MIT holds annual family weekend
Many family members participated in campus tours of laboratories and facilities and ate at campus dining halls.
OMAR OROZCO – THE TECH
MIT held its annual Family Weekend from Oct. 27 to Oct. 28. Visiting families had the opportunity to attend events including special concerts to lab tours.
Families were invited to listen in to open lectures for classes ranging from 16.002 (Unified Engineering: Signals and Systems) to 18.02 (Multivariable Calculus). Different academic departments also held receptions catered towards visiting families. Many participated in campus tours of laboratories and facilities and ate at campus dining halls.
Many parents attended open lectures for their child’s classes. Zoe Zhang, who attended 18.02 (Multivariable Calculus), said “The class I attended was great. Having a class with my daughter was amazing.” Tony Nguyen, who attended 7.012 (Introduction to Biology), said that “it was very entertaining and informative.”
Parents observed extracurricular activities as well. Katharine Santos watched her daughter’s Taekwondo Club practice and said that “watching how the Taekwondo instructors emphasized strategy and hitting with a particular amount of force from a particular angle made me realize how a scientific approach pervades everything at MIT.”
Parents had positive feedback regarding the dining hall food. Nguyen said, “I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the dining hall food the first time I tried it.” Zhang added, “The best meal was probably the last meal I had before I left on Sunday. I tried food from different stations, and it was the best meal out of the three meals I tried in the Maseeh dining hall.”
On Oct. 29, the annual Family Weekend Concert concluded the weekend of events. The theme of the concert was celebrating the “universality of music." The MIT Wind Ensemble, Festival Jazz Ensemble, and Vocal Jazz Ensemble performed a series of musical pieces with global influences, featuring works by Prokofiev, Clifton Williams, Ellington, and many others.
Many parents viewed the concerts as the highlight of Family Weekend. Zhang said, “the concert I went to was awesome, and the performances were fantastic.” Santos added, “the most interesting event was definitely the wind ensemble and jazz concert. The musicality was incredibly impressive.”