Foot of the Charles

The last race of head race season in Boston is The Foot of the Charles regatta. The course runs from MIT's boathouse to Harvard's, a slightly shorter distance than most head races. In terms of participation, it's much smaller than the Head of the Charles, with only college teams showing up to race in it.

MIT's lightweight men put out four boats: three freshman eights and a varsity four. I was in the second eight. We raced against Brown, Harvard, and Boston University, among others, all of which also put out several boats.

Because our boathouse was the starting line, all our boats had to be on the water before any of the races started. We wouldn't be able to launch once people started rowing past without interrupting the other races.

Typically, eights are the last event of any regatta and the Foot was no exception. So we dutifully showed up three hours before race time, clad in only racing spandex and a hat, got in our boats, and went out onto the water. Now, it's cold in Boston in November but it's even colder on the water, in the wind, wearing next to nothing, paddling around for hours on end.

Once the race started we warmed up quickly and were at full steam in no time. Despite the boat being composed half of walk on rowers - who's only experience in a boat had been at MIT - we focused and had the best row that line up had ever seen.

I'm second from the bow

After the dust settled and the results were out, we had done really well. Our first eight was the fastest light weight boat overall, beating Harvard's first squad. My boat, the second eight, came in third, beating Harvard's second, third, and fourth eights.

That was the last time on the water for the Fall season. Everything until March will be indoors: lifting, erging, and running.

Barker Stacks

I had mentioned previously that I was working at Barker library in my spare time to help pay for tuition. That is still true. However, I also mentioned that it was low key and I had a lot of downtime for studying or playing around on the internet. While I thought that was the case at the time, it is apparently no longer true.

After using some of what I thought was down time to study for some upcoming tests, I received an email from my boss regarding his "expectations" and how I was not fulfilling them. Needless to say, I was pretty scared. I had been slacking off and did not want to lose my position.

I spent some time thinking about the job and decided that it wasn't any different from rowing or classes. When I get in a boat or settle into a test, I want to do the best, be the best. That shouldn't be any different for heading up to the library. Just because I don't enjoy it doesn't mean I shouldn't bring the same level of discipline and dedication that I do with everything else.

Since receiving that email, I am proud to say that I have not used my time at the library to study or surf the web. I shelve the books, work on the inventory project, and generally tidy up around the library. Recently, I was asked if a new student could shadow me as I closed one night because I was "the best closer at Barker," and given a small bonus for letting her. While it might not mean much in the long run, I feel better about a job well done. Even if it means I have to sacrifice my down time to make up for the time I spend working at the library.

UA Dinner

Undergraduate students are encouraged, once a semester, to take a professor out to dinner. The idea is that they'll get to to him or her and form lasting relationships with someone who would be otherwise inaccessible. The Undergraduate Association (UA) happily foots the bill as long as you keep it under $20/person and fill out the required paperwork.

As a freshman, I didn't really know any of my professors. Three of my four classes were huge lecture situations where several hundred students shared one lecturer. Naturally, the good ones were overwhelmed with student requests for dinners and could probably go several weeks on end without paying for a dinner if they indulged all the students who inquired. The fourth class, Writing about Literature, was much smaller. Twelve students small. And it was taught by a relatively young and hip professor, Noel Jackson.

Class was scheduled for 3:30-5 on Mondays and Wednesdays, and as diligent  young students, we were roughly on time each day. Noel, on the other hand, was not. He strolled in regularly around 3:45 each day, which gave us plenty of time to talk amongst ourselves twice a week. After the first round of "UA dinner" emails went out advertising the idea, it was quickly brought up in this free time and organized.

Five students (the max is six) agreed to enjoy an early Friday night with Noel and cash in on a free meal from Bertucci's, a local Italian eatery. Conversation was interesting, starting with parents' occupations and going from there, hitting everything from academia and industry, robotics and AI, to Jay-Z and Kanye West. When it came time to order, we finally hit a pause. No one really knew what they wanted - would some people like to split a pizza, or order separate meals and share? Ordering food for a group of MIT engineers - myself included - had tacitly turned into a large, complicated optimization problem. And we had no paper to figure on!

