No Name Blog

So, I know that I’m a horrible person for not updating at all in the past n months. I’m sorry. I know this also means there are things that have happened that people don’t know about. I’m sorry. I plan to fix that soon. In the mean time, tonight makes for a good story that stands well in isolation.

First of all, it snowed today. And it didn’t rain afterwards. Well, it didn’t rain the same day it snowed, although it is supposed to rain tomorrow. In any case, there was snow on the ground and it was still snowing this afternoon after classes. As I tend to do when I don’t feel like walking back to Burton-Conner on days like this, I went over to East Campus, where several of us decided that it was about dinnertime, and some place like a North End pizzeria would be pretty uncrowded due to the weather.

Then we made our first big mistake for the night. We decided that it would be fun to walk. So we did.

So we started towards the Longfellow Bridge. The snow varied between about nothing and 3 inches, depending on where exactly you were and how well it had been shoveled, and visibility was pretty limited. The snow combined with the wind felt more like sleet hitting your face (and hitting pretty hard). I decided it was a bad idea. I recommended getting on the T at the station on the other side of the bridge. For some reason we kept going.

Then we got lost. We should have realized this sooner, but we knew that the person leading our group has no sense of direction. He pointed out later that we took the scenic route with nicer scenery. Of course, with visibility being what it was, we wouldn’t have known.

It probably took us about 45 minutes of trudging through the snow to get to a small pizzeria where we demolished three large pizzas. We then walked over to Mike’s Pastry, a pretty well known shop there, for dessert.

Then we took the T back to MIT.

And that’s about all. In the mean time, I have to get up early tomorrow (which, for a Saturday, means before noon), so I’m going to bed.

So, here is a general catch-all entry for the past few weeks.

Starting with the Ig Nobels. The Burton-Conner student government allocates money every year to an IFAF to try and encourage interfloor bonding. Floors are allowed to get together and do stuff, and the dorm will pay for it. The activities are also known as IFAFs.

This year, one of our IFAFs was attending the Ig Nobel Prize Award Ceremony with Conner 2.

I don’t have photos, but suffice it to say that we had a good time. Highlights included an appearance by Benoît Mandelbrot, a spokesperson from the IAEA and 5 or 6 Nobel laureates demonstrating the sound of nails across a chalkboard, and a paper airplane hitting one of the Ig Nobel recipients in the head (throwing paper airplanes onto the stage is a traditional part of the ceremony).

Another fun thing from a while back: famous people tend to come to MIT for various reasons. For example, Steve Wozniak came to promote a new book, and I got a signed copy of said book. Now I just have to find time to read it. The founder of Pandora was also here.

Also, The Mythbusters are coming in about a week and a half, and some friends and I are going to go see them. Honestly, we’re not even sure why they’re coming, but it should be fun.

In addition, there are multiple recruitment sessions every week from big name companies, like Google or EA. And they usually bring food and/or swag.

For a brief excursion on classes…

I realized today that one of my 6.042 professors co-founded Akamai. Most people probably don’t know what Akamai is, but basically, they deliver big content like videos and music for lots of big companies, including, for example, the iTunes Music Store. And that’s really cool that he’s my professor.

We also had our first test in there last Wednesday. However, I completely accidentally slept through my recitation section on Friday, so I haven’t gotten the test back yet. I should tomorrow.

3.091 is going well. Sadoway’s lectures are still great shows, which makes them easier to sit through. However, we have another test coming up next Wednesday, and that makes me a little nervous.

We just got to Faraday’s Law of Induction in 8.02. Basically, it’s the AP Physics C curriculum, and I don’t understand why we don’t get credit for that. I got an 89 on the first test, which is satisfying, not to mention well above average. I guess having had the material before gives you a slight advantage. Not to mention a year of experience playing with vectors. As a class, it basically takes the form of interrupted lecture, which I think is unfortunate, because in theory, TEAL-style learning should work with the right teachers.

We’re covering techniques for using recombinant DNA in 7.012. I know that this was material I knew really well when I was in AP Bio, and it’s not significantly harder now, but I’m having a slightly difficult time with it, so one of the sophomores who’s a biology major is going to help me with the problem set, and I should be fine by our next test.

And that’s schoolwork.

Like I mentioned earlier, a few friends and I travelled down to New York for Columbus Day weekend.

We went into town on Sunday, planning to see a Broadway play that night. However, the interesting piece is that we are college students, so we were looking for tickets that were less than about $35-$40 or so, and finding tickets in that range is just not easy for Broadway. In fact, we quite literally walked from 42nd Street to 52nd Street, stopping at every theater we saw, and couldn’t find tickets that we liked. We checked the TKTS booth, too—the selection was really bad.

