Well, it's Thanksgiving weekend here at MIT, which means the campus is unusually quiet. A fair number of people go home or to friends' houses for the holiday, leaving halls crowded with West Coast and out-of-country folks. A few seniors are here, too - I'd guess they don't want to leave campus any more than necessary. I expect I'm going to be difficult to pry away from campus during senior year.

Did I mention that this place is wonderful? No? Well, then. It is.

So right now I'm trying to get a book project of mine organized. I have time, for once, and am dinkering around with it. As usual, the devil is in the details; I've planned out B's world for a long time, and now that I'm dealing with O instead, I have to build an entirely different set of customs. It's fun but annoying. I'm chary of lists - if I have to list a dozen or more of the customs, odds are that I'll forget them or else use them compulsively. Neither is a good tactic.

Hmm ... and, now, on to MIT.

How should I begin? With the amazing professors? The tough tests? The wonderful culture? Correction: the various wonderful cultures? The age range, from 15 and 16 year old genius freshmen to your 23 year old senior-folks (not even counting grad students, who can be far older)?

The clubs? The classes? The absolutely amazing people?

... Yeah. It occurs to me that I'd be far better off just summarizing anything odd that I see thoughout the day.

Posts have been temporarily delayed ...

I've been busy. (Well ... it is MIT.) I have some ideas for posts which I'll be putting up not too long from now.

In the meantime, here's some silly stuff for you to enjoy.

The Cutest Pictures on the Web: http://thecutest.info/top.html

The Fairest Pictures on the Web: http://thefairest.info/top.html

Disclaimer: I don't own any of that material, but it is pretty neat to look at, and I'm not getting any money or anything for recommending it to you. It's just cool.

I have only eight days left. Eight days, and then off to MIT. I'm very glad, and somewhat nostalgic, and already I'm wondering who my roommate will be, where I'll be staying, and whether the professors are as wonderfully odd as I've heard. (Probably, but, as they say, I won't know until I get there.)

The time constraint also forces me to think about what I'm leaving behind. Change is good, of course. (After all, who'd want to live without it? Stuck as a teenager for all eternity? Blech. I'd rather snort a bottle of Tabasco sauce up my nose.) But for anyone whose departure from friends, family, and familiarity is just on the horizon, it also means savoring the last few days, weeks, or months. At least, that's what it meant for me. I imagine I'm not alone in this.

So. What'd I do? And what do I recommend that others do, as well?

I did several things. There are activities that I enjoy which I will have less time for when I have arrived at MIT. These include sleeping, plotting my book, spending time with Californian friends, and Laser Quest. So, I spent a fair amount of time doing those activities. (I think the average time per day spent with friends is four hours. Admittedly, I may be a bit insane.) Television, on the other hand, fell by the wayside. Seriously - I'd rather spend time with my nose buried in Sabriel or The Moon is a Harsh Mistress than with my eyes glued to the telly.

I looked for a job. This may come as a surprise, but I spent most of the summer unemployed. There was a very high-stress, low-pay job that I undertook right after my high school graduation, and the stress was ultimately not worth the pay check. So I made roughly a hundred dollars for thirty hours of work, and spent the next seven weeks without a job. If nothing else, I've learned from the experience, and I'll be darned if I'll be unemployed next summer.

In late June I went to Federal Way, Washington to play in the Western Regionals of the North American Challenge team. Yes, that's right - I'm on a Laser Quest team that travels across the country to play in tournaments. (Nerdy? Me? *looks wide-eyed and innocent*) We did well, beating six of the twelve teams that attended.

As previously mentioned, I spent a fair amount of time visiting friends. (Incidently, I highly recomment gathering / organizing contact information before you leave for MIT. Perhaps a list of email addresses, sent to your MIT email for safe keeping?) I also read a lot, caught up on sleep, played Laser Quest until my muscles threatened to rebell en masse, and worked out kinks in my book's plot with the aid of a very good friend of mine.

My advice for other entering college students is this: have fun, but also be productive with the time that you have. (You can tell that it grates to be unemployed. *sigh*) Spend time with friends and family. Work and volunteer. If a Google search of your company reveals that many employees don't like its policies, then have a backup plan. Stay in contact with friends even if you don't spend time with them directly. If you have a hobby that you love but won't have much time for after college begins, you might spend some time doing that.

Also, appreciate the environment around you. This can be subtle, and it is not meant to cause homesickness, but it probably wouldn't hurt if you stopped to smell the flowers every now and then. If you live in a state where In-N-Out is available, you might want to visit it one last time before boarding your flight. If you live in a state where Steak-n-Shake is available, the same principle applies. If you like to fish in a local lake, or go bowling with your dad every Friday night, or just go on long drives into the countryside and talk about whatever with your friends or significant other, then take a little bit of time to appreciate those things.

Going to MIT is like a dream come true, as far as I'm concerned. But that hasn't stopped me from appreciating what I have elsewhere, and I hope that you, too, take time to relax and enjoy yourself a little before you board the plane for Boston. That way, you can have the best of both worlds.