Thankfully, one of the other students solved it easily with one simple fact. "Well, the UA will pay up to $20 a person. I say we take them for all we can!" Obviously, that settled it quickly. We each happily ordered an entire pizza with different toppings and promised to share with whomever was interested. That's right. Six people stroll up, sit down, and order six eighteen inch pizzas. The order goes in, conversation resumes, and is promptly interrupted again by the waiter preemptively bringing out six stands and setting them up around the table. When the pizza arrives, we are literally trapped in it. Surrounded by food, the only way to escape is to eat out way out!

Pizza embargo

With bulging stomachs and smiling faces, we waddle out of the restaurant carrying three leftover pizzas, enough to feed another six hungry customers. Noel thanks us for a great evening and hops on his bike to go home, and we saunter back towards campus.

Afterwards, the dialog in class felt much more relaxed and familiar. After all, half the class saw Noel as an entire human being, instead of just a teacher. An another (unintended) benefit from this experience was that last two essays were graded higher, perhaps I had become a better writer over the course of the class, but perhaps having dinner with him helped him grade a bit more leniently. I guess I'll never know. 

I'm definitely looking forward to doing this again in the Spring semester. I again don't know any of my professors but I am certainly happy for the opportunity to get to meet them!

Family weekend, Head of the Charles, Classes, oh my

Family weekend was two weeks ago - my mom came up from Florida for about thirty six hours. We hung out in Boston, campus, and Harvard Square. Saturday night we went to Harvard Square for dinner and couldn't find anywhere to eat - it was Harvard's family weekend too - and wound up wandering around until we hit a restaurant with empty tables. It was Upstairs on the Square, a posh eatery. We went up four flights of stairs before seeing a dining room or table. I got a delicious steak and my mom ordered the duck. After dinner, we caught the last three acts of an MIT a cappella concert. Everyone was amazing but the best part was the last song: "Up B," a parody of C-Lo's "Fuck You," written about Super Smash Bros. The video is not of the MIT a cappella group but the song is the same.

 

This was absolutely hysterical because the two parts of the joke - the original song and the content from Super Smash Bros - were both completely foreign to her. So not only was I laughing at the song, but I got to see her completely stunned reaction. Totally funny.

The next weekend was the Head of the Charles Regatta, the biggest regatta in the country if not the world. It wasn't that big of an event on campus; unless they were a rower or knew rowers, no one was particularly interested. Although I didn't get to row in it this year, I went and cheered on the team and hung out with the other guys who weren't in the boat.

This last weekend was Halloween - Friday night and all day on Monday I was dressed as a ninja.

There were surprisingly few other students dressed up for the holiday, but I did walk to my writing class with Wonderwomen. Otherwise, I saw the pink panther, several video game characters, and a viking or two. Saturday night I was a frat guy

Pictured here with Minnie Mouse and a zombie

and walked around Boston with some friends trying to get into the Halloween parties. It was the first real snow of the year, it was very cold in Sperrys and khaki shorts!

Unfortunately life at MIT isn't all weekends and rowing, I've been busy with schoolwork and the second round of midterms. We literally did rocket science last week in physics and I understood it on the pset. Either some things are actually harder than rocket science or I've got a very nice seven semesters lined up. I survived my bio midterm and am happy to report that I'm passing all my first semester classes.

Long week but a long weekend

Last Saturday was the thirty third annual Anything But Clothes party on Burton third. I didn't really know what to wear to this event, but after looking through last years pictures, found that most guys usually wore boxes around their waist and girls somehow constructed dresses from trash bags and duct tape. There weren't any empty boxes laying around in MacGregor and I really didn't want to go out and purchase one for a one time use outfit. I just kept putting it off, after all, psets and classes are more important than clothes to one party. I told myself I would figure it out Saturday afternoon; luckily as I walked to class Friday morning, I saw a handful of people unloading and breaking down boxes of glass pumpkins for display. I simply asked for one, and easily enough the Saturday night problem was solved.

