<p>Ben Golub, are you a senior at Caltech? Is your girlfriend a junior at MIT?</p>
<p>CIT really means California Institute of Technology or Caltech where Ben is currently studying.</p>
<p>Subtract one year from each class posited above and you get the right answer.</p>
<p>so... what's it like having a loved one going to college at the opposite end of the country?</p>
<p>Way easier than I thought it would be. And this isn't even a particularly upbeat moment, since we just saw each other for two days (the overlap of our spring breaks) and now I'm back to LA and we won't be seeing each other for at least a few weeks.</p>
<p>Hmm, what else is it like... I'm pretty familiar now with both LAX and Logan -- fringe benefit, I guess.</p>
<p>Another one is that we never see each other when we're stressed out and tooling and terrified of all the work we have to do, just during happy times.</p>
<p>But we've hijacked pebbles' blogthread, which certainly wasn't intended as a forum for ruminations on my romantic life :-P</p>
<p>Between classes and homework some 60 hours of any given week are beyond my control. While I do admit I am a bit of a novice at time management, the expected output rate of any MIT student is taxing in the least. It's a sobering experience gathering up and sorting all your problem sets, notes, and exams from a semester past. I did this in december. More paper than usual plastered the floor of my dormroom and they all had somewhere to go. Pencil scribbles that meant something. I smiled at all the stupid/desperate/ridiculous comments and drawings that I'd spewed onto my problem sets probably some dead of Wednesday night; I laughed as I discovered new places my TA grader had hidden replies. I kept them in little brown file folders highlighter-labeled with a decimal. Gone for now.</p>
<p>Between classes and homework is a social scene split down the middle. No no, "nerd power" isn't quite it. The introverted thick-glassed bookworms that had padded the bottom of the high school social food chain don't suddenly take up their throne here. They're simply left alone. They even have a name. They're called "ghosts". They're happiest when you walk by their locked doors like it's just a patch of solid wall. Over the course of the next few weeks you'll hear more than you'll want to ever again about the East-West divide, something about freaks and social deviants vs jocks and high school frat boys. These generalizations are somewhat cringe-worthy so hypocritically I'll offer one of my own. Those who fit best into the West Campus culture are those who are seeking a more typical college experience- an extension of high school with way more parties and way fewer rules- who are perfectly happy with the way they are and wouldn't mind keeping up four more years of the same old routine. You will be fed regularly and you will be showered with elevators and facilities. Those who fit best into the East Campus culture are those who are looking to try something different. Be it near complete independence or building rollercoasters or just doing whatever the hell you want for once, East Campus prospectives are seeking change- social, environmental, especially personal. Here, you may run into the deepest insecurities and the biggest egos, and you may end up more mature for it.</p>
<p>Parties are frequent but impersonal- as mass social gatherings tend to be. Relationships are hard to maintain. MIT seems to have an uncanny ability to weed out the weak here, as well. Some combination of our age, our inexperience, the long hours, and the undertow of stress gets just enough of a grip on our budding incompatibilities to drag under what is not firmly rooted. So we keep them in little cardboard boxes sealed with a sigh. Gone for now.</p>
<p>Meet spring. </p>
<p>Our fragile New England spring. Get acquainted. Stay awhile.</p>
<p>As you will soon see for yourself, the structural anatomy of East Campus is pretty traditional. The approximately 40 residents on each hall are distributed evenly on either side of a long, perfectly straight hallway about 5 feet in width and 4-500 feet in length. There are 3-4 doubles on each hall and the rest are singles. The doubles are precisely the same size as the bigger singles. There are five single/multiple occupancy bathrooms, two lounges, and one giant kitchen. The corridors are covered with flame-retardant carpet, the walls with murals. Let's take a walk down one of these hallways. </p>
<p>If we start on first west our walk will be cut short by a solid wall marking the intrusion of EC desk and Talbot Lounge, a sort of common room for all of EC. You may travel half the length of the hall on second east without encountering a soul, only to discover the entirety of the student body packed into a darkened Walcott lounge- their projector screen the size of my double. Walking through third east you run the risk of being lit on fire, through fourth west beware of airborne projectiles. Allow your eyes to adjust on fifth east and watch your step on second west, and that smell of something burning? Probably the GRT again from the first east kitchen.</p>
