Life in the cement bunker
Over the course of four years at MIT, I’ve come to realize the meaning of IHTFP. I distinctly remember the senses of anguish: the smell of a blown op-amp at 2AM, feeling powerless when MIT cut eight varsity sports, the taste of another Red Bull while trying to finish that computational biology project, and listening to the collective groan of freshmen getting back their physics exams. The visions of paradise are even more vivid: watching our professor race to erase multivariable calculus equations in 10-250 before the boards could reset, observing a unanimous vote of the faculty to approve an experiment that could bring together the fall career fair and the September student holiday, and seeing it start to snow right before my first crew regatta. During the weeks since class ended, I’ve found myself thinking about how unique some of these experiences are to MIT and identifying the common thread behind them: our community and its insistence on the freedom to explore.