Atonement
“Hey Xo, did you get in?”
Xo: “Um, who are you? Get in where?”
“MIT, dummy.”
Xo: “Uh, I was deferred, but how did you know I applied to MIT?”
“You look like it!”
It’s only been two weeks, but it seems as if I had suffered months of conversations like above. If it weren’t for the fact that I probably do look the part so brilliantly well…
Halloween 2008
…I would have surely thought this was some hoax. I really couldn’t understand why there were unknown underclassmen and random Asian girls near my lockers asking me a question they were so sure I had an answer to.
At any rate, I certainly applaud MIT’s decisions system for applicants. It’s darnably precise, giving a day (December 15) and a time (9:00PM EST—I took this to mean that it had ±30 minute uncertainty and was right) weeks in advance. I was one of people enthusiastic enough to try to log in ahead of time and poke around (I found out the decision would be at decision.php by trial and error), but still, a system with a feel of mechanical precision gives me far more reassurance than say, a more personal-feeling email notification setup. It’s got a feeling of fairness and reliability.
That was enough peace of mind to let me waste my time doing other things. I got to work on the EV and a Nixie tube clock I’m building as a gift. Here are some screenshots of the EV and clock in Solidworks CAD software:
Foil—My 08–09 design for EV
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I have half a mind to produce a video about all the stuff I’m doing now, and send it to MIT. Perhaps every other senior is slacking off, but I’m still at it, doing what I love.