In hindsight, showing up in NYC on a holiday weekend was probably not the wisest idea, but at least we learned something. We took a regional train out to where Becky lives and basically relaxed for the evening (although not before working on homework for a little while).

On Monday, I had this theory that we would be able to get tickets for a Daily Show taping for that night. I requested the tickets about a week and a half in advance.

In hindsight, maybe I should live tickets to someone else in the future, because I seem to have bad luck with them.

So, we ended up caving, raising our ticket price cap, and getting tickets for Avenue Q. They were center of the very back row of the balcony, but the seats are very steeply sloped, so the view was great. And basically, it was amazing. One of the best parts was that Rick Lyon was on Broadway again. He created the roles of Nicky and Trekkie Monster, and he does them both very, very well.

And with that said, it’s really late, and I have class really early tomorrow, so I’ll finish bringing you up to date later. But probably soon.

Nothing like extended holidays in honor of people who were total jerks. MIT gives us two days off. I guess their policy is one day off every month, and two off every two. Whatever it is, I’ll take it.

This week sucked for just about everyone on campus; most classes gave tests in anticipation of the four-day weekend. For me that included 7.012, 3.091, and 8.02.

3.091: the class so far has covered some relatively basic material: stoichiometry, photoelectric effect, De Broglie hypothesis, etc. While none of this stuff is actually simple, the applications we used in class basically involved applying an equation or two. Also, two years’ worth of old tests were available online. Also, we can use a periodic table, a table of constants, and an 8.5×11 sheet of paper with whatever we want written on both sides. All of these things mean that several people did well, including me. The class average was higher than in previous years. Personally, I made a few minor mistakes and got a 96.

7.012: so far, we’ve done the biochemistry and basic genetics portions of introductory biology. It’s mostly been material I’ve seen in AP Bio, but the biochemistry is significantly more difficult. Unfortunately, the test was heavy on the biochemistry stuff, and it was harder than I had hoped. I think I did OK, although not great, but I won’t find out until Wednesday or Thursday.

8.02: electricity. Almost all of it: Coulomb’s Law, Gauss’s Law, and capacitors. No circuits yet, though. It felt like an easy test, but I got a a 74, so I’m not entirely sure what I did wrong. I’m hoping it was little things where I just didn’t pay attention, but I should find out for sure on Wednesday. Incidentally, the class average was a 70.

I’m not sure how well I can use these as indications of future performance, because all of the tests were either easy and/or covered material I’ve seen in previous years. I expect that the 6.042 test in two weeks and the next 3.091 test will give me a better sense of things, since 6.042 is basically a sophomore class and 3.091 is moving into new material.

In any case, to enjoy the four-day weekend, some friends and I are going to New York for a few days. We leave in just over an hour, so I need to go and finish getting packed.

…your professor starts the class with, “‘There are only two things that make students come to class: candy and sex.’ We’ve already tried candy…”

(This is for 6.042, by the way. I really love the lectures for this class.)

So, it’s been two weeks since that first day, and it seems only fair to provide an update on just what’s going on:

My score on the FEE required that I take a CI-HW class sometime in the first year. Unfortunately, some massive percentage of the freshman class received the same score, and there is only capacity for about 306 students to take a CI-HW class per semester. Long story short, I couldn’t get into a section that fit my schedule, so I dropped the class, and I’ll take it next semester.

Instead, I’m taking 6.042. This class’s official title is “Mathematics for Computer Science,” but was apparently introduced by the professors as “Proofs, Proofs, and More Proofs.” That’s OK with me, because between GSS and math last year, I’m pretty good at proofs.

The class looks like it’s going to be good. I’m told that they played a clip from The Colbert Report on the first day of class, but since I joined we’ve received a hilarious list of invalid proof techniques and watched a clip from Die Hard 3.

6.042 is typically a sophomore class, but it’s only prerequisite is 18.01, and almost all of the other Course VI classes require 6.001, which I can’t take as a first-year freshman along with my advising seminar.

The problem sets are hard, but my TA is very helpful. I actually just got back from office hours where a couple of us and my TA worked through about 60% of the p-set.

As for other classes, 7.012 is still basic material. We just finished macromolecules and started on genetics. Eric Lander is doing the lecturing on genetics (because, well, it’s kind of what he does—he was heavily involved in the Human Genome Project), and his lectures are always very engaging.

The work load has been pretty light—a relatively p-set every two weeks, although the TAs don’t seem to be quite as good. 7.012 is an introductory class, so its goal is to basically teach all of biology relatively poorly. The TAs, however, are all very focused in particular areas, so they all can’t help with everything. My first TA, for example, did genetics, so he couldn’t help as much with the biochemistry we were doing initially. I did have to switch out of his section, though, because otherwise I wouldn’t have had a lunch break on Mondays or Wednesdays, and my new TA seems to be more focused on protein folding. Go figure.