Fabrication was very straight forward. I created some roughly suspender shaped pieces out of duct tape and put them over my shoulders, positioning the box so that it covered the important parts. The biggest problem of the night was something that didn't occur to me until we got there: other guys would also be wearing boxes of various sizes. And when you're in a box, you take up a lot more room - you're literally bigger and have funny dimensions - than you're used to. So when two guys in boxes try to maneuver in a crowded space, it gets complicated and funny pretty fast.

Someone costumes that really stood out included a guy wearing a kilt composed entirely of Christmas lights. He stood near an outlet for the better part of the night before he finally gave up and unplugged it. There was a couple wearing inflated balloons, and a handful of people wearing food. Skittles and fruit roll ups were the popular choices. 

All in all, it was a fun night. I think the last few weeks had worn down my immune system, because I woke up Sunday morning with gallons of mucous in my lungs. I got some extra sleep and drank plenty of water, but it wouldn't go away. I was coughing it up every day and finally on Friday I gave in and went to Medical. It turns out it was some sort of bacterial infection; they got me started on an antibiotic routine and it's working pretty well.

After a pretty successful trip to Medical I headed back towards west campus and the boat house. On my way, I ran into a pair of Korean tourists looking for the dome. I happily led them to it - it was on my way anyway - and they snapped a few pictures. It amazes me that this school is such a destination; there are huge tour groups every day. Last week, someone took a picture of me going to class, just because I was a student here. It's unreal. 

Otherwise, we just had Columbus day weekend, we had Monday and Tuesday off. I used it to catch up on sleep. I have a feeling I'm going to be getting less and less as the semester progresses, so I get it while I can. We have a three day week this week and then the next weekend is Family weekend. My mom's coming up Friday night, I'm excited to see her again and take her around Boston and Cambridge.

The week

I don't think math professors particularly enjoy teaching 18.01 or 18.02 (single and multivariable calculus). They're graduation requirements and essentially boring fundamentals for the rest of a math career. Our current professor for Multivariable, McKernan, is uninterested at best. After the first week of lectures, the freshmen of D Entry at MacGregor decided we would rather watch the videos they posted on youtube of previous years lectures, taught by Auroux. It's the same material, but delivered more relevantly and concisely. He has an awesome french accent and is much  more focused. And it's open to the public, if you have some free time, check it out.

We've had two tests so far, one in each physics and math. I got an 87 on physics and 95 on multi, it feels awesome to say that I got an A on a math test at MIT. I think the OCW lectures are working. 

Classes are really different here than in highschool. Everything is the student's responsibility. The psets are distributed over the internet and are turned in outside of class. It's your job to make sure you get everything done, to show up to classes, tests, recitations. There's no punishment for missing a lecture except that you missed the lecture. You missed the material covered and should make it up if you want to do well in the class. Of course, it's completely up to you. Taking advantage of this, I had a paper due at 3.30 and a calc recitation at two. I chose to spend the first half hour of my recitation proofing my paper and fixing mistakes. I think it was worth it, but I don't want to make it a habit. I'm lucky that I've already seen the MVC material already.


Overall I'm finally finding a rhythm in my weeks. Monday through Wednesday is rough, but I have free time on Thursdays and Fridays and even find time for naps! Mondays and Wednesdays start at 10 with biology and go until seven. I have class until five and practice until seven. On Mondays I head over to the library to work from nine to midnight. Tuesdays wouldn't be that rough - I have only two hours of class instead of five and half - except I have morning lifts at 7:30 after a late night at the library. Thursdays, like Tuesdays, only have two hours of class, and one of them is OCW 18.02, so it's whenever I want. My weekends alternate fun and work. I go out Friday nights, work all day Saturday and go out again after dinner. After my second night out, I pset hard again all day Sunday. So far, it's working.

