Saying Goodbye to MIT
Tuesday, May 30th, 2006It’s a bittersweet time of year. Wandering around an increasingly deserted campus leads to me reflect on my time here at MIT. I find myself recounting all sorts of times, events long thought forgotten flash into memory, vibrant and bright as if they had happened yesterday. I remember exams, the ones that went well, the ones that went poorly, the ones that came out somewhere in between. I remember, more than the exams, the places where I took the exams: whether Walker Memorial’s third floor basketball gym, sweltering hot in late summer, or Johnson’s massive indoor track and field complex that serves as the home of most final exams… or those smaller exams, taking place in classrooms with wooden desk-chair units that squeaked when they swiveled.
I remember too, all the places I’ve lived at MIT: my freshman year double that both my roommate and I moved out of after a scant seven weeks, my several years on Fourth East in East Campus, first in a room painted gray and purple that I later repainted to be a bright white with navy. I remember my summer room at EC, with the courtyard a bright green and folks throwing a frisbee around. I remember my futon loft and the day it came crashing down, only to go back up within a week… I remember my final room at EC, with its sink placed in an near inaccessible corner… I remember my first room at Simmons, with a splendid view of western Cambridge, complete with red sunsets and railroad tracks. And then my summer room at Simmons, poised on the third floor, where the sounds of construction and morning traffic served to wake me without fail… and finally, my current room, complete with wavy walls and fifteen windows, none of which can support an air conditioner, verily, a triumph of modern architecture indeed.
All these memories, by the very act of remembering, only serve to remind me that my time at MIT has, at long last, ended. All that now remains is Commencement, a ceremony involving wearing entirely black attire on a hot summer day: once again, a triumph of form over function. I look across this sunlit, bright, emptying campus and smile, for it has been a wonderous and enjoyable time here, but I cannot say that I am not glad to at last graduate.
I hope so, because I’m dating one. On a serious note, that was the title of lecture I attended this evening at the Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square. With the provocative title, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I hadn’t heard of the speaker, Catherine MacKinnon, and hadn’t had time to Google her (the wireless networks in the theatre were, alas, password-protected). So I went in with an open mind and without any biases.