3.091, also known as “Chemistry for People Who Never Want to Deal With Chemistry Again,” is also a lecture-format class, but has a completely different style to it. The professor, Donald Sadoway, is legendary at the Institute for this class; he’s a true showman, and he’s been doing this for a while. His lectures are always carefully planned out, complete with Powerpoints where he’s scribbled all over various slides and such. I’m told that 3.091 has the highest enrollment of any MIT class, and Sadoway is one of very few professors who can teach a class of 450 people.

Incidentally, it’s worth pointing out that 10-250, the largest lecture hall on campus, only has 425 seats. On some days, there are people sitting in the aisles, but videos of the lectures are also put online, which is great when you can’t remember some aspect of the lecture.

My recitation leader for 3.091 is actually a professor, who has so far done a great job of simultaneously working various problems with us and teaching the material a day before Sadoway does.

Homework for 3.091 is optional and not collected. Instead, we have a quiz over the homework every week. So far they’ve been insanely easy, but I’m not expecting that to last. In addition, we had a quiz over the periodic table today for some unknown reason. Even my recitation professor thought it was a little odd. In any case, it was pretty easy, and I think I got everything right.

My last full fledged class is 8.02, taught in the TEAL format. What is TEAL?

In theory, TEAL is a departure from the traditional lecture and recitation format of college classes. It encourages collaboration, working in small groups, better knowledge retention, and all kinds of good things like that.

In reality, it’s an example of how too much technology can be a bad solution. Classes generally consist of a professor lecturing off of a Powerpoint with intermittent interruptions for 5 or 10 minutes of group work at a time.

Many people agree that it works very poorly, and my advisor wants me and my friends to try and figure out why so that he can go complain and try to fix it.

Speaking of my advisor, that brings us to my advising seminar, 6.070. It’s mostly freshmen, and most of them are advised by the instructor (there are a few others that snuck in). There are then two upperclassmen also in the class. It’s worth half the credits of my other classes, and will probably have far less than half the workload.

The class will involve some basic electronics work, but after that, it’s basically free-form; we come in with ideas of what we want to build, and Ed (the instructor) provides us with the materials and a little of the information. Right now we just finished building mobile robots controlled by a PIC, and we have to work on the programming aspect, which will probably be more challenging than the building.

In any case, it’s a great stress relief class, and even though I think we get a lot done, it doesn’t feel so much like work because it’s so free-form. In fact, I’ve actually stayed around working on various things for an hour after class both Monday and yesterday.

Outside of classes, I haven’t gotten involved in any activities yet, but that’s mostly because I’m still club shopping. Friends have recommended that I get involved with the FIRST Robotics team here, which should be good because I think it’s based at the Edgerton Center (which is where my seminar is). Other than that I’m still looking.

So, that’s life. Oh—also, my roommate and I are going to sign up to host visiting pre-frosh. So if anyone that reads this is interested in Course VI (specifically, the computer science aspects of it) or Course II, Kris and I don’t have any real experience in our respective fields, but we’d be glad to host you anyway.

So, this is a short and relatively uninteresting story, but it made me pretty happy. My server got in today (we had it shipped in hopes that it would make it in one piece—it did, fortunately), but I had to reconfigure it for the MIT network, and I didn’t have a monitor. So one of the guys on my floor takes me down to the lobby and into what was once a photography lab, and there are 3 or 4 different monitors sitting in there that nobody wants. So I grabbed one and carried it back up to my room. I didn’t even have to leave the dorm.

So I have a monitor now, network configuration was easy, and I have a server too. Which means that my spam filtering works again. Trust me—this is good.

And now, for a brief summary of today:

Since yesterday was fission day, today was fusion day. Fusion is apparently believed by many to be possible, and MIT has an entire center that studies it. However, there are still several problems, and most of our mentors are fission people, so the kind of laugh at the fusion people.

After that we went to Salem, where we saw this terrible presentation on the witch trials. It was kind of funny because it was just so bad. Then we were given a few hours to wonder around Salem. However, none of us knew what we could do, and none of us wanted to spend money, so we spent a long time sitting by a cemetery talking about different stuff like classes and dorms.

Tomorrow (well, today now) is officially the start of REX, or Residence Exploration, or dorm rush. For the uninitiated, rush is the period where dorms try to convince you to leave your temp housing and move to their dorm. This means free food for the next 5 days.

But in the mean time, I should get to sleep, since I still have to wake up in 5 and a half hours.

Good night.

