Corona extra extra, read all about it!
What evacuated students are doing to keep Tech spirit alive
Despite being away from friends, faculty, and most importantly Verde’s, students are attempting to use their quarantine as an opportunity to make LaCroix out of lemons. Whether it’s the unexpected revival of HouseParty or recreating Maseeh lunch, the engineers are still maintaining community and productivity while away from the ’Tute.
For example, in an effort to bring a piece of MIT to wherever they call home, the engineers have actually been bringing grass into their rooms to symbolize the student center around autumn time. Students are even trying to emulate the culinary expertise of Bon Appetit, the MIT Dining service. An anonymous student is preparing her own McCormick Soul Food night next Wednesday for their family. Another student has been testing different types of spa water like Maseeh Dining recently championed. Pickle Water went over about as well as it did in Cambridge.
In these dark times, students have also turned away from their terminals and instead looked to the arts. Literacy rates at MIT are up a whopping 75%, the Media Lab probably reported. Chalk and paint brushes are finally seeing the light of day since rush and recruitment. Moleskine notebooks from the BMW Career Fair booth are being put to use for some quality journaling. CMS concentrators have taken a strong liking to Netflix and Hulu for the thesis of the century: Choose your fighter: Love is Blind or The Bachelor.
MIT social life has also continued online, thanks to a few philanthropists’ creation of Zoom-based Tavern in the Square virtual hangouts.
While posted up in their doomsday bunker (a New Jersey shore house), six seniors called on their higher achievements of social media influence to craft the social gathering affectionately known as TITS. They even injected tidbits of public health PSAs to educate socially inept Gen Zs, such as sanitizing microphones and washing hands before going online. The Chief Data Scientist behind the event, Gaylor Trey, estimated that they hosted roughly 30 zoomers at peak hour.
Popular apps from our childhood — Houseparty, Club Penguin, Poptropica — have risen from the ashes like a phoenix and are now better than ever. While I still haven’t gotten to the final floor of The Suite Life of Zack and Cody Pizza Party Pickup, it’s like our friends at the Sloan School of Management™ always say: “t = 0. The time is now.”
This is intended as a light and satirical student life piece, a quick laugh to break up your day. Yet it does not escape me for one moment that countless students, from MIT, the US and around the world, are struggling. Some don’t have a place to go home to, some don’t know where their next meal is coming from, and many are scared for what the future holds. Here is a list of ways you can help them and others.
Jennah Haque is a member of the MIT Class of 2021.