Finals

I have two finals this semester, one tomorrow and one on Tuesday. Then I'm done!!! Check back in a few days for an update on the last few weeks of school. Right now I'm studying like crazy.

Room for next year!

Yesterday was Simmon's rooming lottery. Each dorm has a different method for picking rooms, and Simmons uses a lottery, with rising seniors picking first, then juniors, then sophomores. Now that we are rising juniors, we will all get singles! I was pick #88, and there were about 200 students total. I was in the upper middle of the junior class. My friends and I were very lucky since we were able to take over the 10C tower. My new room will be the one next to Gus' current room. It is 134 square feet, which is actually a relatively small single, but it will be plenty of room for me. Kaitlyn will take Gus's room, Gus will be living across from me, and Amanda will be a few doors down the hall. We also have two of our freshman friends in a double on the same floor (the room Kaitlyn and Amanda currently live in). It should be fun next year. It is quite strange because there are still tons of singles and doubles left. My current room with Annelise was not taken. I think this is partly because some people chose to just live in doubles to be closer to friends, and also because there are about 30 people fewer in the lottery than last year.

For pictures of a typical Simmons dorm room, go to the blog entries: "Simmons: My Crazy Dorm" (October 2005) and "My Room" (September 2006). Early next semester I will also post pictures of my new single room, so look out for those.

Ring Delivery

We got our Brass Rats!!! I keep looking at mine, smiling to myself. There was a reception in the State room of this really nice building in Boston. We had fun, even though it was on a Thursday night and we had psets to do.

Below is a snippet of a Tech article from this link: http://www-tech.mit.edu/V124/N10/RoseRing10.10c.html\

I think it expresses how MIT students feel sometimes.

“It seems that with each year here, undergraduates become more and more entrenched in this spiral of self-pity and disgust at their lives. But really there are a few milestones within those four years that seem to keep us sane and above water. One is graduation and finally being done with this place. The other is getting your brass rat.

The brass rat is a symbol of what you have accomplished so far, what you have to look forward to, and what you will accomplish when you leave campus. When you are a freshman, you look with envy to the upperclassmen’s fingers wrapped in shiny yellow. You know that you’ve got a long road ahead to finishing your turn in the Institute, but there’s a concrete item and experience to look forward to, to keep you plugging away at your work day in and day out.”

Very well said. See pics below of our beautiful and clunky rings!

CPW

The weekend of April 13^th was Campus Preview Weekend (CPW) for MIT. Many of = the admitted students come and visit the campus to see if they like MIT or not. CPW is a very huge deal here, and everyone puts a lot of time into planning activities so that there are a ton of different things to go to. Parents of the prospective freshman also come, so there are special activities for them, too (they need to be kept preoccupied so that their kids have some freedom :-). My CPW was one of the best weekends of my life, and I hope the kids this year thought so, too.

My roommate, Annelise, planned all the Simmons’ activities this year, along with another of our friends, Erin. We tried to have as many different types of activities as possible so that everyone would feel like they could fit in.

I had a prefrosh stay with me named Tiffany. She was from Fremont, California, and was into anime and music and many other things. She was undecided about MIT at first, but I received an email from her a few days ago about accepting MIT’s offer, which is great!

On Thursday night, we had a movie marathon, with Office Space and Euro-Trip, both quite hilarious (and very college-oriented) movies. I stayed up pretty late for that, since I did not have anything due the next day.

Friday we had an Arcade night, along with an Italian dinner. Unfortunately, I missed the dinner, but I had a good reason! There was an Intel Science Talent Search reunion dinner, so I saw some old friends and met the winners of this year’s competition. It’s amazing how we still have bonds from just being a week together.

Saturday was a very busy day, as there was chocolate baking, dorm tours, a brunch, and then at night there was a Mexican dinner with salsa dancing, and then board games! We decided to play board games while frat parties were going on, since so many people go to them. For people who did not feel like going to frat parties, they could at least come to Simmons and join us.

The pics above are the mexican dinner/salsa dance setup. The bottom one is me at Phi Sig's graffiti party, where Gus put high lighter on m y nose (don't worry, i got revenge!).

So you can see how busy ONE dorm was for CPW, can you even imagine how many things there are to do if each dorm, each frat/sorority, and most student groups and other people put on activities? There were pages and pages of things for people to do while here, and everyone does it with enthusiasm.

One of the largest compliments we get is how much fun MIT’s CPW is compared to other colleges. I didn’t go to any others, and I thought they were similar, but I guess MIT’s is one of the best. People really do get excited about the weekend, even if there is tons of school work to do, and tons of planning, but that doesn’t deter people from making an awesome CPW every single year. The weekend was fun, but very tiring for us. I hope everyone had fun!