People and Practice

There are serveral stereotypes about MIT that seem to be permanent and universal: work would be voluminous, time management would be a struggle, all my classmate would be geniuses, et cetera et cetera. For the most part, they need to be true for the school to maintain it's reputation and prestige, and so far our professors are doing a very good job of living up to those expectations.

There is one preconceived notion that couldn't be farther from the truth. The undergraduates here are not math robots, human calculators, or physics prodigies; I have yet to see a single pocket protector. They are real people with desires, feelings, opinions, and the capacity to have fun. At least, the majority of us are. Every now and then I run into someone who actually is the stereotypical MIT student. I'm trying to have a conversation with this guy on the way back to MacGregor and he's just resisting every step of the way. I managed to wrestle from him that he's a senior majoring in mechanical engineering, but other than that, he kept it to monosyllables and little to no eye contact. Those people are surprisingly rare; I'd estimate it at maybe one for every ten social students. Of course, that's probably the most biased sample ever, but I don't think I can easily correct for it.

But more than being real people, they accept everyone else as real people as well. The atmosphere created here is unbelievable. You can do anything weird or obscure, pursue any whim - and chances are someone else will be there too. Want to skateboard through the underground tunnels in the middle of the nights? That's one of the less weird things the maintenance staff will see this year. Go for a jog in full business attire? I've both seen it happen and been involved.

Crew is wildly different than it was at Cape Coral, but I still love it. Getting to go on the Charles every day is incredible. In the canals at Cape Harbor, all the other traffic was motor boats and people that had never seen a racing shell before gawking at us or taking pictures. Here, it's the complete opposite - all the other boats on the water are either collegiate sail boats or other rowers. It's really cool rowing past Northeastern, Harvard, or especially Wellesley crews. And it's totally expected. The Bostonian pedestrians see people rowing on a daily basis, after all The Head of the Charles is one of the biggest regattas in the world.

The actual practices are different too. Instead of taking out only one boat, we take out three eight man shells every day and do mostly race pieces. There is a technical warm up period but the majority of the practice is full pressure - pulling hard the whole way. This week in particular we have three two a days, practice at 7:30 am and then again at 5 pm. Although it's tons of time and effort I love every second of it.

Other than that, I've started picking up shifts at the libraries and MacGregor desk. Both are pretty easy, and very low key. The library job just entails shelving books and cataloging . Working the desk at my dorm is actually pretty fun, I just talk to everyone as they come in, handle packages, and get to work on whatever I want. This entire post was actually typed while working the desk.

'Work hard, play hard'

Freshman orientation ended with a class trip the aquarium: we all packed into buses and drove over the river into Boston. After visiting with the sea turtles, penguins, sharks, electric eels, et cetera, we went outside to a dance area. Several of the MIT dance troupes performed, culminating in riDONKulous, who put on an awesome show. After the performances, they opened the floor to all the freshmen and let us loose.

Even though orientation was over, there was still time before classes start, and we had to stick to the unofficial motto of "Work hard, play hard." To aid us in that endeavor, rush week and recruitment started as quickly as freshmen orientation ended. Rush is put on by the fraternities; it’s the only time where it's a good thing to be a freshman guy. Similar to REX, the different houses try to convince freshmen to join them by hosting cool events and parties. It kicked off with the Zeta Psi annual Car Bash: they find an old junk car, give teenagers some spray paint and sledgehammers and let them go crazy. Any piece you knock off you can keep, and who wouldn't want a door or trunk for their fresh, undecorated dorm room? I line up and watch the first couple groups go; everyone's working on the driver's side door. This thing is built to last, the hinges stand up to all the sledgehammer hits twenty or so teenage guys (and one girl!) throw at it. My turn comes up and I go for the door too, because at this point it's so close to coming off.. Someone's going to get it! Although I don't have much luck with the door, in an afterthought I take a couple swings at the rear view mirror. Viola, it pops right off! A few good pulls break the wires connecting it to the dashboard and I've got myself some new decor.

