Meltdown — The original admissions blog post
This next week and a half promises to be electrifying. We’re on the brink of an epic hurricane, a Presidential election, and either the most disappointing or the spookiest Halloween ever. But right now I’m going to talk about me, about MIT, and about why I haven’t talked to you in a month.
House calls from your neighborhood MedLink
One in four interactions with Medlinks is related to wellness and mental health, as opposed to physical ailments, according to Medlinks president Frances K. Chen ’13.
An interview with admissions blogger Lydia K.
Admissions blogger Lydia A. Krasilnikova ’14 is no stranger to life as a hosed MIT student. Her Oct. 29 admissions blog post “Meltdown” quickly went viral, with over 4000 likes on Facebook and coverage by WBUR (Boston’s NPR branch). The Tech sat down with Lydia to ask her what she thought about stress and her additional reflections after writing the piece.
Students weigh in on pressure at the Institute
Stress. It’s a known constant in the equation of life at MIT, whether it’s due to time-intensive extracurriculars, challenging classes, typical college social drama, problems from outside campus, or a combination of all these things. For The Tech’s pressure issue, our reporters searched campus to find out more about stress and pressure from a student perspective.
MIT Medical’s 24/7 emergency hotline
What do you do when you have an urgent problem and MIT Medical is closed? Since MIT Medical’s Urgent Care closed to walk-ins from midnight to 7 a.m. two years ago, a 24-hour helpline service was put into place in December 2010. People with urgent medical or emotional problems can reach the helpline at 617-253-4481. However, the type of response differs based on the time that the person calls.
Course 17 head, Sloan dean to leave MIT
Richard M. Locke PhD ’89, deputy dean of MIT Sloan School of Management and head of the Department of Political Science, will become the director of Brown University’s Thomas J. Watson Institute for International Studies in July 2013, Brown announced last Wednesday.
The cause of MIT’s major power loss
What actually happened when MIT and much of Cambridge lost power last Thursday night? Why didn’t MIT’s 20 megawatt cogeneration turbine power the campus like a lighthouse in a sea of Cantabrigian darkness? What was the root cause of the failure?
City of Cambridge gets new City Manager
On Monday night, the Cambridge City Council voted eight to one to install Deputy City Manager Richard Rossi as City Manager for a three-year term beginning June 30, 2013. The current City Manager, Robert Healy, has held the position for over thirty years, but announced this May that he would retire. Rossi has also been a longtime member of Cambridge governance, serving as Deputy City Manager since 1981.
MIT to present new ‘Infinite corridor east’ vision tonight
MIT will appear before the Cambridge Planning Board tonight to present a preview of zoning changes for the campus east of Ames St., which it intends to file with the City later this month. The meeting is at 7 p.m. at 344 Broadway, the City Hall Annex. MIT’s presentation is not expected to start before 8:15 p.m.
UA launches review of W20 and restaurant vendors
Do you have an idea of a restaurant you’d like to see in the student center? On November 5, 2012, the Undergraduate Association (UA) Special Projects committee and the UA working group on dining announced a review of the building with a focus on potential new vendors and changes to the second floor. A website, http://ua.bonfireapp.com/ideas was launched to solicit student opinion on the subject, which will be aggregated and presented to the Division of Student Life (DSL). The site allows students to submit ideas and upvote or downvote existing ideas. As of publication, the most popular restaurant suggestion is Starbucks, with 320 points, followed by Panera Bread with 270 points. The website has received roughly 100 ideas from undergraduates, with several hundred comments and up/down votes.
Power returns to the Institute
This article will be updated as The Tech learns more. Check The Tech’s storify for more information: http://storify.com/thetech/mit-during-the-cambridge-blackout
MIT chooses new digital learning lead
Last week, President Reif announced the appointment of the first director of digital learning — Sanjay Sarma, Fred Fort Flowers and Daniel Fort Flowers Professor of Mechanical Engineering. Sarma will oversee efforts to enhance education with online tools, including OpenCourseWare and MITx (MIT’s contributions to edX, the venture started with Harvard).
REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK: J.J. Abrams on the science of stories
This past Tuesday, MIT was graced by geek royalty in the form of J.J. Abrams, the producer and writer-director most famous for his television shows, which include Lost and Alias. In the latest installment of the Media Lab’s Conversation Series, Abrams sat down with lab director Joi Ito to discuss the creative process and the unexpected similarities between their respective ventures. I arrived at the lab thirty minutes early to secure a seat, and for good reason — the third floor atrium filled up quickly with aspiring storytellers looking for bits of wisdom and excited fans looking for the answers to the ending of Lost.
Hobojacket no more
Hobojacket, a website by Jin Pan ’16 and Cathie Yun ’16 dedicated to donating jackets of a rival college to the homeless, has shut down amidst complaints about the ethics of the enterprise. The site, launched on Sunday, quickly went viral and saw coverage on various websites, most of which criticized the actions of Pan and his collaborators for being in poor taste, including Jezebel. The site was taken down and replaced with an apology letter, copied below, sometime Thursday morning. At press time however, a visit to the website reveals a completely different site reporting to sell temperature indicating cups.
New VP of research in 2013 among administrative changes
On Jan. 16, 2013, Maria Zuber, former Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) department head, will assume the role of MIT’s vice president for research. President L. Rafael Reif announced the news in an email to the MIT community on Tuesday. Zuber has been an MIT faculty member since 1995 and is currently the E.A. Griswold Professor of Geophysics. In the email, Reif refers to Zuber as a “compelling advocate for farsighted national investment in university research” and mentions that she is “extraordinarily well prepared to lead MIT in federal research policy and administration” given her experience in Washington.
Powerless
MIT, Harvard, and the surrounding areas lost power from 4:26 to 6:37 p.m. yesterday. The outage threw the Institute into darkness — classes were canceled, MBTA service was delayed, and police were dispatched to direct traffic. Emergency power remained on in dormitories and around campus.
332 to participate in externship program
Now in its 16th year, MIT’s Externship Program will connect 332 undergraduate and graduate students to alumni-sponsored externships this January during Independent Activities Period (IAP). Run by the MIT Alumni Association, the program began offering short winter internships (“externships”) in 1997 for 20 to 25 students in its formative years. This year’s 332 is a new record, over last year’s 294 participants, according to numbers provided by Katie C. Maloney, Director of Parent Association and Student/Alumni Relations.