad GPA, and end up practicing medicine in my parent's basement, but it's not true! Just about 90% of premed undergrads get into med school :-).

I am very happy to say: Only four months left!

Well my camera conveniently died during CPW, only taking pictures with a color balance approximated below:

I tend to be a man of few words, and my guest-entry was going to revolve around visual aids; consequently, I hope you find this mostly text-based article short but sweet.

Enough with the excuses, onto the introduction! My name is Gordon and I’m from sunny Santa Monica, California. Most would consider me to be a pretty serious, goes to bed at 10, enjoys jazz music type of guy. So from the minute I leapt off my five-hour plane flight to drearily dragging my semi-conscious self out of bed Sunday morning, my rather straight-laced personality was exposed to a weekend of epic proportions.

One of two constants during the four-day trip was the cacophonous racket, which I absolutely loved. I met up with my host, Brad ’08, and from the Student Center to Skullhouse across the river, music of some kind never stopped blaring. The second unvarying item was the massive quantity of free food. Some standout dishes included cannoli from Mike’s Pastries, the obligatory liquid nitrogen ice cream, and professional chef Gerry’s world famous cooking at Skullhouse.

I originally planned on running the Back Bay 5K with Brad, who is a marathon runner like myself. Sadly, he became a little under the weather, but I left to check out the race. It was anticlimactically canceled, but I still went for a nice run with a couple of other prefrosh:

I hope my Photoshop tweaks slightly improved the wonky picture quality. This run along the river really highlighted how MIT has one of the best locations imaginable: the campus straddles both the most college-friendly town in the world and a bustling, vibrant city.

CPW taught me a lot about MIT. I now know that the sports teams are called the Engineers, but the mascot is the beaver, “nature’s engineer.” I know the social Baker from the relatively calm Simmons from the quirky East Campus. And I understand UROPs and why I might prefer Course 6-2 over 6-3.

But most importantly, I was introduced to a group of young adults that I am proud to become a part of next year. MIT attracts an unbelievable diversity of students from across the social spectrum. I can’t imagine anywhere else that can so seamlessly make me feel at home in my comfort zone and challenge my norm. From the hackers of East Campus to the frat brothers on the Boston side of the river, everyone is bound together by a love, or at the very least an appreciation, of science and technology. One Institute, under tech! MIT is a place where I can play a heated bout of Super Smash Brothers and stay up all night writing code, but also party like it’s 1999 every once in awhile. So I would like to thank everyone at MIT for making the campus such a special place and give a special shout-out to those at the Delts' Goldfish Party and the Skullhouse Flava-Ice Party, who exemplified the “Work Hard, Play Hard” mentality. And especially to the ladies in the cages (shown in-construction here) at the Phi Sig Graffiti Party, thanks for putting up with my ludicrous dance skills.

See you in the fall!

All throughout today, the day after CPW, I kept taking my keys out of my pocket and looking at my recently-purchased lanyard. Now, when I should be writing a persuasive essay for my AP English class (for all those who have forgotten, an essay is the English version of a pset), the situation isn’t any different.

It’s a brand new, red and silver and black MIT lanyard; on it are the words MIT Engineers, a picture of black-colored beaver swimming gracefully through water (abstractly represented by cardinal-colored ripples), and a mass of keys about the size of a tangerine. It’s nothing really that special—there were many more exactly like it at the Coop, and I bet they’re a common sight on campus—and there shouldn’t be any reason for me to like it this much. And yet… It really is something more, something special.

After CPW, I have almost a complete outfit of MIT clothes—a shirt, a baseball cap, and a sweatshirt. All I’m missing is some pants, maybe some shoes. But these clothes aren’t the feel-good objects they should be. Wearing a shirt, a sweatshirt, a hat—heck, even my non-existent MIT shoes—inspires in me minimal pride (though it does cause some bemusement as I walk into the local U that I take classes at in the morning). These clothes are really something that tell other people that I got into MIT.

This lanyard reminds me that I am going there next year, that the amazing people I met and the awesome experiences I had during CPW aren’t just a memory.

This lanyard holds the key to my soon-to-be home, even if it lacks keys to any of the many residence houses.

I’m not going to say that I’m going to love every moment of my life at MIT—that’s just setting myself up to be disappointed—but as the hackers in lobby 7 eloquently expressed, “IWHTFP” in each and every one of the possible meanings. The four or five months from until I move into Cambridge will quite possibly be the longest in my life. Being part of a community that hacks the campus while simultaneously hacking away at psets (I know, I know, It’s called “tooling”) is an experience that will most likely never find it’s equal in the past 18 years of my life, for better or for worse.

