Karen Anne's CPW

General Background

2008-04-14T23:23:00.000-07:00

Hi! I'm going to assume that most of you know who I am, but for those of you who don't, I'm Karen, a current senior in high school and a prospective MIT '12. My other blog chronicled my journey from naive applicant to depressed deferee to ecstatic acceptant, so go there for that. This blog is entirely about my CPW experience.

If you've read my other blog, you probably have a general idea that I'm not a very typical high school senior. My CPW didn't really stick to the book, and it wasn't perfect all of the time. I also lost my camera so I don't have as many pictures as Snively's CPW blog. I'm going to be as honest with you as possible (as usual) so that you can see how I fell in love with MIT over one crazy Campus Preview Weekend.

I'd like you to be aware that, generally, the content in this blog is rated R. I am 18 and I won't sugar-coat things, and certain parts of my CPW experience were more politically correct than others. If you feel as though you may be offended but his, I give you full permission to stop reading. You have been warned.

the flight over and check-in

2008-04-14T23:22:00.000-07:00

My flight over was pretty much a disaster, starting on Wednesday night.

Originally, I had wanted to buy plane tickets immediately, but my parents made me wait a few hours before purchasing a round-trip ticket on American Airlines, because United could collapse at any minute. At this point, American hadn't had any issues with their planes. However, two days before I was scheduled to leave, American was forced to cancel hundreds of flights around the country in order to do maintenance on their planes, and my 1:40 flight out of O'Hare was, unfortunately, cancelled.

Fortunately, my parents work for a travel agency, so my mom knows tricks and managed to change my flight to one at 9:45, meaning I would miss all of Thursday at school! The weekend was off to a great start :)

My flight went smoothly once I was on the plane, and I arrived in Boston around 1 and was on campus by 2. I called my friend Feldman '11 and he agreed to meet me at the Student Center to show me to East Campus, where I'd be staying, but while I was making my financial aid appointment after checking in, I got a phone call from Snively, and he met me in the Student Center too, making for some awkward forced conversation while I chatted with Ben. Snively got a phone call and Feldman and I went to EC, because Snively had to be in the Tim the Beaver costune anyway, and I dragged my luggage up the four flights of stairs to 5th west.

The East Campus West parallel - home sweet home for the next few days!

a rough start

2008-04-14T23:21:00.000-07:00

After Feldman and I dropped all of the stuff off in my host Kiersten's room (which she had luckily left open for us), Feldman showed me around East Campus for a bit before I left him to do work, intending to find some fellow prefrosh to befriend. In the Student Center, I talked to Ben for a bit and he circled all sorts of useful things in my CPW schedule (hereby referred to as Prefrosh Bible, or PFB). Unfortunately, I forgot something rather profound and important:

I'm kind of shy when in large groups of people.

So, I called the first person I could think of who's certain never to be shy ever - Snively! After an adventure trying to get into a locked door in the Green building, I met up with him and a friend of his, and we ran into some people that he knew with their prefrosh in front of the Rickrolled Onion movie, right after we saw the chainsaw zombie hack! I didn't take a picture because I didn't want to embarass Snively by being a tourist-y prefrosh :)

So, these new prefrosh and I went to get bubble tea, which I suspected I wouldn't like and consequently didn't try any of. We chatted for a bit before these prefrosh ditched me for newer and better things, and I sat on the couch before deciding to journey back to the dorm to meet up with Kiersten, because she was out of lab at this point.

It was right about here that I started seriously doubting that MIT was for me - it really shocked me when we were driving onto the campus, and we were suddenly there - I wasn't expecting it to be so urban. But, at this point I was really doubting my ability to make friends, and my perception that I'd be able to find equally geeky people at MIT to be friends with. I was journeying back to the dorm when I ran into...

Ben Jones again! Don't worry, I eventually introduce a new cast of characters :)

Anyway, Ben introduced me to Tanya '10, who lives on Kiersten's floor, and he told her to show me around and Tanya was very nice and very cool (and coincidentally I couldn't find her again after this day) and we were walking back to East Campus when she pounced on Becca, the little sister of one of her former classmates, and Trev, who was staying in the same room as Becca in Simmons. Becca and Trev joined us, and we awkwardly ran into Ben again on our way to EC, and then we hung around with Tanya and another girl, Melinda '10 chatting about life at MIT.

