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Archive for grad life/MIT
August 1, 2006 at 12:53 am · Filed under grad life/MIT
I am a friendly enough person. I don’t have problems talking to strangers; I sometimes strike up conversations with people while waiting in line, and I meet my share of random people. I am usually friendly, at first anyways, but I inevitably end up lumping a few into the creepy category, and I never ever want to talk to them again.
One recent example: a guy who works in a lab down the hall whom I actively try to avoid. I always manage to run into him when I walk down the hall to go to the bathroom. This was how we struck up a conversation initially; while walking past him, he stopped in the middle of the hallway and said hey. He seemed nice enough, so I introduced myself and asked the standard give-me-your-life-in-30-seconds questions. But then he WOULDN’T GO AWAY.
Most other people I’ve met on the hall are perfectly content with exchanging hey’s during quick walk-by’s in the hallway. Not this guy. This guy ALWAYS stops, making it hard to do a fly-by-hello, which is all I want. One time, I hurriedly pointed to my watch and fibbed, “I’ve got to run to a meeting!” and tried to keep walking, but he insisted, “oh? what meeting?” I have nothing to say to him; we have nothing in common, and there are always awkward silences during which I frantically try to come up with my next passive aggressive excuse to get away.
NOT to mention, and this is the worst part, he always manages to find some reason to pat me on my back, or lay a it’ll-be-okay hand on my shoulder, or reach out to turn my arm over and ask “where are those scabs from?”
Does he NOT understand that touching is unacceptable? Does he NOT realize that we do not KNOW each other, and thus exploding through my personal bubble is completely inappropriate???
I have started to go up a flight of stairs to use the bathroom, and soon I am moving my office upstairs as well. I know, I know, SUPER passive aggressive. But what else am I to do? I clearly cannot seem to be able to just confront the guy and deal with the situation, and what would I even say to him? “Please don’t talk to me anymore, creep”?
So, please, just allow me to remove myself from the situation.
July 19, 2006 at 12:05 am · Filed under grad life/MIT
Being summertime, and prime college visits season, I see multiple tour groups through campus all day everyday full of bright, young, wide-eyed kids bored through their minds and their baby-boomer parents who keep volunteering things like “my child made a foam horse that could fly when he was still in the womb. He is a natural genius conceived to go to MIT; he will fit right in.”
Riiiiiiight … but the point of this isn’t to talk about baby-boomer parents, nor even offer any opinion on the undergrads who are here. I want to take a moment to address the tour guides, and offer a few quick pointers, if I may:
1) DON’T WALK BACKWARDS. What are you trying to accomplish? Being able to walk and talk to your tour group at the same time? Well, I hate to break it to ya, but when you’re walking across Mass Ave full of cars honking, construction cranes drilling asphalt, and walk-signals chirping, who the hell even hears what you’re saying anyways?? You’re risking your life walking backwards for nothing. Maybe that mother in the front will get overzealously unselfish enough to actually warn you before you slam your back into that telephone poll. Urgent care over in Medical is open 24/7, okay?
2) TOUR GROUPS OF 30 DO NOT FIT INTO ELEVATORS, so quit trying to stuff them all in like sardines. What’s so important on the second floor anyways? Building 56 has labs on the second floor, and the third floor has yet more labs. With locked doors. Oh, but you can walk over to building 18 on the third floor skywalk. I bet the tour group would like to do that, just so that they can have a do-over on the whole sardines experience going back down, but hey at least they get to see the inside of the Building 18 elevator, too! Anything for elevators.
3) THE BASEMENT IS NOT SOMETHING TO SHOW OFF. Standing in a darkened corridor with nothing but closed doors on either side talking about the MIT social life just isn’t fair. I mean, darkened hallways are so great for fun things like sliding down the freshly waxed floor with socks on, running into zombie grad students, taking a late-night stroll by yourself when you really want to go to sleep but can’t because your roommate’s “friend” is over … these are much too exciting things to show these prospectives & parents! They might think that MIT isn’t a serious academic institution, and that all kids do here is have fun sleep-walking. *GASP*
4) DO NOT EVER WALK BACKWARDS!! EVER!! This one’s so important that I’ll repeat myself. Handsome, you’re too cute to get laughed at for running into a parked car, and way too precious to your darling mother to trip over that step and bust your head on the concrete, go to the ER with blood on your face, and subsequently have to listen to your mother wailing over the phone about her poor poor baby.
Okay, rant closed. Call me a snobby tour guide. You know you want to. I was only a University Guide for 4 short years and gave 100+ tours. Big deal.
