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!