first semester shenanigans @MIT

This post/reflection is long overdue and uhhhh I started writing it in November lmao but yeah... It's been a really busy time; once October turned around the corner… things got really hectic. I'm learning a lot about time management and how to efficiently get shit done here haha. I'm in a learning community called concourse that's focused on the humanities, joined a bunch of clubs as well as a sorority! Overall, first semester was rough but still a good time :)

Classes

CC.5111 (Chemistry)

Ngl… this class kicked my butt.. I had taken honors and AP Chem in high school and even the SAT subject test for chem for my MIT application but classes here I feel like move much faster and cover more content much more in depth. This class I took in concourse which means I took it with people in my learning community so it's a smaller class (around 20 people instead of a huge lecture of 100+) My professor is great and the topics are interesting! We even spent an entire lecture on the chemistry of drugs lol and I loved it. She went into detail about how chemists can modify drugs and how Adderall actually has a similar chemical structure to meth! In hindsight, I wish I was more proactive about reaching out to my professor with questions and self studied the content and reviewed it more to get a better, thorough grasp of the concepts.

CC.110 (Becoming Human: Ancient Greek Persepctivies on the Good Life)

aka becoming an "iNteLLeCTuAL" lol… ya know reading philosophy and stuff haha totally do this all the time… This class was just not my cup of tea. It was cool to get to explore the "ancient greek perspectivies" on a bunch of topics though like slavery, what it means to live a good life, justice, and gender. The recitations and discussions were a good time though!

18.01 (Calculus)

I love this class actually and the professor is super sweet. One time, to demonstrate integrals and how they can be used to find volume, he even brought in his kid's baby toys to show us how integrals work. And he knows my name!! Which just goes to show how great he is since 18.01 is a super big GIR* lecture and he tried his best to remember students' names even though the lecture was huge with 100+ people. He's great and the class honestly loves him. He's always super helpful this was probably my favorite class this semester! Just one downside though lol the psets are super long.

8.01L (Physics)

This is also one of my hardest classes this semester…. the quizzes …. Oof they were rough for me… I'm trying to learn how to study and not procrastinate. The professor is funny and really helpful though! This was also sadly a 9am class AHHHHHH thankfully it's moved to 10am over IAP*.

Extracurriculars:

Varsity Fencing:

The varsity fencing team at MIT is a division 3 sport so we practice 10 hours a week and have weekend meets! I love the community here! They're lots of fun, the people are great, the coaches and captains are all super nice, and I like that there are actually a decent amount of freshmen on the team together! Sadly, I sprained my ankle twice this semester and wasn't really able to compete. I'm practicing and competing actively over IAP and the spring semester though!

WBL (Women Business Leaders)

Women Business Leaders right now has education meetings on finance, consulting, and later on entrepreneurship (in the spring semester). It's a great community and they're super cool. It was nice to hear from the alumni of the club and how they navigate their careers and how they figured out what they wanted to do.

SWE (Society of Women Engineers)

I'm an innovation freshman rep in SWE and helping to organize more "innovative" events like workshops and other programs that do outreach to Boston area schools! It's been a nice learning journey to see how people host and organize events in college and especially at MIT. It was cool to do my own little part as an MIT student to spread the STEM message and continue what I love to do from high school in engaging girls in STEM :))

~ cool and interesting~ things I've done/been to

pumpkin drop

over a 100 (i believe) nitrogen frozen pumpkins are dropped from the green building (the tallest building on campus) and they explode!! it's a ridiculous but very fun time hehe

various acapella concerts!

syncopasian and the ohms put on amazing concerts :0 I was in awe of their talent, syncopasias does a lot of east asian music and the ohms do a lot of bollywood/indian music!

cool talks and pitches!

by people like.... the cofounder of venmo! the first ceo of netflix! the ceo of stripe! the former vice chairman of the federal reserve!! I'm so grateful to be in a place where these people come by and are able to share their experiences and thoughts on current events and industry news! At Marc Randolph's talk (the first CEO of Netflix and its co-founder), he even gave out free copies of his new book! Patrick Collison, the CEO of Stripe, told us his amazing entrepreneurial story of how he dropped out of MIT to start his fintech startup that's now worth over 1 billion dollars :000. It was all very inspiring and educational. I loved it. Ooh ooh! And one other cool event that I went to was this VC* pitch competition by Pear VC in Sloan and there were 1 minute pitches that were competing for 1000 dollars from Pear VC. It was amazing to hear what professional venture capitalists thought of these pitches by undergrad and grad students and even alumni of MIT and Harvard. Their critiques were very no nonsense, straightforward, sometimes harsh and often hilarious as well as super helpful. It made me more prepared for my own future pitches haha

Summary

All in all: a good time but also a stressful time! I hope I get my shit together and can accomplish that by working on small goals! All this freedom is exhilarating but also a lot of responsibility haha :) onto IAP and spring semester!

Notes:

*GIR: general institute requirement like a course that is required for graduation basically

*IAP: independent activities period basically all of january it's a time where people can either stay home or take classes at MIT or go do an externship or even teach or intern abroad!! I'm taking classes and fencing but I have friends that are going to Mexico, Italy and also externing in boston!

*VC: venture capital: the initial investment of startups, the people who take the biggest risk in investing in entrepreneurship