June 10, 2006 at 2:10 pm · Filed under grad life/MIT
Every now and then I stop at a bulletin board and read the multitude of posters on it. Because it is summer, this is much easier to do than during the school year because there are very few posters during the summer. So today, looking at a bulletin board, I was surprised to find 4 posters soliciting volunteers for a sleep study, and not the same sleep study, but 4 different sleep studies.
The headlines on the posters are along the lines of “Do you avoid sleep like the plague?” and “Do you get less than 6 hours of sleep a night?” followed inevitably by something along the lines of “We want you for our sleep study.”
It really hit me that these posters were designed for people who do not sleep much, ie people at MIT, be they students or faculty. It is a tad unnerving that these posters were put on bulletin boards at MIT for a reason, because they thought they could appeal to more people who lack sleep at a place like this. And the headline “do you avoid sleep like the plague” … I don’t even have any words for that except “wow.”
April 19, 2006 at 9:30 pm · Filed under grad life/MIT
February 14, 2006 at 1:17 am · Filed under grad life/MIT
Something like this could have only come out of MIT …
Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!
To add to the obvious nerd-factor already apparent in the Valentine’s Day theorem above, the image itself is supposedly computer generated. See the MIT News site for the credits.
February 9, 2006 at 1:28 am · Filed under grad life/MIT
It is amazing how life can go from merrily floating along to grand rapids rushing toward a waterfall at the flick of a switch. This week, all of a sudden, with the start of classes, came an onslaught of meetings, responsibilities, issues, random happenings, and of course the classes themselves. Last week was relaxing and calm, yet all of my days this week have been filled to the brim with junk. Despite the days being so full, as I sit down at the end of a day to think about what I did, not only do I realize that I have accomplished nothing productive during the course of the day, but I also can never recall what exactly I did do with my day. Hour after hour just rushed on by, gone forever from my life. And saddest of all, I can’t even properly account for them.
January 26, 2006 at 11:22 pm · Filed under grad life/MIT
Philip, who was up here visiting two weekends back, asked me today if he could pose a question to me. He said it was something he’s been wondering about, but is kind of awkward. Finally he said “When I was up there a couple of weekends ago, I noticed something in your closet when you were getting sheets out for me. Do you have a large fishbowl of condoms in your closet?”
Here are the four reasons Philip came up with for why I would have a fishbowl of condoms in my closet: 1) I got it as a gag gift, 2) I was stocking up because after all, I have been telling him about a lot of guys who have shown interest lately, 3) my parents sent them to me, 4) they’re left over from Ryan.
Okay, reason #3 is just plain weird, but none of the others are right either. Thanks for having such a wild imagination, Philip. Do I really seem like the type? Only reason #1 is even worthy of a response from me, and no it was not a gag gift.
I do have a fishbowl full of condoms in my closet. It contain condoms of all shapes, flavors, textures, and colors (like black). All GRTs can pick up a fishbowl of condoms to provide to our students however we see fit. I think some Tutors leave condoms in jars outside their door or something. I have just opted to throw that bowl of condoms in my closet. I did talk to all my freshmen about responsibility and the importance of safe sex.
The condoms do make for a good shock for people when they look into my closet; the sheer number of them is enough to stop most people cold. Philip was so shocked he was too embarrassed to even bring up the subject while he was here. Finally, his curiosity got the best of him today, and he just had to ask.
***Addendum: Phil’s reaction to this post***
Philip: and no you don’t seem like the type … i figured i must have been mistaken
me: you thought it was candy. a fishbowl of candy wrapped in condom wrappers
Philip: i thought that only because, while i was asking, i realized how crazy it is. That there’s no way you would have a bowl of condoms
January 23, 2006 at 11:46 pm · Filed under friends, grad life/MIT, dating/relationships, daily grind
because there always are aftermaths. Some directly result from the event, and others seem completely unrelated.
1) I felt like a queen this weekend. I will be eternally thankful for all the caring friends who went out of their ways to bring me movies, ice cream, beer, groceries, conversations, and some altogether well-spent quality time. I feel no less grateful to everyone who left comments, phone messages, and/or sent emails expressing their condolescences and offering to help in any way that they can. I truly am a lucky gal.
2) I am much happier now than I was last May about some life choices. This subject really deserves its own entry. For now though, it will remain a joyful afterthought.
3) I am already tired of a relationship that doesn’t even exist yet and will most likely never be. The games have gone on 2 months too long. I need to accept that “he’s just not that into me” and move on. I want to tell him how I feel, so that I will have no regrets or thoughts of “what if?” later on … but what I really NEED to do is to stop wasting time/energy on him and move on because he’s just not that into me. He is just not that into me. Repeat. Repeat.