Eventually, enough people gathered and realized two important things that would shape the rest of the weekend:

1. We're prefrosh!
2. Prefrosh have the PFB, which tells where all the free food is

So, we picked out an activity, and we journeyed to the MIT Hillel for pizza.

a grand adventure

2008-04-14T23:20:00.001-07:00

Becca and I chatted as we walked and quickly realized that we are both HUGE blogstalkers, and consequently she was the person that I dragged out into the hallway to take pictures with. I would've gotten in the pictures myself, but I am awkward and kind of clumsy and therefore managed to spill water down my shirt.

Yay! Free food!

After Hillel, I really wanted to see the West Campus dorms, even though all of the EC people told me that they are dull and boring, much as East Campus kids eat babies and consume copious amounts of illegal substances (kids, don't try this at home!). But, they took me to Baker anyway, even though they insisted on leaving their own mark:

Afterwards, we somewhat split up and Kiersten and Tanya went back to East Campus (I think) while the three of us journeyed on to Simmons and the famous ball pit!

simmons and icebreakers

2008-04-14T23:19:00.000-07:00

Yeah, the ball pit was pretty lame, hence our sad faces. It was more like a carpet of balls than an actual pit. If Becca and I are temped in Simmons, we are definitely getting some more balls (and something to keep them from falling out of the door)!

Afterwards, we journeyed over to the Rockwell Cage for Opening Ceremonies. Trev had eaten dinner with some other prefrosh, so we tried to be friends with them but quickly got separated. Becca and I sat next to another prefrosh from Colorado, Becca's hood, and we became friends with Tim, adding a new homie to our menagerie!

After a fun concert from some of the different student groups at MIT, it was time for icebreakers. Our orientation leaders asked for suggestions, so of course Becca and I suggested something. But not before Ben saw us...

Me: Ben, stop walking!
Ben: What? *comes closer*
Me: Stop!
Ben: What? *walks closer*
Me: Stop walking! I want a picture! I HAVE TO BLOG THIS!!!
Ben: *lol*

Becca and I suggested the human knot. Thanks to the friendly admissions guy that took pictures for me! Unfortunately, my camera broke immediately after this. I can only assume that there's a connection :) So MIT, you owe me either a fabulous education or a new camera, whichever you have more of.

We eventually got out, but it turned out that three of us were holding hands with each other, forming a teeny knot in the midst of a bigger knot. Epic fail. After this, we went to the athletic fair, where I tried bubble tea, which is totally weird. Ick.

dorm tours, part 1

2008-04-14T23:18:00.001-07:00

After the activities fair, Becca, Tim and I decided to go off the beaten path and to demand tours from everyone that we found, going to each dorm one by one in order to see as many as possible.

We began our journey at Senior House, because I wanted to get my sweater from East Campus. There, we entered and demanded a tour from the first person that we saw, which turned out to be the so-called sketchiest kid in Senior House. Suffice it to say that we were kept entertained, although I had to whip out the sass. The next morning, the following conversation took place:

5 West: So, what'd you do?
Me: Um, I had a sketchy tour of Senior House.
5 West: Oooooh, with who?
Me: Um, some sketchy kid that looked like Jesus and hit on me a lot?
5 West: Ah, we know who that is! Don't worry, he flirts with anything with 2-4 legs.
Me: ...
5 West: Yeah. Live here.

After our crazy insane tour, we journeyed on to Burton-Connor, where we got a less insane tour and spent some time chatting on Burton 2. After this, I was pretty exhausted, so I went back to East Campus to sleep, thereby violating the first rule of CPW. My bad.

day 2

2008-04-14T23:18:00.000-07:00

I woke up around 10:30 and took a shower then made my trek over to the Student Center to meet up with Becca and Tim. I tried to recruit people to come with to lunch, which we picked out as hamburgers at the ROTC building, but pretty much everyone had class, so I left Dave '11 in the middle of the hallway doing a problem set and trekked over to the ROTC building to meet up with Tim and Becca.

