Peer2Peer joins other campus mental health initiatives
Peer2Peer, an anonymous web-based peer support platform, launched late last month. The site allows users to chat with fellow students; the Institute launched the site as part of an ongoing effort to lower the barrier for seeking help with mental health issues. Peer2Peer was spearheaded by Berj Chilingirian ’16 and two professionals at MIT Mental Health, Evan Waldheter and Rheinila Fernandes.
Protesters seek release of Aafia Siddiqui
A small crowd of protesters gathered at the bottom of the steps of Lobby 7 Tuesday afternoon. They called on the U.S. government to release and repatriate Aafia Siddiqui ’95, a Pakistani neuroscientist who is currently serving an 86-year sentence in a prison in Fort Worth, Texas.
IMF Managing Director, Christine Lagarde, talks demographic change, energy, and MIT culture
Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, spoke at MIT last Friday, saying “we need to reframe the debate about demographics” and the global challenges that come with demographic changes. Her plan to counter shrinking and ageing populations in advanced economies includes both policy-driven approaches, such as entitlement reform, as well as calls for technological innovation in healthcare and energy.
Mens et … mens?
The very first class I attended at MIT was 7.012, four and a half years ago in the fall of 2011. I remember how excited my fellow freshmen felt in Maseeh dining that morning, how tightly the Infinite was packed with students finding new classrooms, and how crowded 26-100 was once my friends and I got there. But looking back on that first class, I cannot actually recall much of what the professor said. Or really much from any other 7.012 lecture. Or from 18.02 lectures that fall or 5.111 lectures the following spring. Why is that? I have a fairly good memory, and in four years it shouldn’t seem reasonable for me to forget the material. I suspect that I don’t remember what was taught in these three classes because all of them were rigid lecture-based classes. Although these were core freshman science classes, there was little to no student engagement through hands-on learning.
Zootopia is humorous but drives home a hard message
Animated movies can be fun for adults, but they’re aimed at kids. And at first, Zootopia feels like purely a kid’s movie with a straightforward plot that we’ve seen before: two clashing personalities must come together to save the day. But as the plot shifts, building up to the movie’s core message, you find yourself engaging with it on a level uncommon to a typical kid’s movie. And that’s where the magic happens.
The Embrace of the Serpent: a song, a prayer, a symphony
Deep in the Amazonian rainforest, we embark on a journey with Karamakate (Nilbio Torres), a shaman who is one of the only survivors of his tribe. Colombia is being torn apart and pillaged by the rubber plantation barons who control the country during the colonial era. Director Ciro Guerra’s The Embrace of the Serpent is an intricate and mournful examination of the ravages that this period in history wrought upon the indigenous peoples of Colombia. It is based on the travelogues of two explorers, German ethnologist Theodor Koch-Grünberg (Jan Bijvoet) and American biologist Richard Evans Schultes (Brionne Davis), who wrote some of the only existing accounts of many of these indigenous tribes.
WTF offers a unique perspective on life on the front line
Reviews often destroy movies, and only rarely, as in the case of Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, do they create them. In 2011, a New York Times review of Kim Barker’s wartime memoir The Taliban Shuffle described Barker as “a sort of Tina Fey character, who unexpectedly finds herself addicted to the adrenaline rush of war.” This caught the eye of Fey herself, who began pulling strings to bring Barker’s story to movie audiences as Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.
Behind the scenes of Zootopia
Nick Orsi is a Visual Development Artist from Disney who spent a year working on developing Nick Wilde, the con artist fox protagonist of Zootopia. After a special animation presentation to the MIT community, I sat with him for a quick conversation.
A look back at Peyton Manning’s career
Two-time Super Bowl champion and five-time league MVP Peyton Manning announced his retirement March 7, following an 18-year career with the NFL, including 14 years with the Indianapolis Colts and four years with the Denver Broncos. Manning’s decision to retire comes just a month after he guided the Denver Broncos to victory in Super Bowl 50.
Sailing clinches third place at Brown University
The nationally-ranked No. 14 MIT sailing team finished in third place at the Sharpe Team Race Trophy over the weekend at Brown University.
Why I chose MIT
Two years ago, I faced one of the most difficult decisions of my life yet: where to go to college. Where would I spend my parents’ savings and the next four years of my life? Like many MIT students, I was picking between top institutions. Because I knew I wanted to study computer science, I had narrowed it down to my top three: MIT, Caltech, and the University of Texas at Austin (UT) for its Turing Scholars Program. It was difficult to discern the difference academically between the top three schools, so I chose with my heart.
Barbara Johnson
Editor’s Note: Portraits of Resilience is a photography and narrative series by Prof. Daniel Jackson. Each installment consists of a portrait and a story, told in the subject’s own words, of how they found resilience and meaning in their life.
A microbial bridge to MIT
Editor’s Note: Any student new to MIT experiences a certain level of culture shock, whether they enter as an undergraduate or as a graduate student. For graduate students from underrepresented backgrounds, this shock can be even greater. This article tells the story of two such students.
Random Hall turns 12
The crowd gathered slowly. People trickled in from across campus after a long day of classes. If you looked closely, the crowd was a little unusual: hair in blues, pinks, greens, and purples; a smattering of matching shirts; and half-sheets of paper printed with script-like font reminiscent of a curious hymnal excerpt.
