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.