ROTC was very interesting - it didn't sound like a bad deal, except for the physical training. I was legitimately interested and asked questions, along with Becca. Tim seemed kind of terrified and didn't want to discuss it when we left, leading me to believe that I'm particulary susceptible to brainwashing :)

Tim and I then went on a wacky adventure to the Stata center and a CSAIL presentation, which took us about 20 minutes to get to. Meanwhile, we became trapped in the hallway of Physics boxes and spent a LOT of time pressing the buttons to watch the experiments. There were strobe lights and sparks and all sorts of things that a young nerd like me enjoys :)

After we finished pressing the buttons, Tim and I went to the presentation and got free t-shirts. It was interesting about the different undergraduate research opportunities, but the main thing that I noticed is that Stata is totally awesome and that CSAIL has really tasty brownies and only shirts in size medium or extra large, which is odd. Afterwards, Tim and I went to 6.02.

6.02 was taught in Stata, and we arrived about 5 minutes before 2, when the class was scheduled to start. Later, we learned that classes actually start about five minutes after the start of the hour, so Tim and I paged through the problem set that was given out as homework for that week, along with some of the notes. Here was my first surprise:

I could actually do most of the problems based on reading the notes. This blew my mind! That I could actually potentially handle a course 6 workload had previously been crazy talk (though I certainly hoped that it was true). The professor was engaging and interesting, and when I ran off at the end to meet up with my dad, I felt a lot better about the possibility of me *not* flunking out of MIT.

Afterwards, I met up with my dad for our financial aid meeting, which turned out horribly because there really wasn't anything that MIT could do for us, which really majorly sucked, and I was in a bit of a funk for the rest of the day. Fortunately, we had raided the Student Activities Fair beforehand and had amassed all sorts of interesting new toys!

Afterwards, my dad and I went to the Course 6 open house, where I actually ran into the 6.02 professor along the way. I told him how much I had liked his class, and he was very nice and asked me if I was interested in being a course 6 major. At the open house, I got another t-shirt (course 6 ftw it seems) and some more free food (double win) and I talked to some kids about starting salaries for MEng students in 6-1 doing mainly chip design, which is what I'm prospectively interested in.

Suffice it to say that my student loans will be fine :)

Afterwards, Becca and I met up for cupcakes at the girls cupcakes thing and prepared ourselves for what promised to be the Best Night Yet.

friday night aka solid AWESOME

2008-04-14T23:17:00.000-07:00

Friday night started out pretty awesomely with the Bouncy Ball Drop over at Senior House. It was frustrating waiting for them to *finally* throw the balls over, but once it happened, it was pretty cool (and we each grabbed quite a few bouncy balls to take home with us). My dad commented that the music hadn't changed since his time in high school, although I think this might have just been Senior House :) All pictures of these events are courtsey of Becca, who is AWESOME!

Tim brought an umbrella to protect us from all of the bouncy balls:

Bouncy balls falling:

YAY! We got some :)

Afterwards, we went over to Meet the Bloggers. Becca and I chatted the entire way about who would be taller in real life, who would be cuter, who would be exactly as we had expected, and how many prefrosh would jump Snively. We guessed about seven, which turned out to be right. Becca and I quickly decided that we'd keep it on the DL and not try to appear *too* starstruck with all of the celebrity.

Instead, we just took cute pictures of ourselves:

We had been sitting at our table for about five minutes when Snively and Ben spotted me and called me over loudly, causing most of the other prefrosh that I was aware of to stare at me as I blushed awkwardly and scrambled over chairs to go see them. I don't recall the exact conversation, but I believe it went something like this:

Ben: So, how's CPW?
Me: Um, it's pretty awesome
Snively: Then take this! *hands over iPhone*
Me: ?
Ben & Snively: ENROLL!
Me: ... *secretly can't work an iPhone* Um... *puts phone down on table*
Snively's prefrosh, Chris '12: *takes phone* *enrolls*
Me: Oh well.

I introduced Becca and Tim and I believe this is where the "she's totally blogging this" inside joke that permeated the rest of the weekend came from. They were totally starstruck, I could tell.

I think it was around now that other prefrosh, seeing that I had shattered the barrier between bloggers and prefrosh, began attacking Snively. After the introductions, I found him surrounded by starstruck prefrosh and offered him a pen to sign autographs, but I don't think he found it as funny as Becca and Tim did :)

See, Snively is a god in their eyes:

Becca, Tim, and I chatted with Laura and Ben for a bit before heading over to what promised to be the greatest adventure of our lives: Lobby 7 at 10 pm.

