Hockey!

Our first IM Hockey game was last Wednesday and, even though we lost rather gloriously (7-1), it was not a shutout and we had a lot of fun.  My personal success was that I won a faceoff!  I also brought some fans to the game in the form of my roommates.  They were super excited to see us play something hockey-ish - something I appreciated but didn't fully understand :-)

Since we're newbies and ice time is limited (we went on right after a C-league game - we're in D-league) each of the three periods in the game was 11 minutes instead of 20.  During warmups many of us tested our pads by diving on the ice and then repeated the dive at the end of the game.  Maybe that will become our signature move.

My roommates not only acted as a great cheering section, they also took quite a number of photos.  I would like to share some of those with you.

Mid-game action

Our opponent - Delta Upsilon

I've got the puck!

Checking out what's going on, ready to get back into the ice

Our next game is versus the LGO '12s on Tuesday night, so it will be interesting to see how we do then.  No matter what it should be time for some good trash talking and bad hockey.  Woohoo!

MIT Quirks and Extracurriculars

Hi again.  I had to share this.  One more vestige of undergraduate life.  In order to graduate, each undergraduate needs to complete a certain number of PE classes.  I had heard people refer to this PE class combo using this particular title (see screen shot below), but hadn't seen it officially acknowledged by the MIT's department of athletics, physical education and recreation before.  This is a screen shot from their website:

Awesome!

In a related note, Winter IM sports are almost here and I've signed up for the LGO D-League Ice Hockey team.  I still need some gear (some you can rent from MIT and some things, like sticks, our upperclassmen have passed down some) and probably need hockey skates rather than figure skates, but it should be a lot of fun.  D league is the most basic level you can play at (some people don't know how to skate yet!!) and so I'm not really worried.  I can skate okay, I can't stop too well and I've watched but never played hockey.  Given that history, I should be in the middle to middle-front of the pack.  There's a practice/intro session tomorrow night so I'll have to see what I can scramble together.  Oh, and we also have three mid-terms this week.

Besides IM sports, I'm taking beginner guitar lessons through the MIT Live Music Connection (http://lmc.mit.edu/), an undergrad club (but open to all) formed in 2008 for people who play less classical instruments.  They have these "open source" music lessons, hold jam sessions and help MIT bands put on shows on campus.  

We meet on Monday evenings from 8:30-10 for "lecture" and then there's expected recitation (practice on our own).  Even though there's tons of music on campus, these guys still found a niche to fill and it's been pretty cool.  I need to keep practicing through!  Our first songs were Mary had a Little Lamb, the opening to Stacy's Mom, the opening to Welcome to the Jungle, a Bon Jovi intro, part of the Rolling Stones' Paint it Black and...the opening to the Super Mario Brothers theme.  As I said, I just need to keep putting in the time.  We'll see how I do in class tonight :-)

Reaching Out

One of the recent advances I've made in getting the word out about LGO is having my blog added to the MIT Sloan Student Blog (http://mitsloanblog.typepad.com/).  In our early New Student Recruiting Committee meetings (yes, I'm documenting my experience for my benefit AND yours), some current students had mentioned that LGO is hard to find from both the Sloan and Engineering pages, so my goal is to make it more visible than it was before, no matter how small that change may be.

A fun surprise from working on getting cross-posted on the Sloan blog was that I "met" (through the phone) my summer probability professor's wife!  Turns out, she works for Sloan admissions and is the person coordinating the blogs.  Hi Harriet!  Thanks for getting this coordination effort rolling.

Besides just getting rolling, the cool thing is that it looks like things are starting to take hold.  From looking at my 'Stats' page I've already started getting referral/link traffic from the Sloan blog page and have added a few more hits to my total.  A next step I'm looking at would be to approach the general MIT admissions blog (http://mitadmissions.org/blogs) and see if I could have even one guest post on their site.

I know quite a number of undergraduates post and read the MIT Admissions blog, but I don't know how much the blog interfaces with the incoming grad population since it is usually focused at applying to specific departments rather than learning about MIT as much in general.  Engineering departments here generally don't have student blogs, and you can't apply to LGO straight from undergrad, so it's hard to know how to best reach potential applicants (Hey applicants, if you're reading this and have some ideas, let me know!).

I seem to have a funny relationship with social media.  I have a Facebook page and I have a Linked In profile but I don't use twitter.  I haven't posted any of my own photos on Facebook and yet I write this publicly available blog.  Overall, I guess I like the casual prose of blogging versus the sentence or two that are status updates.  I took four writing classes while an undergrad at MIT and Writing ended up being my humanities concentration (all undergraduates need to have a humanities concentration, but it could be music or history or economics as much as it could be writing).  It's just something I like doing.

As a final aside, if you want to know anything about MIT in general, with a 95% service level, I probably know about it or can get you information on it.  Honestly the more fun and legend-like the better.  Having been an undergrad here for four years and then worked with alumni while I was employed out in Michigan there are a lot of things that have passed my ears in addition to the things we've been learning about as LGOs.  Feel free to ask me questions over email or come talk at Ambassador Day (11/7/11 - be there!).

Weekend in Michigan

Wow, October is already almost half gone.  Other students and I have decided that days might seem to go on and on but weeks disappear like nothing.  How are we over a month into term already?  While we've had over four weeks of classes, this post is going to at least start out not about classes.

For our long Columbus Day weekend (MIT gives Monday and Tuesday off!), I went to Michigan.  I flew out on Friday, landed at DTW around 4:30 and went to the Red Wings home opener at 7PM (Wings beat Ottawa 5-3 -Yay!).  On saturday, I went back to one of my favorite restaurants out there, The Forest Grill, which is in a town called Birmingham (right by the Law Firm of Victoria - not kidding!) and then on Sunday, went to a cider mill for cider and donuts...

Filling something like cheesecloth with apple chunks to be pressed into yummy cider! Another press is on the left

...and then out in a boat on Lake St. Clair all the way down to the Ambassador bridge connecting Detroit to Canada.  Turned out that the weather was as nice out in Michigan as it was in Boston this weekend - mid 70s and bright sun.  Best weekend of the fall for sure.

Ambassador Bridge - Canada's on the left, Detroit Rock City is on the right

There, we could see the GM Renaissance Center and the Red Wings' home - Joe Louis Arena - from the water.  I waved to Canada and was reminded that this weekend was their Thanksgiving.

GM's Headquarters, the Renaissance Center or RenCen for short :-)

On Monday, since they did not have the day off, I visited my old workplace, got to see changes that had been made, hear a little about what was going on as well as share what I had been busy with "out east".  People seemed really pleased that I stopped to see them.  I'm pleased that they were pleased!

All in all, an AWESOME weekend, but one that felt much shorter than it actually was.  I flew back Tuesday morning and was doing reading for class while waiting to board the plane.  Seems like you're either in work or fun mode, there isn't much in between and you've got to maximize both.