After reading all of the posts on this beautiful website, I feel absolutely compelled to jump on the Bandwagon. Not only do I want to add my feels to the pile of feels, but I want to especially emphasize a point that I have seen in a lot of posts that is very important to me.
Living groups are absolutely essential to success at MIT.
When first arriving on campus, I thought I knew exactly who I was and what I wanted to be. Obviously I wanted to be a Chemical Engineer, and I needed to ASE out of all my GIRs so that I could graduate a year early and begin my career changing the world. As soon as I learned about the existence of CourseRoad, I began mapping out my plan of classes so that I could be in and out of MIT with my shiny degree. You see, I had been enrolled at a university for two years already, and thus I knew what I needed to do with my life.
Stupid frosh.
Here I am, a little over two years later, a junior living on a crazy wild floor called Tetazoo. Tetazoo has become my new home, and the people of Tetazoo are my crazy, dumb, beautiful, stupid “family.” Over my time living on tetazoo, I have acquired two beautiful gwusbands, a life partner/nemesis, a second mother, a greek wife, and a boyfriend. I am still technically studying chemical engineering, but I am also studying physics, electrical engineering, archaeology, materials science, and course 19. I’m mostly on track to graduate at some point in the future. I think.
To say I have changed as a person during my time at MIT is an understatement. I have learned a great variety of things, ranging from sending stupid emails to lockpicking to gender politics. Tetazoo has dramatically shaped me as a person in the awkward college transition of highschooler to real person, or at least a functioning human “adult”. Yes, I have learned a great deal of things from the classroom at MIT. I can use formulas to do cool stuffs and tell you rather specific details about certain topics that I have studied. However, the life lessons and life skills that I have learned from my family on Tetazoo seem to have a far greater effect on me as a person. Furthermore, many of my close friends come from a variety of backgrounds, and I am constantly encouraged by them to expand my horizons to learn new things. For example, as a course 10, I took 6.004 (a great class, I highly recommend it) because all of my friends were taking it and I had heard a lot about it from upperclassment. I also decided to take 8.03 for similar reasons, and this eventually lead me to adding a physics major. My rigid plan to quickly “get through” MIT absolutely fell apart. I don’t care at all – I love it.
That’s not to say that MIT has been all roses and diamonds for me. Not only do I load up on way too many classes every semester (I am a massochist or something), but I have dealt with many personal issues at MIT that have left me rather wrecked. It is during these times that my living group has been the most essential. On my home on tetazoo, I can talk to anyone about my issues, including my friends, the GRTs, the Medlinks, and our housemasters, and I know I always come out feeling better. My home is where I am the most comfortable with myself, and I wouldn’t change anything about it.
It is my hope that current and future students at MIT can have similar experiences to mine, and that others can see just how very much we cherish the communities that we form and the trust that we place in our peers. Also, butt stuff is nice.