There was some minor chaos that ensued when it looked like we weren't going to get picked by a tour - we saw someone familiar and urged them to ditch their prefrosh, but they weren't having any of it. Luckily, we got on a tour and quickly became engrossed in the BEST THING EVER. At the end, it had doughnuts. That's all I can say here. After this TOTALLY AWESOME THING, I lost Becca and Tim, went to Killian Court and saw a totally lame rain collector that we were sure would be full of fail come the next day, and passed out on my host's floor.

a quick story

2008-04-14T23:15:00.000-07:00

I woke up at 9:30 on Saturday morning after only 5 hours of sleep to go on a campus tour with my dad. Bad call. 9:30 is really early for someone who's used to getting 8+ hours of sleep - I hear this only happens in high school anyway :)

My dad really liked the campus tour. I really liked the opportunity to take tourist-y pictures.

I think here is a pertinent time to address a major issue that I initally had with MIT - I was scared completely shitless. I thought that the entire campus was going to look exactly like that picture - pretty, grassy, spread out, and this totally wasn't the case. Lobby 10 was filled with people and the entire campus was buzzing, and this was horribly intimidating. On Thursday, if you asked me where I was going, I would've said U of I, hands down. I was waiting for MIT to give me a reason to fall in love with it, and I was terrified waiting.

After the campus tour, my dad and I headed over to Burton-Connor for breakfast (yes, I did influence him to go to BC, because I am a blog-stalker and half of them live there anyway). I introduced my dad to Snively by way of 'this is the guy that got me called into the Dean's office' and he said hello and got food while I chatted with Laura for a bit. She forgot my name. I guess I wans't initally sassy enough :)

Anyway, my dad and I were eating breakfast (well, he was eating scones while I was chugging black coffee) when he casually mentioned my coin, at which point I started going "OMG NO DAD YOU ARE SO EMBARASSING" and turned an obligatory shade of red.

What coin you ask?

This coin:

Well, only half of those coins are my coin.

Anyway, I haven't told any of you the story yet!

On Wednesday, before I left for CPW, I got a red dean's slip in French class. My first thoughts were, "oh, shit. What have I done lately?" Then, I realized that I hadn't done anything, and I started to get paranoid.

So, I went to the dean's office after French, even though the pass said after school, but the secretary was out. I interroguated her temporary replacement, who told me that I had received mail from a magic company in Virginia. Very mysterious. I assumed it wasn't a letter bomb and reluctantly went back to class until 2:45, when I got to return and found the dean waiting for me.

"Is this yours?"
"Um," replied I, nervous, "I have no clue what that is. Or where it came from."
"Well, then." He opened the door to his lair. "Enter my office and let's open it."

I opened it and out fell...A TRICK COIN!!!

For those of you that stalk me, you probably recall my declaration that I was going to flip a coin, and heads was MIT. Well, two heads on this coin, don't have much of a choice, do I? :) Not that I did before.

Anyway, the school's policy is to call in the parents of the child that receives mail, so my mom had to come in to the dean. And that is how my parents knew of Snively up until this point - the blogger/kid that got their daughter called into the dean's office.

The first question from one of the mothers was whether it looked like a real quarter. She examined it carefully...

And determined that it was of rather high quality, and quite nice. And this is just one of the many days that my dad horribly embarassed me this weekend. Others included on dorm row:

Guy: FREE HUGS!
Dad: For prefrosh only?
Me: ...ohmygod.

Guy: JELLO WRESTLING!!!
Dad: I'm totally asking him if I can come to.
Me: ...ohmygod.

Anyway, he had fun.

dorm tours, part 2

2008-04-14T23:14:00.000-07:00

After my brief flirtation with morbid embarassment, Becca met up with us and Snively came over and we found ourselves on a BC dorm tour!

For those of you that didn't get the chance to visit, Burton-Connor is split up into two buildings, the Burton side and the Connor side. Becca, Tim, and I had ditched our BC tour the previous night at Burton 1 and had run to Burton 2 to investigate, and therefore we had seen very little of the actual dorm. Snively gave a great tour and my dad was pretty enamoured. My favorite part were these books:

Snively: I can't believe you're blogging this.
Becca: Oh, she blogs everything.