While I was in the ring with the car, one of my friends from highschool – currently attending Northeastern – sent a picture of the car bash from the sidewalk to my phone. All those rumors about everyone coming to the MIT parties? Turns out they’re true: he's here with a bunch of NU friends for the first night of Rush. We meet up and hit dorm row in Boston to go party hopping.

The next day, I went indoor skydiving and played trampoline dodgeball with AEPi. It's a Jewish fratertinity but anyone was allowed to come to their first few events. Trampoline dodgeball is played exactly like regular dodgeball except the floors are all trampolines and the walls are at forty five degree angles and are also trampolines. And your wear special shoes that let you run on them. Its fun just jumping and running around, and even more fun playing dodgeball. Indoor skydiving was even cooler than it sounds, we went in a vertical wind tunnel with an instructor and spun and floated around for a few minutes at a time.

Quite the facial expression.. In my defense it's very windy in there

That night we went F1 racing with Kappa Sigma, which is essentially go karting for big people. Although I wasn't too excited - I have a driver's license, some of the thrill has worn off - I really like the brothers at Kappa Sigma so I tagged along. When we got there, it was not what I expected. A huge indoor course, professional looking jumpsuits, and serious go karts met us at the door. Driving around tight turns, hitting close to thirty miles per hour on the straight aways, and even some "unintentional" contact with the other cars made for a great time.

Later in the week, I went to the beach with Kappa Sigma, spend some time at their house for football on Sunday, and eventually received a bid from them. Although I haven't pledged yet I am strongly considering it. I really like all the brothers and they have a great time together, but they know how to buckle down and study as well. The soonest you can move in is sophomore year, so I have plenty of time to decide on that front. The fraternities – just like everything else at MIT – ignore the traditional stereotypes. Instead of the traditional drinking club image, the brothers in each house are very involved in the community, help each other with homework, and are otherwise nice people. The Kappa Sigma chapter at MIT was named the best chapter according to the national KS association. When they want to show a good example of a KS house, they show people the chapter at MIT.

While I'm on the topic of living groups, I should touch on recruitment. The sorority system is much less fun than rush week. It’s pretty much the exact opposite, actually. For rush, the fraternities spend tons of money to supply good food, fun events, transportation, everything. For recruitment, the girls that are interested spend six to eight hours a day meeting the sisters of every sorority and making small talk. And they're only allowed to eat animal crackers and drink water, (in contrast to the steak and lobster dinners at frats) to keep things fair between the big and small houses. This lasts three or four days and at the end culminates in a night of singing, cheering, and happiness when all the girls receive their bid. It's an abysmal process but all the girls that stuck it out and found a sorority seem very happy with it and unanimously report that it was well worth it. 

 

Sadly, the other part of "work hard, play hard" was quickly approaching. With schedules in hand, we set off Wednesday morning for the first day of a long first semester. First class, biology (7.012) with Eric Lander is very interesting; Lander explains introductory concepts very well despite being in charge of the Human Genome Project. Biology in my freshman year of highschool was memorizing power points, but Lander has a different philosophy. He teaches you to make inferences and understand overarching concepts. Of course, you still need to memorize some things, there is no way to interpret what a Golgi apparatus does or the differences between miosis and mitosis without the requisite knowledge. After biology I go straight to Physics (8.01). Physics is taught as a "TEAL" class, which means instead of just lecture, we sit at circular tables of about ten students and work on problems or concept questions together after the lecture. It's very dependent on the students at your table. If you get kids that aren't interested, you'll be struggling by yourself, but otherwise it definitely promotes discussion and helps me understand that material. Today I got to help with an in class demonstration of reference frames. The professor and I walked at a constant rate while we played catch. From my point of reference, it moved backwards, but to the stationary students, the ball seemed to go forward. Fascinating, right? Maybe not, but still useful. My third class is multivariable calculus (18.02), which is lecture style. Freshmen are only allowed to take four classes, and most chose to take a humanities (HASS) class as their fourth. I'm taking Writing about Literature (21L.00J). It's focused on poems and is so far pretty interesting. We've already had to write one paper for it, and another is due in a week.