Again fiddling with my keys, I think about the highlights of my weekend. My arrival was pretty simple—unlike most people, I live within 50 minutes of the domes—and registration passed without incident. Sitting in a chair in the student center lobby, I subtly remind my parents that they aren’t required to stay, if they really don’t want to. Picking up the hint, they quickly schedule a financial aid appointment and head back to Vassar St. and their parked car. A little bit later, my host awakens and arrives to escort me to my sleeping spot for the next four days.

Along the way I meet someone I had spoken to for a while in an online AIM chatroom for accepted students, and I have now officially met the first real person from my class. Once my luggage is settled, my sleeping bag and pillow unpacked, and my backpack filled with essentials, we head out to begin tasting the fine wine that is MIT. An exciting day results, and everything is going swell until later that night.

All the people from the chat had decided to meet up at Anna’s Taqueria at 8:00 that night, and in the beginning it seemed to be going well. Looking behind me, I see a wooden ledge (perfect for sitting) below an angled concrete roof. I put my arms back and push myself upwar–*bump* goes my head as it impacts the ceiling, and I fall back down to earth feeling slightly embarrassed. I at first thought it was a normal bump, until one of my compatriots exclaimed "Chris, you’re bleeding!"

Why, oh god why?

A few ounces of overly-dramatic blood, one ambulance ride, and four staples later I was in a taxi (my first!) on my way back to the campus, head wrapped up in what might be the funniest-looking bandage ever utilized. I tried as much as possible to hide and ignore my newfound distinguishing mark, hiding it beneath an MIT baseball cap, and 24 hours later I was able to finally remove the headwrap.

Not that I was any less recognizable — at least one person still noticed ("Weren’t you the guy who had that headband thing on because he…" "Yes…"). It was a good way to start some conversation, though, and showing people my staples always prompted a reaction.

The next interesting thing I participated in was a game of underground capture the flag played on Saturday night (Random Standard Time). The first few games were strictly by-the-rules, but due to a sudden simultaneous and unannounced decision by both teams a significant amount of cheating took place in the third game. Lasting over an hour and 10 minutes, the tiebreaker round saw the utilization of numerous technicalities and almost developed into a full-blown fistfight near the end, when the red team was shown to be the better cheater of the two.

While there were many more awesome events, including MTB and the Battle of the Bands, any attempt to fully include them all would take up more pages than an advanced calculus textbook.

Barely able to scrounge up a few hours of sleep, I awoke and packaged my luggage up again—not quite able to fit all of my new t-shirts inside. I said goodbye to my host and a few of the others I had met in the house, and headed out to be picked up by my parents. As we drove away, I stared out the window of the car—feeling that for all that I was going back to my house, I was leaving my real home.

Personally, today has already been even slightly more crazy than usual. After my bioengineering seminar, I ran over to the Student Center to pick up my very own pre-frosh, an awesome guy from Brooklyn named Abi (if you're reading this, hi Abi!). After a quick stop at Anna's and bumping into Shamarah '12 in the Infinite Corridor, we arrived at my recitation for 5.12 (organic chemistry), where I spent an hour unraveling the mysteries of Sn2 reactions and E1/E2 elimination.

We followed that up with another recitation, this time for 18.03 (differential equations), where the ever-effervescent Jeremy explained convolution and why it matters. Abi then ran off to the Whitehead Institute to take a tour of the Weinberg Lab. To be honest, I'm actually incredibly jealous (who would have thought I could be envious of a pre-frosh?), because Dr. Weinberg - who was my professor for 7.012 last fall - is a brilliant researcher, and I imagine his lab has to be pretty cool as well.

Now I'm headed to my last class of a day, an hour-and-a-half lecture/discussion about "humanistic perspectives in medicine." So far, this class (which fulfills part of my humanities requirement) has covered everything from the Hippocratic Oath to black-market organ harvesting - yes, it's very intense ;) - and today we'll be discussing Sinclair Lewis' "Great American Novel," Arrowsmith. (Who says MIT kids aren't cultured?)

At 4:30, I'm heading over to the northeast side of campus for a not-so-secret meeting with several familiar faces - sorry to keep you in suspense, but you'll definitely hear (and see?) more about the fruits of our meeting later. At 5:00 I'm due to meet Abi again at the Student Center - we'll probably head over to Simmons (my dorm), get him settled in my room, and figure out some sort of plan for dinner. After that, I'll be helping set up for the CPW Festival (which you should all come to, by the way: the fun starts at 9:30 in the Johnson Athletics Center) before hopping across the river to meet up with some other pre-frosh friends at Skullhouse's Monster Party.

And from there, who knows what will happen? Oh, CPW...