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Being originally from Southern California, my first months living on the East Coast were a bit distressing. The humidity was almost lethal, I didn't know where anything was, and I had to learn how to feed myself. I thought I had been dropped off in a foreign country with hostile natives. After all, when a New Yorker tells you that "you look pretty normal for a Californian," are you supposed to feel right at home?
In any case, I graduated from MIT in June 2002, so now I'm living in "the real world." While I haven't really left MIT---I still do theater there---I still really miss being there.
A friend of mine owns a t-shirt that says it all: "Any other college is just a college, but MIT is HELL." Students at MIT take pride in their pain yet somehow make time for fun. We work hard and play hard. It's possible that students at other schools work just as hard as we do, but we're understandably skeptical.
One Johns Hopkins comp sci professor likens MIT to "a black hole." The tendency is to get sucked in and never emerge---not that you'd want to anyway. There is just something about MIT culture that makes you want to stay. When you find a place where everything just seems to fit, why would you ever want to leave?
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Lobby 7. |
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MIT doesn't have a major in "pre-med" as some schools do, so I decided to major in VII (Biology) and minor in XXIL (Literature). I almost had a minor in V (Chemistry), but I was too scared to take 5.03. In any case, I barely fulfilled my pre-med requirements. If I had had a more active advisor and pre-med advisor (separate things at MIT), maybe things would have been easier for me.
For those of you who have heard the Chorallaries song, "MIT is easy when you take Biology," don't believe a word of it. Being Course 7 is just as hard as being in any other course (with the exception of 16, perhaps).
As an undergrad, I lived in G-Entry of MacGregor House, across the river from downtown Boston and the Citgo sign. Perhaps Cambridge and Boston aren't the best places from which to form an opinion of the East Coast, but I grew quite used to it. Or maybe I grew used to MIT. In any case, I've yet to return to California.
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Page last updated: 06.29.03
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