<p>hhaahah arun that was probably like ONE friday (for the capture the flag stuff and all).</p>
<p>I didn't sleep THAT late (8 oclock) each day, but usually around 3. I actually had to go to work ;)</p>
<p>well i substituted capture the flag for chilling
i ususally went to sleep around 5 or so on weekdays (AM), but on friday no way was i sleeping</p>
<p>As long as we're busy avoiding writing our college essays by talking about RSI, I figure that I might as well shamelessly copy this from the summerbook:</p>
<p>You know you're in RSI when...
By Cindy, Sue, and Nour (lol, hope you don't mind me posting this)</p>
<ul>
<li>you want to talk to the person sitting right next to you, so you send him/her a zephyr</li>
<li>your only light source at a dance is someone clicking a pen light on and off</li>
<li>you wonder why counselors bother to assign room arrangements in the first place</li>
<li>you can't complete a sentence without using the word "skeetchy" - even if you're not describing anything</li>
<li>you refer to people by their Athena names, not their given ones</li>
<li>you can say "blow me" in 7 different languages, including C++</li>
<li>you start seeing negative proofs of "people don't generally eat other people" everywhere</li>
<li>you can't drink Nantucket Nectars without feeling like a cannibal</li>
<li>strawberries have symbolic meaning, and you use "piece of furniture" as an insult</li>
<li>you do things just for the sake of lowering your purity score</li>
<li>you compare purity test scores instead of SAT scores</li>
<li>you see a photo-shoot opportunity at every moment</li>
<li>punch lines are immediately followed by a dozen people yelling "quoteserver!"</li>
<li>people act like married couples after being together for 24 hours</li>
<li>you've taken practically every ingestible form of caffeine</li>
<li>your main language is LaTeX</li>
<li>by the end of your stay, you're practically qualified to be a certified massage therapist</li>
<li>your highs all come from lack of sleep</li>
<li>the only thing left sacred anymore is bedcheck</li>
<li>you can't pass the third floor without stopping to glance at the picture wall</li>
<li>the cleanest euphemism for mass homoerotic orgies is "group nap"</li>
<li>you spend more time at group naps than in your own bed</li>
<li>there are 50 names that rhyme with "well hung"</li>
<li>the remaining names all have a prefix of "El" or "Al"</li>
<li>you can't even look at a carrot without thinking about your purity test score</li>
<li>you use math pickup lines... and they actually work</li>
<li>you leave with more extensive a working knowledge of birth control than of athena commands</li>
<li>you hear the term DP more times than a normal human being should</li>
<li>you mispronounce latex when referring to condoms</li>
<li>you stay up to take a three hour test starting at midnight to evaluate what percent dirty you are</li>
<li>non-native speakers of the English language learn the meaning of "eugenics"</li>
<li>getting 5 hours of sleep is Christmas come early</li>
<li>"I proved the Goldbach Conjecture" is a perfect pick-up line</li>
<li>you're interested in Mechanical Engineering and you end up with a mentorship at a Biochem lab</li>
<li>the opening ceremony is a truthful assertion that you are at the brink of going through 5 weeks of hell</li>
<li>the 5 weeks you spend are hell + [but you're happy] = they've screwed around with your mind</li>
<li>after 5 weeks of hell, you still don't get results</li>
<li>your purity test score plummets</li>
<li>you participate in/attend a sketchy Harry Potter skit</li>
<li>Nerd is not just a label; it's a way of life</li>
<li>you obsess about sleep alternatives in much the same way industries obsess about alternative sources of energy</li>
<li>you are given illegal tours of MIT and Harvard</li>
<li>you meet someone who claims Bulgaria is the best place on earth and coincidentally turns out to be Bulgarian himself</li>
<li>you think Athena is the best thing that ever happened to computer technology after only 5 weeks of usage</li>
<li>you see people walk around with stuffed animals on their shoulders and find that extremely cute</li>
<li>you find yourself walk around with stuffed animals on your shoulder and people find that extremely cute</li>
<li>you buy your own minerva, fenrir, giraffe, penguin, and, of course, athena</li>
<li>you are surrounded by Math people who will say the word Math in much the same way Gollum yearns for his Precious</li>
<li>you stay up late trying to solve a 6x6 foot crossword puzzle</li>
<li>'Scream': the MJ song becomes a reflection of your current situation</li>
<li>cross-dressing doesn't come close to being sketchy enough</li>
<li>you bring the next day's breakfast with you when you go to the athena cluster at midnight</li>
<li>pictures are distributed in pdf form</li>
<li>your know people who can't leave home without their DDR pads</li>
<li>gang wars are fought over Mac vs. Windows vs. Linux</li>
<li>the majority of your social activities take place after bedcheck</li>
<li>you spend approximately 0.0026% of your time in your assigned room</li>
<li>the lines of sexual orientation are blurred beyond recognition</li>
<li>when you hear that your tutor group is meeting in room 3-141, you immediately think, "wow, those are the first four digits of pi!"</li>
<li>it's six weeks of your life when intelligence isn't looked down upon</li>
<li>no one thinks of pastries when you talk of kerberos cookies</li>
<li>people **** in a trashcan on a dare</li>
<li>people go skinny-dipping even without the excuse of a dare</li>
<li>caffeine is one of your five major food groups</li>
<li>you become the most popular person at your dinner table when you bring a Putnam competition book</li>
<li>you open windows in your room in a certain way to try and maximize the convection currents</li>
<li>you weep for your Circadian cycle by the end of the program</li>
</ul>
<p>... lol, good times. There are plenty of inside jokes here that make no sense to anyone outside RSI, so if you're curious, ask. We're just using the excuse of a new thread to indulge ourselves in RSI nostalgia (or at least I am).</p>
<p>OMG!!!! <em>squees incomprehensibly</em> WOW matt did you type that up yourself?!??? that is an amazing task!!! i <3 you!!!</p>
<p>this one is still my absolute favorite, and the one, i think, that captures the essense of rsi: "you compare purity test scores instead of SAT scores."</p>
<p>that's all rsi is about, folks... breeding and eugenics... hahahah</p>
<p>"you can say "blow me" in 7 different languages, including C++" i'm not even going to comment on this one... <em>coughcoughVinayakcoughArun</em></p>
<p>oohhh... and these two were great...good memories... "you want to talk to the person sitting right next to you, so you send him/her a zephyr."
