Updates

Updates First: Hello! Long time, no talk. I feel like each of my entries this year has started off in the same way: Im so sorry for having disappeared off the blogosphere! And its true I am sorry! I dont know whats gotten into me :( Second: this weekend is going to be EXCITING! I know of at least five or six MIT 12s currently in the running for Rhodes Scholarships. In case you missed this  or this, let me update you: so far, 44 MIT students have won Rhodes Scholarships, and 7 have been in the last four years! Keep this years eligibles in your thoughts this weekend as they go through the Rhodes intervew process :) Third: Life updates. My life has been filled with learning experiences recently; case in point: as it turns out, its not a good idea to accidentally push down on your laptop screen, since they tend to crack. sitting in the very center of an exam hall when you happen to have a bajillion questions about the exam isnt the smartest idea; in fact, the professor might even ask you to get up and move to the front, to make it easier for him to come to you and answer questions. the MIT career services center is actually amazing at editing CVs/resumes huh, who wouldve guessed. taking 6.01 (intro to EECS) with a bunch of sophomores/freshmen is great, particularly since they often know more about coding than you do. all-nighters are hard to pull there is such a thing as too much caffeine MIT alumni are amazing and very responsive to email :) Fourth: I want to share an entry I wrote a while back but never got a chance to publish; its about MITs Solar Electric Vehicle Team and their recent participation in the World Solar Challenge. Note that this is slightly outdated, as I wrote it while the team was competing in Australia. They ended up finishing 15th overall congrats, SEVT! _______ An epic journey is about to begin: over 40 teams will depart Darwin, Australia on October 16, 2011, and will strive to be the first to reach the city of Adelaide, 3000 km south of Darwin. Among the teams competing in this event, the World Solar Challenge, is the MIT Solar Electric Vehicle Team, which has been preparing for this competition for about two years now. Twelve MIT affiliates (graduate students, undergraduate students, and alumni) are in Darwin at the moment, preparing for Sunday’s competition. The pressure is on to get MIT’s car ready for the race! Alix de Monts, a junior at MIT majoring in Mechanical Engineering with a concentration in Energy, is wide awake at 4:30 am on a Wednesday morning in Australia and speaks excitedly about the experience of working with the Solar Electric Vehicle Team. She describes every team member as a “jack of all trades,” adding, “we do all the work our selves. We have a core group of very dedicated members. Everyone is involved in everything.” MIT’s Solar Electric Vehicle Team was first established 26 years ago and currently maintains a set of 12-15 actively involved MIT students and alumni. The team has changed with the times, adapting its design approach to the novel technologies available and seeking sponsorship from a variety of places, the biggest of which are Ford, Konica Minolta, Infinesse, 3M, and MIT’s Edgerton Cetner. Today, the team works with a total budget of $300,000, most of which accounts for in-kind donations such as time, technology and resources. The SEVT car itself is valued at $150,000. Alix describes variety of challenges that the team has had to overcome, the most significant of which took place this past summer. SEVT originally intended Summer 2011 to be dedicated to testing the car and working out minor kinks; however, on the second to last day of testing, the car strayed off the road, flipped, and suffered immense damage. A summer that ought to have been relaxed and leisurely suddenly became intense and stressful: the team was forced to start from scratch and rebuild their creation. Now following a number 80-hour weeks and sometimes 72-hour days, the team is gearing up to compete and is hoping to win the World Solar Challenge. They will take on teams from all over the world, including Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan, and of course, Australia itself. The event is geared towards endurance, and SEVT has put their utmost effort into making their car the best it can be â€" even at the expense of comfort! The car does not have air conditioning, and in fact, the driver sits on an unpadded, aluminum seat. Thankfully, these cars will never hit the markets and in fact are not meant to be for commercial use; however, as Alix mentions, bits and pieces of cars’ design may be taken up and incorporated into future vehicles, thereby bettering the automobile industry. All in all, the MIT Solar Electric Vehicle team has a very action-packed and exciting few weeks ahead of them! When asked if she has any last thoughts or comments, Alix says: “To MIT students: Were always looking for new members. Shoot us an e-mail at [emailprotected] if youre interested in joining. Well take people from all majors and any experience levels. All you need to do well on this team is dedication and hard work. Well teach you the rest.” And also: “Everyone should check out our website: mitsolar.com as well as our blog: mitsolar.blogspot.com. We also have a Facebook and a Twitter ! If anyone wants to show their support for the team we have a great Adopt-a-Cell program: http://solar-cars.scripts.mit.edu/ sponsorship/adoptacell.php.” Best of luck to Alix and her teammates! Look out for more on the MIT SEVT in the months to come! ___ Thats it for now! I have a couple other entries planned (IAP plans! Yay!), and Ill post them within the next few weeks :) See yaaa. updates It’s been a hot second since I last blogged- about ten weeks, to be precise. There are all sorts of random reasons I could give for my disappearance, drawn from the same set of valid reasons I give to my friends or family for going three weeks before replying to a text. ‘School is crazy!’ is always a good one- an honest and unquestionable summation of what it means to be an MIT student. ‘My classes this past semester were brutal’- another frank excuse. I was taking discrete math and fundamentals of programming last semester which are known to both be consuming classes in their own right, and I was also taking solid-state chemistry in an effort to slowly chip away at my GIRs. My World Music class served as a welcome and wonderful escape from crunching code and wrapping my head around proofs-based math, and it culminated in a project where I got the chance to listen to lots of East African classics in line with my project theme which was the timeline of East African music in the past half-century or so. This was the semester I realized how precarious it is to strike a balance between being a good student, a good friend, a good daughter, a good sister, a good aunt, a good cousin, a good house manager. I had to re-define what balance means for me; trying to get seven hours of sleep, eat at least two healthy, balanced meals daily, exercise, finish my assignments on time, study for tests and score decently in them, make my bed, do laundry, check up on my friends, fix things in my house promptly, study for interviews and apply to research positions, make it for my library shift, smile at every dog I walk past on the Infinite and call my parents is a tall order to do even in the space of a week. I was constantly overwhelmed, and yearning for the semester to be over even in its earliest stages. Eventually, I perfected the skill of prioritizing; knowing what was doable and what was not, and learning when it was time to ask for help on something I was stuck on. I’m glad I hung on to the en d. After finals, surrounded by my friends who had held me up during the semester, and talking over our hopes and fears, I realized that I continually miss the forest for the trees. I spend so much time obsessed with my stress points on a daily basis that I sometimes forget to stop and appreciate where I am, and the curious mixture of delights and troubles that life hands me. Yes, academic pressure is real, but so is having friends-turned-family who set you back on your path and remind you who you are, what you’re set on doing. This was also the semester of rejections! So many rejections, left, right and centre. It gets discouraging, being in a position to access these amazing opportunities then falling short a step away, especially when you’re not honest with yourself about why you’re so keen on those opportunities in the first place. You start to miss the forest for the trees, again. Imposter syndrome has been a constant in my life for as long as I can remember, and added external rejection is like feeding fuel to this monster. Being in an environment where everyone around me is doing amazing things compounds this diminishing feeling where it looks like Im doing too little, and I punish myself for it. This isn’t going to go away soon, and all I can do is keep going, and learn from positive critique to make myself better. Being a sophomore is different, and not just academically. I didn’t even notice the winter creep in this time. I unconsciously transitioned into insulated jackets and furry boots from the light parkas and easy leggings of fall time in line with the changing weather, whereas as a freshman I was excited for every new day to come so I could point out to myself the new barren tree or the fresh coat of snow that had accumulated overnight. I walk easy in a hoodie in 45F weather, whereas freshman me would have been layered in cardigans and coats and scarves in similar temperatures. Acclimatization- the bittersweet process of fitting in but also falling into a state of normalcy where things arent as bright and shiny anymore, and I have to put extra effort to make magic happen when I want it to. I saw it in other areas, too- the waning of excitement about things that a year ago were incredibly captivating. Last year’s turkey was heavily featured on my Instagram story. This thanksgiving, I stared blankly at the poor turkey and passively bit into a piece without second thought. Sophomore me is a minimalist. Last semester, I began practicing what I knew I should have been doing for a long time in the interest of my academics- picking and choosing what I really wanted to invest my energy and time in, and resisting the urge to fill my plate with every interesting activity that came my way. I left my acapella group partly for this reason, and I decided to let my writing be my one creative outlet. But even that became hard to do, maybe because I didn’t really have time to process my thoughts at all, let alone write them down. So, I just wanted to put it out there that I’m still here, quiet, learning, recharging, garnering content. (Do I sound like Joe in this line???). I’m figuring stuff out, shifting my mindset from trying to sort the quickly changing facets of my life into neatly labelled drawers and shelves, to forging some stability and sense of surety of who and where I am, and what I am becoming. Wish me luck.