Burton-Connor was very nice, but I wasn't as in love with it as I was with East Campus. Still, it won me over with its suite-style living, its kitchens, and its bathrooms in each suite (the EC ones are kind of annoying). Definitely a solid second in my dorm rankings.

After this, my dad, Becca, and I met up with Tim and headed over to MacGregor to investigate.

This review is extremely short, mostly because my dad and I got lost somewhere in the convenience center and ended up far away from the tour and unable to find it, so we gave up and went to East Campus for a hopeful tour. Unfortunately, Miss Ugly was going on and my friend Feldman '11 was in it, and I didn't feel comfortable having my dad see him in drag, so I kissed my dad goodbye and he told me the following fateful words,

"You can go here if you want to."

This made me pretty emotional - my parents had previously been dead-set against MIT, saying that I could get the same education at U of I for a lot less, but I think that my dad was won over by the people. Props to Snively especially - my dad liked him a lot. And so, it was on me, and this made me hella nervous, which spilled over into some other parts of the night (i.e. my obnoxious rants about things, let's forget that happened, Tim!). I thrive under pressure but crack under tough decisions.

saturday night, and dorms part 3

2008-04-14T23:13:00.000-07:00

After a somewhat emotional closing ceremony (I was dwelling on my choice, bad things happen when I dwell on things), Tim, Becca, and I embarked on what ended up being the BEST NIGHT EVER. Period.

We went to a fraternity for dinner first (this might have been before the closing ceremonies, not gonna lie, I was pretty tired) and then went to Battle of the Bands, which was pretty awesome. Here are some pictures of the BOTB crowd - what, why is no one dancing?

After noticing this, Becca, Megan, Alex (I think his name was Alex), Tim, and I went down to the front and proceeded to dance a LOT and make total morons of ourselves. Pretty much no one was dancing, so we took this opportunity (the girls at least) to get our freaks on as best as possible. After this, we split from the boys and the girls went to Bexley while the boys went to the frat parties.

On the way, we saw fire trucks at Baker!

Don't worry, it didn't burn down. Although Megan got a bit nervous because she was temped there, and she didn't want her stuff to be destroyed by the sprinklers.

Not gonna lie - Bexley scared the CRAP out of me. The twisty dark staircases and the graffiti made me completely nervous, but Becca and Megan liked the location and the people were a lot less scary than we had expected. For me, it was like going down a frickin' rabbit hole - every place we came out was different. I missed East Campus and 5th West. Awesome parts of Bexley were the big rooms and the spacious kitchens and full bathrooms (I think that it used to be apartments) but I just couldn't feel comfortable.

Next, we journeyed to Random, which felt very off campus to me. I missed the academic buildings, and by this time, I was starting to get pretty homesick for my floor. Random, though, was very nice - I really liked the HUGE kitchens with the many fridges, and the residents were especially friendly. Honestly, though, I didn't fit in. This was different than when I didn't fit in at Baker (which we looked at Thursday night) or another West Campus dorm - I just thought 'these people are too weird for me to live with.'

I guess that 5th West was right when they declared, "I've talked to you for 5 minutes, and you are NOT a Randomite."

Random definitely is perfect for some people. Those people just aren't me.

best. night. ever.

2008-04-14T23:12:00.000-07:00

After our visits to Random and Bexley, two places where I felt NO fit AT ALL, I was pretty desperate to return home, and I was also kind of cold at this point, so I made an excuse to go to East Campus, which Becca and Megan were pretty eager to see.

"Hm," we thought as we neared the campus, "there sure are a lot of people here..."

Meat Market was going on, where apparently Senior House sells random, scantily-clad girls in order to raise money for Steer Roast, where they cook an entire cow and do a lot of drugs (or so I hear). We entered the floor and I immediately declared my intention to find the first 5th West person that I could find and make them take us on a tour. That person was Dave '11! YAY DAVE!

I had already been on about 5 tours of East Campus by this time, so I started pointing out things that Dave forgot. He had a few things in his favor though - Becca and Megan had already had me tell them all about how awesome East Campus was and he was pretty good-looking, so they were quickly won over. After this, Becca wasn't feeling well, so I walked her and Megan back to Lobby 7 and waited for Tim and...

