I’m Not A Good Enough Writer To Do EC Justice

I’m a freshman; I’ve been on campus for just over a month and I feel completely at home. People accept me for who I am and let me make my own choices and figure out for myself the best way to build a loft/ fun thing. Most importantly though, people are always willing to help: building crazy things is a way of life, and everybody is interested in seeing your thing succeed (or at least hold your weight).

The summer before I came to MIT I was terrified—I wasn’t going to have any friends, or fit in anywhere. I wasn’t going to be able to build cool things because I had no experience; I wouldn’t have anyone to pset with. Now that I’ve been here a month, absolutely none of those things are true. I was assigned to East Campus (my first choice; I saw some of the rush builds from previous years online and was sold) and I feel like I’ve finally found a home.

I love the fact that I can to bed to the sound of hammers beating in time to the music and wake up to chop saw blades whirring. I feel like I can attempt to make whatever I want—people with more experience are more than willing to show me the ropes. People are always dragging you on adventures, making sure you feel welcome and nobody cares if you are a little offbeat, or like to walk around barefoot. Everyone is incredibly open and accepting and willing to try new things, and in my entire month here, I’ve never once felt unwelcome or unwanted. East Campus is an awesome, magical place, and the wacky things people come up with and build are incredible. I love this place, and I wouldn’t trade it for anywhere else.

A new home

I may not have four years of memories here yet, but I can say that East Campus is the reason why I came to MIT.

Personally, if I’m not in a tightly-knit community, I will withdraw completely. I will not socialize, I will not make friends, and I will become nothing more than a grade-producing machine. This was somewhat true of me through high school – I had a large group of people who I liked and who liked me, and we would all have complain about school together and go to each others’ events from time to time. However, I never had close friends. The person I was dating was the only person I really confided in – my family life had gone to hell and I didn’t really trust my classmates to care all that much about my struggles. Nobody really “knew” me.

Though I survived, I don’t want to just “survive.” I want to be happy. The thing that distinguished MIT from the nine other schools I had planned to apply to was the culture. When I stayed in East Campus for CPW, I felt like I had found my people. I hung out on Tetazoo where a friend from high school lived and I now live. I talked to my host on 4E for hours as various other upperclassmen from the hall wandered in and out of the conversation until we suddenly cooked dinner (lemon and herb fish) at 2:00am. I wandered back into the dorm to fetch a sweatshirt in the evening and was swept into an impromptu adventure.

That was just CPW, and REX and the beginning of the year have been even more overwhelmingly full of this kind of activity. What strikes me the most is the freedom of this place. Even at my family’s house, I’m not completely free to be myself. Here, everyone is free to do pretty much as they please so long as they don’t make other people uncomfortable. I feel safe here. I feel like I can wander, squinting, to my morning showers in my underwear without being hassled or judged. The people here treat me the same whether I’m wearing cargo pants and a T-shirt or a pretty dress. I can be straight. I can paint on the walls. I can question authority.

Read moreA new home

Why I came to MIT

Ever since I started thinking about college, I’d wanted to go to MIT. It was the best engineering school in the country and I wanted to be an engineer, so MIT seemed like the perfect fit. In high school I started to learn about the culture of the school. I watched videos of students building and riding crazy contraptions and read stories of the cool hacks that had been pulled over the years. At the time, I had no idea that this culture that I loved and so much identified with had its home on the East Side. After being admitted, I tried to learn as much about the dorms as possible. I found myself drawn to East Campus because of its incredibly unique culture. Where else did students paint beautiful murals on the walls, build forts and rides, and rappel down the stairwells? When I was temped in EC for CPW, I met some of the students who were doing all of this amazing stuff. At first, I was nervous approaching them, because they seemed so much cooler than I. But once I actually got to know these people, I realized that they were incredibly warm, welcoming, and genuine. I left CPW feeling great about MIT and fantastic about East Campus, but I hadn’t yet committed. MIT was awesome, but I had an offer from another school that was almost too good to be true. I finally made my decision when I thought back to my times at EC. Yes, I would get a great education at both schools, but only at MIT could I be a part of the East Campus community.

I’ve only been here a month, but EC already feels like home. My hall, Tetazoo, is not just where my bed is. It’s where my closest friends are: both my freshman peers and my upperclassmen mentors. It is the site of movies, smoothies, pancakes, screaming, dancing, and laughing.

I never knew how much I could learn in such a short period of time, not from my classes, but from my hall. I’ve learned how to get to the supermarket, how to use the campus printers, how to cook stuffed peppers, how to use a sledgehammer, and how to make my own harness out of webbing. Aside from these practical skills, I’ve gained insight into what classes to take and how to manage my time. I’ve found out about clubs and opportunities that I wouldn’t have known about had my older hallmates not clued me in.

Although MIT has a myriad of support services, if I ever had a problem, those on my hall, especially the GRTs and the MedLink would be the first people I’d turn to. They are so valuable because they know me well and because I can trust them to act in my best interests.

I suck at conclusions. See above post!

I belong here.

I grew up in a place where conformity reigned supreme. I am now in a place where individuality is not only tolerated but celebrated. Those around me have already shown me that this is a place where people grow into their own skin–which is something the east campus culture facilitates and fosters. I couldn’t imagine becoming myself anywhere else.