You can ignore 21L.011, I dropped it.

Occasionally you get a reality check and it feels awesome: I'm in a math/physics class at MIT and I actually understand what the professor is saying! How many people do you know that can say that? So far, that's been the only good part of class - they really didn't pull any punches when it came to the first round of homework (p sets).

As classes started, so did rowing practice. The first day we ran to Harvard stadium in the rain (about two and a half miles), met each of the thirty steps in the thirty seven sections, and ran back. Thursday and Friday were ergometer (erg, think rowing treadmill) sessions on the dock. Erg sessions are not particullarly fun, but being surrounded by other suffering scullers is better than a solitary session. On the next Monday, we finally got on the water. Rowing on the Charles, passing all the landmarks in the Boston skyline, even the fresh set of blisters forming on my hands put a smile on my face for the entire workout. It definitely reminded me why I love rowing and I can't wait to get back out.

Lastly, sorry for the length of this post. I meant to update every week, but as you know, these last weeks have been absolutely crazy busy. This is about two weeks worth of content, and posts in the future will probably be much shorter.

Free Food

I've been on campus almost three days and I haven't paid for a meal. And I won't until next Saturday.

All the dorms are in the middle of REX, residence exploration, and are bribing the freshman with free food and parties. Since Friday I've been to jello wrestling and grilling (one event), a luau, three difference dances, brunch, and a long walk to Bexley.  And campus was shut down on Sunday due to hurricane Irene, so that's only two day's of REX events.

Once REX is over, rush week starts. The fraternities spend thousands of dollars trying to entice other students to pledging to them. Although I don't have much interest in joining a frat at the moment, I sure will during Rush Week! Free steak dinners? Yes please. One of the sophomores in MacGregor who pledged last year said that his frat is spending about $20,000 in just that week alone.

Speaking of MacGregor, although I'm running around, meeting everyone, partaking in free food, visiting the different residences, and plan to see some frats next week, I'm happy living here. Everyone is very friendly and social, and there is always something going on in my entry (D). Tuesday morning I woke up a bit earlier than everyone else and went into the common area. The TV was off! Which doesn't sound that unusual except that it had been on every other time I was in there since Friday.

On Tuesday we had a guest lecture by a professor here. Dr. Zuber spoke about the moon, it's history, and how learning about it's gravitational fields will help us further understand how both the moon and earth were formed. Then she went on to explain that NASA was sending one of her designs, the GRAIL, into space to orbit the moon and take in data about it's gravitational field. That's really, really cool. And some kids fell asleep during the lecture! 

We've also had two workout sessions with the lightweight rowing squad. They're mostly just to meet everyone but we did some good ab work and lifting both days. About six of the nine lightweights are extremely strong rowers and don't really look like they should be under 160 lbs, but they have virtually no fat and somehow they make the weight by race day. It was actually somewhat intimidating because here they are doing one handed pullups or showing us how to they do the ab workout to make it more difficult while I can only do two or three regular pullups and I'm having enough trouble with the core exercise as is, thank you very much. Regardless, we're going to have an excellent season. Even if I'm in the worst boat I'll still really enjoy it - I'd rather be the slowest rower in the slowest boat then not on the team.

The only thing disappointing thing is the lack of a strong Boston accent on campus. My mom and I stopped at a diner for lunch on Friday and the waitress talked to us about the "weathah" and the "storum." There's none of that on campus - the students are too mixed.

Coming from a small highschool, there are a TON of people here. I thought I'd met a lot of freshman in my first few days here, until we all got together for lunch. I looked around and didn't recognize a single person. That never happens at Canterbury. First time for everything!

Residence Assignments

Housing works a little differently at MIT. Because they need to be different in as many ways as possible, I suppose. In May, all incoming freshman received a thick, brightly colored mailer with details about the different dorms. Using the packet in conjunction with the DVD it included, we filled out an application online that asked for a paragraph about ourselves, whether or not we liked cats, and - critically - our residence preferences. After about a month, the results of the housing lottery appear online.