CAPTURE THE FLAG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It turns out that Capture the Flag actually started at midnight, and I had missed this note because I had left the PFB back in the dorm in an effort to seem cooler. So, I spent the next fifteen minutes waiting around and hoping that Tim showed up - he came about five minutes later, and then the sketchy kid from Senior House ran into us in Lobby 7 while we were waiting. We discussed my MIT decision.

Him: So, have you decided?
Me: Yeah, it's going to be prostitution for the next four years, but I'm going.
Him: Baby, I can totally be your pimp.
Me: ...what kind of a deal are we looking at? How much?
Him: Oh, no, honey, I'll pimp you out for things that money can't buy.
Me: ...can I be an internet meme?
Tim: ...
Him: Oh, baby, I'll make you a frickin' LOL cat.
Tim: ...
Me: *LOL*
Him: So, what color are we?

We ended up being blue, as that was the only color that the guy could find a small t-shirt in. Capture the Flag was the BEST THING EVER. Seriously. Although the color was a bit of a fight:

Guy: Red or blue?
Me: Blue. It's sneakier.

*later*

Dave: We're always red!
Me: Blue is sneakier!

Capture the Flag really highlights one of the main things that I loved about MIT. Nowhere else that I've visited has left enough buildings open (or had enough buildings connected) to get a legit game of capture the flag going in the buildings themselves. Between running around and being dragged away from unlocked doors by Dave (I'm sure I was pretty obnoxious about this part) I basically realized that MIT is a huge playground, and I am a kid in a candy store. And, of course, this was my favorite part:

Yeah, this is from the tour earlier. But seriously, Stata was SO AWESOME. Totally awesome and amazing and wonderful, and I walked in with Dave and felt like I was in a HUGE playground, and it was beautiful and I loved it. And the views were cool, especially this random one from the 9th floor where I was looking through about 6 windows at once, and Stata is officially my favorite, therefore I will either major in Course 6 or philosophy so I can go there more often :)

But yeah. Capture the Flag. Brilliant. Blue team won twice, because we were sneakier, of course :)

After Capture the Flag, I ran into Feldman in the hallway, and our motley crew went to go chairing in building 66, I believe. Chairing is when you take the Athena cluster chairs and take them down ramps.

On the way, we had the following converation:

Sketchy kid: So, she's coming.
Dave and Feldman: Really?
Sketchy kid: Yeah, I'm her pimp.
Me: Apparently he's pimping me out for things that money can't buy.
Dave: ...like what.
Sketchy kid: Math theorems.
Me: I like math. As long as it's in the name of calculus, I guess it's ok.

Chairing was BRILLIANT, and Dave and sketchy kid from Senior House found this random laundry cart, and we rode around in that too. Amazing. Pure awesome.

Then I matricultated in the Athena Cluster, and I was officially Karen '12. No turning back now. My parents are going to FREAK when they read this.

Afterwards, I stayed up all night, screwed around in the Student Center very early in the morning, played some guitar hero back on 5th West, and got used by Dave for free food:

In McCormick. One of the funniest moments of my life - Dave and George '12 eating doughnuts amongst the girls and their parents.

Mmmm, Lucky Charms!

Then I came back, packed, went on the plane, and was back in Chicago again. I'm not entirely sure if I came home or left it.

cpw wrap-up

2008-04-14T23:11:00.000-07:00

So, you may be wondering what I thought of the whole experience, and what played into my final decision to attend MIT. The initial pro/con chart looked like this:

Pro
Great education
Good location
I like the blogs

Con
Frickin' EXPENSIVE

The post-CPW pro-con char looks like this:

Pro
I have never felt more comfortable and at ease in a place than I did this weekend at CPW
Great education
Great people
The students really own the school - it's theirs
Tangerine Tours were SO BITCHING

Con

I was initially super nervous that the bloggers would be the only ones that liked me - everyone that I met at first that seemed to enjoy my company was either a blogger or someone that I went to high school with. But, once I met some awesome prefrosh to hang out with, and once I felt like I could fit in somewhere and make it on my own, without my connections to the admissions office or anything, I was sold.

Basically, money doesn't matter, sleep doesn't matter, it's MIT 2012 or bust. And I wouldn't have it any other way. Gigantic shout-outs to Snively and Ben for recruiting me hardcore and to all of 5th West for making me feel like I could fit in at MIT. I was waiting for a reason to fall in love, and I certainly got a lot of them.

So, to all of you:

Thanks. See you in August :)