<p>A product of our mixed-years housing system is a cohesive culture and sense of community within our living groups. Each with its own casual, lived-in feel. Our rooms are small so our doors are almost always open, students flit from room to room with ideas, news, jokes, troubles, food, or just small talk to share. Like it or not, you can't make it from one end of the hall to the other without getting a sense of everyone's taste in music, overhearing at least a few bizarre mid-hall conversations, tripping over some cultish midnight exercise circle, being stopped by the new girl and offered really way too sugary east-asian food, receiving a kick to the face by apologetic cartwheel/handstand first-timers, hopping out of the way of some guy on a bicycle/scooter/unidentifiable wooden contraption, or having to take a side in some kind of disagreement, offer advice on some decision, help with some physics predicament.</p>
<p>It's not chaotic. It's got its own sense of order, but with the exception of a few halls it's most definitely not quiet. So go ahead, pay us a visit, just, please, keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle at all times. And, watch your head.</p>
<p>I can't say if it's the hands-on nature of our education/interactions or the not-very-prestigious feel of our campus, but for the most part, we're relieved of the physical discomfort associated with sustaining an upward tilt to our noses. In short, we're not too worried about getting our hands dirty or looking like an admissions blunder. We welcome you to our community, neither exclusive nor intimidating, and hope that you won't ever forget how much smaller you are than the concrete monuments that surround you.</p>
<p>Wow -- thanks for the personal perspective, it really is helpful!</p>
<p>pebbles, this rocks! i'm a junior, so obviously haven't applied anywhere yet, but i'm seriously thinking about mit and your depiction is pretty d*mn awesome.</p>
<p>One sunny day I was walking down Mass Ave 6.001 test in hand. Scowling and flipping furiously, I mumbled to myself as I counted up just how many points I had lost to the same 'abstraction violation'. With something like 17 or 19 firmly in mind, I paced the ground beneath a crossing signal that forbade me to walk. I mean, how was I supposed to know about their absurd data abstraction policies? It was poorly named garbage and confusing as all hell. There was nothing wrong with my code- run it, I'll bet my prefrosh it would work just perfectly. Besides, where on the test did you specify the importance of these so-called 'data abstractions'? Where, oh where, did you indicate it was even necessary to use them? I was robbed! Robbed, I say! I'm angry! Really angry! I need an extravagant way in which to express my righteous anger! I flung my test to the ground, stomped on it a few times as the light turned green and proceeded to walk away. Ahh. Much better.</p>
<p>"Uh... excuse me miss?" came a timid voice from behind.</p>
<p>Oh what now! Was I seriously going to be lectured on littering? I whipped around, preparing my best defensive stance and already rehearsing a few comebacks.</p>
<p>It was a homeless man. Leaning forward a little from the his curbside seat and with genuine concern in his eyes, he pointed to the packet of papers a few feet behind me- splayed ugly on the pavement and glowing in the afternoon sun, sad and pathetic with footprints on its cover.</p>
<p>"I think you dropped those." </p>
<p>A friendly smile. A sincere desire to help. A perfect, spring-like day. </p>
<p>A silly college exam.</p>
<p>"Oh! Dear me! Those are important, too, I'm a terrible oaf. Thank you so much, have a nice day, now."</p>
<p>Abstraction violations... can't live without them.</p>
<p>pebbles, your so cool to the infinite power!!!</p>
<p>Me write good.</p>
<p>hahahah i love your test-flinging story.</p>
<p>What could possibly be so great about a large campus?</p>
<p>Oh yeah, you get to get up earlier for classes and freeze your balls off getting anywhere in the winter. How could I forget.</p>
<p>bye bye prefroshies. :)</p>
<p>bye bye cannon. :)</p>
<p>my cannon. <em>hugs possessively</em></p>
<p>So I'm flattened under the weight of just how much work there is left to do before the sun comes up tomorrow but I'm just sitting here in the library on one of those lofted little study cubicles overlooking the charles river and the level below and I'm just looking around at the other students doing their thing like I'm doing mine and goddamn it's an awesome feeling. I don't even know these kids and I love 'em.</p>
<p>Hayden? <3 Hayden.</p>