4) I did not call my parents when the accident first happened (they were not one of my 2 phone calls … ), and I mentioned nothing of it when I called them yesterday. I don’t want them to worry unnecessarily (of course they will), and I don’t want them to have their hearts in their throats every time I tell them I’m going snowboarding/skiing from now on. I feel guilty that I have not told them yet, but I don’t know how to bring up the subject.
5) I am signing off of IM for an indefinite period of time. This actually already happened, since I haven’t really signed on since last Monday. While I enjoy catching up with friends, I inevitably stay up until 5am doing nothing except chatting on IM, and I always hate myself for it. I don’t like hating myself.
6) As calm and accepting as I am about what happened, I do ask “why me?” I am extremely thankful for how relatively well everything turned out, but I really could have gone on, perfectly happily, without another major scar on my knee.
December 24, 2005 at 3:19 pm · Filed under grad life/MIT
At a Graduate Dean/graduate student dinner event that I helped to organize a couple of months ago, I met this guy at my dinner table. Since the dinner, I’ve run into him a few times, but mainly just saying hi during split second infinite corridor passings-by. I felt bad that I didn’t remember his name at first, so I made sure to go back to the dinner guest list to figure out his name. Thursday, I ran into him outside of Kendall. I waved, but he didn’t seem to recognize me at first. When he did, he stopped to say hi, and asked about being a GRT. It turns out that he and I actually met while interviewing for GRT positions last winter, and I had just sort of forgotten about it.
Anyway, so today, I got a friend invite from him on facebook and a message apologizing for having had to rush off at Kendall. Except, I was a bit alarmed, because his profile showed a different first name than the one I looked up on the dinner invite list. Had I been calling him the wrong name all this time? Had we gotten his name wrong at the dinner? I thought maybe it was on of those “I go by my middle name” things, and so I looked him up in the MIT directory.
The directory showed two names, two people, two listings: the one that sent me the facebook invite AND the one at the dean’s dinner. After some snooping around looking at pictures on facebook, I’m pretty sure these are twins, or at least brothers who look extremely similar (ie. twins). The funny thing is that I met each brother separately (GRT interviewing vs. dean’s dinner), so I’m not even sure if they each realize that I also know the other one. There is now also the question of which brother did I actually say hi to those times in the Infinite? Thinking back, there were times when recognition seemed hazy on his part, but maybe I’m just imagining things now that I have new information. And more importantly, how do I tell who is whom when I run into these guys in the future? I’ve never really had to really tell apart a set of twins before.
November 30, 2005 at 12:54 am · Filed under friends, random, grad life/MIT, daily grind
My friend Clement left for Beijing today for 1-5 years. He will be leading the entire Microsoft XBox 360 team in China, aiming for a Dec 2006 (or at least that’s what they tell the media) console release in the land of Mao. This comes after only working for Bill Gates for about a year. Makes me feel like an idiot … I mean, I’ve been going at this grad school thing for the same amount of time, and it’s taken me nowhere; I may have even gone backwards.
This one here is for Ali, courtesy of one Italian dude in an Ireland pub near the cliffs by the sea across the atlantic. May we both still get a kick out of this when we’re old and gray, and still admiring Latin men. Latin, Italian … men … same thing.
Govies rejoice! Annual reunion in Hartsville Tuesday, 12/27 at 4pm, with get-together chez LSR beforehand in Bennettsville. Non-2000’s are welcome too, I’m sure. here’s the evite.
I got 4 facebook invites in one day. I must be getting popular, or something.
It’s not been a good autumn for relationships. Three 2+ year relationships ended in the past couple of months. Love’s just not in the air. For once, I can honestly say “I know how you feel.”
Tim Tams are Australian versions of heaven, even if they call them biscuits over there. I’m saving my last Tim Tam (courtesy of Liang) to try the “right” way of eating one: sucking coffee through it like a straw. Those silly aussies.
The National Zoo in DC has a PandaCam, where you can observe the giant panda exhibit, to which a baby panda was added this summer. Don’t forget to check out Panda Cub Photo Gallery. my personal favorite is image #10.
I have to remember to ground myself before I touch the metal door handle in my office every single time that I go to open the door. I’ve never been shocked so much and so consistently.
A post-doc who shares my office told me that she once knew a guy whose PhD thesis was on how to detect pregnancy in pandas through analyzing panda poop. Her words of wisdom: if you ever think you’ve got it bad … think about how much worse it could be. You could be analyzing panda poop for your thesis.
According to my friend Jason (and I’m paraphrasing) … just live life! have a fling with somebody. no biggie.
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