So, being bored a few nights ago,…

Well, not bored, but more avoiding certain things I didn’t want to do, I took photos for a brief photo tour of my suite/room. Of course, the prospect of photo editing tends to scare me away from doing any of it (I have tons of photos that need editing), so it took me an extra day to actually do anything with it. But, I finally got around to it, and fixed my iPhoto plugin to publish photos to Flickr, so you get a very brief tour of my suite in Burton-Conner.

Our suite is at the far end of one of the hallways on Conner 4. I say that hoping that it’s only enough information for MIT students to find me, and not anyone else, because they could find me anyway.

Anyway, right inside all Burton-Conner suites is a little lounge area. One of my suitemates actually managed to get a piano in here, although by what magic I know not.

Also in the common area is the kitchen, one of the coolest features of B-C. Generally the upperclassmen keep it stocked well, although I’m sure the freshmen will be pulled into the stocking process eventually.

(N.B.: The last photo and the next photo were both taken facing roughly the same direction. This one was taken facing the opposite direction. That may help to orient you within the photos, or it may serve to just confuse you more.)

The rooms are just past the lounge area. Mine is the first room on the right, the only double in my suite.

My room is also one of the “smallest” on the floor. It’s not that the actual square footage is less, but there’s this little foyer area that’s kind of off from the rest of the room and makes it all seem a little smaller. The foyer contains one of our two dressers.

The two desks and the other dresser. I will claim mine, here. It’s the one that’s covered in stuff. It’s not really too much stuff, but it’s the only area where I’ve unpacked at all. Since we might move again, I have a towel hanging up to dry on a hook in the dresser, and everything else is either in the suitcase or on my desk.

Our beds. I’m not going to say which one mine is. Maybe you can figure it out. Also note the shelving on the right wall, which is currently very inconvenient, so not sure what will happen there.

And finally, the view from our window. This was mostly taken to prove to my dad’s friend that we can, in fact, see Fenway Park from our dorm. You can see the lights in the top center of the photo.

So, that’s the tour. Brief summary of events…

The Discover Nuclear Science and Engineering program has been feeding us, starting with dinner on Tuesday night. It’s basically run by a bunch of grad students and a few upperclassmen. After a pretty dry lecture yesterday morning, we took a tour of MIT’s nuclear reactor. We did actually get to go into the containment building and everything, although we had to leave bags, cameras, and phones outside for security. It was pretty cool, although it’s not a big operation or anything – it only takes two people to run the reactor.

After that and lunch, we went to the Boston Museum of Science, where we saw the Body Worlds exhibit, which is the one with the plastinated bodies. It was kind of disturbing, actually, mostly because some of the bodies were as much art pieces as they were medical cadavers.

After that we wandered around the museum and saw a few of the other exhibits, and the lightning show. I have photos, but I need to touch almost all of them up first. It was a very good show, though.

There was an employee in the computer exhibit who was basically taking care of two Aibos that they had on display who turned out to be an MIT grad. She was Course VI, decided she didn’t like the cubicle work, and so now she works at the museum instead. I think I’m the only Course VIer at DNSE, so they laughed at me for that one. The lesson, I think, is to avoid cubicles at all cost.

Anyway, I have to go, because I’m hungry and B-C is starting orientation events with breakfast downstairs.

So, I’m not going to write about NJCL because, while I had a great time and being an officer was amazing, there wasn’t much out of the ordinary that happened. I will say that I’m looking forward to coming back as an SCLer next year.

But I will say something about moving into MIT.

Actually, first I’ll say something about how MIT assigns dorms, because then what I say about moving in will make much more sense.

MIT has what is comparatively a very screwed up dorm/room assignment system. First, there are no “freshman dorms” or “upperclass dorms.” Just undergraduate and graduate housing. Over the summer, you receive a DVD where each dorm makes a short video advertising itself. Then, you rank them, and in late July, there’s a lottery to determine your temporary housing.

During Orientation, part of the fun is supposed to be checking out all of the different dorms available and trying to find the one that best fits your personality. At the end of the week, you can enter a readjustment lottery if you’d like, or stay where you were temped.

Once you’re in your final dorm (which may still be where you started), there is almost always an “In-House Rush” to determine your final floor/suite/room/etc, where it can apparently be difficult to retain your original dorm assignment.

Now, I happen to like the room and suite that I’ve been temped in, and thus far, my roommate seems like a cool guy, too. I’ve been talking to one of the room assignment chairs, who lives on my floor, and she says that it’s quite possible for us to hold onto this room.

But still, it’s not guaranteed by any means, and I basically have to live here for a week with the assumption that I’m going to move. Which makes it very hard to get settled in or even unpack at all.

In the meantime, though, my roommate’s pre-orientation program is completely off-campus, so I’ve got a single for the next week.