When you arrive on campus, you check into your dorm but do not unpack. The first couple nights, all the upperclassmen basically throw huge parties in each of their residences with hopes of luring as many unsuspecting freshman to stay there as possible. That's because you can put in a request to swap dorms if you're unhappy or just think you would like a different one more.

The dorm system sucks for kids like me who really liked the dorm they started at - because we can't unpack for a week - but it is definitly neccessary! Each dorm has a very unique culture and if an unsuspecting freshmen is assigned to a dorm with an attitude that doesn't match his own, he pretty much hates it. Several people I know are desperately trying to get out of east campus and into west. (The east campus dorms are very excentric and the west campus dorms are more normal).

The residence to which I was assigned is MacGregor - it was my first choice. It's divided in three levels. The biggest level is an entry, of which there are nine, labeled A through J. You might notice that the set A through J contains ten letters, because i is imaginary and you can't live in an imaginary entry. Those entries are composed of four of five suites each and a shared common area and kitchen. Finally, each suite is composed of four singles and a smaller living room. Just as each residence has its own personality, each entry has its own personality as well at MacGregor. You can read more about MacGregor on their wiki here and the video that they showed on the DVD is linked below.

Freshman excitment

Every year, the upcoming freshman are invited to participate in pre-orientation programs, or FPOPs,  which are little, specialized  week long programs before the real freshman orientation starts on August 27th. They cover anything from biological engineering to history in Boston, from architecture to outward bound. And students are not automatically enrolled; they must apply.

I'm reading about these all throughout May and June and the application deadline is June 17th. Naturally, I wait as long as possible to fill out the application, because why not, right?

Allow me to set the stage: it's Thursday June 16th, about 5 PM and I'm settling in for a boring night; Leigh's in Italy and I don't have any other plans. My phone rings, it's Jordan. He's gearing up to head to another friend's, Matt, house and they want to include me. Sounds great! I'm not doing anything anyway. But wait: this is a sleep over event. The deadlines the next day, but I don't know what time. I need to fill out my application now if I want to participate in FPOP.

I load up the common application, fill out the biological portion, and scroll through to look for the supplementary questions for the programs to which I want to apply. I had already decided on biological engineering, brain and cognitive sciences, electrical engineering and computer sciences, and ocean engineering, so I didn't spend any time laboring over which questions to answer. I hustle through the application, (Create an acronym for B. R. A. I. N? Really?) and hit send. With that out of the way, I can happily go meet my friends and enjoy the rest of my evening. As an aside, we played risk until about 5 AM and I won despite being pinned into Australia for most of the game.

A week later, everyone in the facebook groups is hearing from their selected FPOP and they're full of colon capital Ds and exclamation points. I haven't heard back from anyone, and I'm starting to get nervous. But, someone posts that the Electrical engineering and computer science group is delaying their responses for 24 hours. No problem, I'll just hear then, right? Wrong.

Little did I know, up at the top of the application was a series of general questions such as "What were your hobbies or extracurriculars in highschool?" that I skipped completely. Apparently the admissions committees don't really appreciate it when you skip the only questions that get sent to every single program.

Although I was disappointed by my hurried application, I'm over it. I'm sure by my senior year I won't be missing spending an extra week at school, and there are plenty of people who have other reasons for not attending the FPOPs. This is, however, a great lesson and I'm happy to learn it on something of such little importance. I can happily report that I haven't missed a question on an application since.

In other news, we have our plane tickets for the regular orientation date, August 27th, we sent in the first check for tuition, and dorm assignments are released in a few days. I'll serve up a fresh post with all the details about where I'm living for the next 9 months as soon as I can.
Lastly, look what I found! http://www.capricorn.org/~akira/home/lockpick/

Coming soon...

Information about FPOP, housing, orientation, schedules, classes, etc will be posted as it comes in!