"your only light source at a dance is someone clicking a pen light on and off."</p>
<p>OHH!! i thought of another one: "you go to chinatown 5 times in a two day weekend"
and:
"you don't even blink when you see the phrase 'i like little boys' on a mass zephyr message."</p>
<p>laaaaa.. good times :) thanks matt, for posting this!</p>
<p>i think my greatest contribution to mankind will be the widespread use of DP
i love how the entire camp was saying it in hours and hardly any of them knew what it meant
i also love how me and greg managed to get hammered, not on alcohol, but sleep deprivation!</p>
<p>and for the last time, group naps are not gay!!!</p>
<p>god i need to be a counselor this year... you little ****ers are gonna be in for the time of your lives</p>
<p>lol... sketchy harry potter skit rocked. =P so did crossword. incidentally I bought that crossword for myself, so I might have a chance to finish it off after all. ^^ </p>
<p>p.s. Nantucket Nectars!!! =D and yay for giraffe! and I love how the RSI 06 thread turns into a reminiscing-about-RSI-05 thread. hehe.</p>
<p>hahaha thanks matt that was awesome. and yes, arun is right, group naps are not gay! (me and arun are two of the four group nappers)</p>
<p>And yes, the main reason I wanted to make this thread is just to talk about rsi haha.</p>
<p>Okay . . . so I've been resisting, but the urge to reminisce with fellow rickoids is just too strong! So hi everyone! </p>
<p>Now, that "You know you're at RSI . . . " list bring back so many memories. I remember composing it while sitting on a bridge at White Mountains. So, a few of my favorites:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>when you hear that your tutor group is meeting in room 3-141, you immediately think, "wow, those are the first four digits of pi!"
It's true! Except it was room 1-134.</p></li>
<li><p>you compare purity test scores instead of SAT scores
This one is great, no denying it.</p></li>
<li><p>you can't pass the third floor without stopping to glance at the picture wall</p></li>
<li><p>you want to talk to the person sitting right next to you, so you send him/her a zephyr
I readily admit my guilt to this one!</p></li>
<li><p>you become the most popular person at your dinner table when you bring a Putnam competition book
Oh, yes.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Yes, I do realize that I am being utterly unhelpful to prospective rickoids. But I don't have any concrete advice. None of us know what RSI is looking for exactly--I really thought I had no chance whatsoever of getting in. Just do your best! More than anything else, CC made me fall in love with RSI and convinced me to apply. And nothing I could say here would adequately convey what an amazing time I had this summer.</p>
<p>Thanks you guys for the wonderful memories! You've made my day and week.... hugs and love to all (from Fenrir as well)! :-D</p>
<p>you know... i don't think i really figured out that stuffed animal thing until like... after rsi. hah.</p>
<p>Im most probably going to put nanotechnology as my field of interest since im really intersted in it and am going to start a research project in the field. I saw you guys talkin about how the field could effect your admission, and i know that nanotechnology isnt a very prominent field. Should i email the rsi people and ask them if they have any mentors in the field of nanotechnology before I put that? Also would I have to put chemistry as my main field of interest and nanotechnology as the subfield?</p>
<p>"Should i email the rsi people and ask them if they have any mentors in the field of nanotechnology before I put that?"
- Remember that (I'm pretty sure) they match students with mentors after admissions.</p>
<p>"Also would I have to put chemistry as my main field of interest and nanotechnology as the subfield?"
Sure go ahead. That seems reasonable.</p>
<p>Bottomline: Don't switch your scientific interests just for the sake of RSI admissions. I didn't get the exact field I wanted (like many others at RSI) so it just goes to show that you can still get in if they don't have mentors for some area. Besides Boston's a pretty big place I'm sure they have nanotech research going on. Anyways don't stress about what's going to be your "field of interest".</p>
<p>mit has the coolest nanotech research i have ever seen</p>
<p>Psh, nanotech? Haven't you heard that macrotech is the next big thing? Retro is in, and computers the size of a small house are set to make a big comeback.</p>
<p>Screw tech! We don't need telephones! I live with BANANAphones!</p>
<p>MIT has a supercomputer right? Does it let RSI kids use it for CompSci stuff?</p>
<p>spydertennis what do you mean by mit has the coolest nanotech research?</p>
<p>Sagar, I'm not sure, but basically RSI is no vehicle for projects getting done. It's all up to your mentor. With that said, it's likely that supercomputers are available to all faculty, so if you need it, I'm sure your mentor would be able to give you some access.</p>
<p>MIT has the institute for soldier nanotechnologies, we (well chem lecture people anyway) toured the soldier institute's labs at RSI... it was pretty cool stuff</p>
<p>I'm a prospective RSI applicant from South Korea. I just came to know about RSI a few weeks ago, and I don't know anyone around me who is noticed of it. Is international admission much more rigorous than US admission? Do they select only supergeniuses? Has anyone from Korea been accepted to RSI?</p>