So this entry will be the first in a series of never-posted blog entries, whether they stemmed from ideas or were just introductions to things I intended to write at one point or another. Today, we pay tribute to those we lost along the way, those that were too tired or sickly or too weary to make it (meaning, I fell asleep while writing and never got back to them): the great, never-finished blog entries.

1. From September 5th, 2008:
"I've attended public schools all my life, public schools that never had a stricter dress code than "spaghetti straps should be the width of two fingers, and if you wear a skirt shorter than your thumb your mother didn't raise you correctly," and so it's come to my attention recently that I've started to fall into a particular dress code - dictated by my schedule. I have a heavy class schedule Monday through Wednesdays, so I'll usually make a little more effort on those days to wear something I might call a "normal" outfit; Wednesdays I have labs, so I'll always be wearing long pants and close-toed shoes (and if you see me in otherwise, feel free to send me home with a note to my mother). But Thursdays and Fridays I only have one hour of class, and so Thursdays and Fridays it is a miracle I remember to go outside at all. It follows, then, that Thursdays and Fridays are sweatpants days. "

*I don't want to brag, but there were definitely some semesters that were sweatpants semesters. Just sayin'.

2. From September 7th, 2008:
"I've been at home for almost two weeks now, and have spent about half of that time roadtripping along the west coast. Not like the fun cool kind, where you go with your friends from high school and do fun cool people things, like get really bad indigestion from eating Taco Bell six times a day (what, you didn't do that?), but the kind with 24/7 family time. This means every conversation starts and ends with one of these questions:

1) You're wearing that?
2) Have you eaten/drank/slept/gone to the bathroom today?
3) Has the dog eaten/drank/slept/gone to the bathroom today?
4) Really, you're wearing that? Didn't you wear that yesterday?
5) What is that smell?? Oh, it's just Jess, she's wearing the same thing she wore yesterday
5) What are you doing with your life??????????
6) Why haven't you blogged in the last TWO MONTHS?

In between breaths, take a few hundred family photos in front of a Las Vegas hotel Christmas tree, eat four times your weight in Korean food, and spend a couple days waiting for your mom in the car, and you've pretty much got my holiday experience right there. Also, I sneezed really loudly just now, so you can throw some snot in for extra flavor.

Anyway, about #6. New Year's resolution, Internet. For reals this time. Along with working more hours on the ambulance, learning the crap out of my classes, spending more time reading and doing creative projects, saving the planet, and losing those extra 400 pounds, NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTION. You can hold me to that."

*Heh. Yeah. That one worked out real well.

3. From September 19th, 2008:
"So a couple weeks ago I got this couch from FAP (blog entry regarding Freshman Arts Program coming soon, I promise).* It's awkwardly shaped and doesn't really fit in my room - having it here means an entire corner cut off and my futon is rendered unaccessible, tucked away underneath my bed - but its presence has changed how I reside in my room entirely. I no longer sit at the hard wooden Institute-issued chair at my hard wooden Institute-issued desk, my head screwed on straight and ready for studying. Instead, I lounge slovenly and totally ungracefully across this green rounded sofa, one leg propped up on the former chair that housed my rear and the other strewn across the back.

I won't lie - it's a pretty good way to live."

*I never did write that entry about Freshman Arts Program, and so I'll say this - in 2009 I was a film counselor for FAP, and it was one of the most ridiculous and enjoyable weeks of my life. I not only taught an awesome group of freshman everything from how to hold a camera to how to edit in Final Cut, I also shot a ten-minute epic film noir, wore a garbage bag and sported a terrible British accent as the Black Night from Monty Python of the Holy Grail, and led a segment on interpretive dance.

Sometime during the summer you'll get information about signing up for Freshman Pre-Orientation Programs (FPOPs), and I highly suggest you try FAP. Or for the less artistically minded, Discover Mechanical Engineering (DME) is a pretty good option, too. Or if none of the above sound good to you, there's also Freshman Outdoors Program, Freshman Leadership Program, Freshman Urban Program… you really can't go wrong with just about any FPOP. A lot of people I know meet people they're friends with all throughout MIT during this first week, and most all of them don't regret it. (Kidding!)Try it!

4. From December 31st, 2009:
"The MIT Externship Program matches MIT alums around the world with currently enrolled students in an effort to expose us to real world job situations for the month of January, with different degrees of involvement. Some are given actual projects to complete by the end of IAP, others are just there to observe. I fall mostly into the latter category - I'm shadowing radiation oncologist Dr. Anthony Abner, a member of the class of '83 with a degree in course 8, with Steph L. '11. For the most part the experience has been very educational, and sometimes very inspiring - the 89-year-old woman with chronic lymphocytic leukemia who, over five weeks of treatment, went from having very inflamed skin lesions that were weeping fluid all over her body to return almost completely to normal, all with a big smile on her face; the 72-year-old woman who'd outlived all her siblings battling breast cancer, Crohn's, and a bad case of psoriatic arthritis that caused her fingers and toes to become so deformed that she'd had to have surgery so that she could still wear shoes - and survived, claiming, "My other doctor said, 'The only way to kill you would be to shoot you!' And I said, 'You'd miss!'"

*This was one of the rare, more serious posts that I wrote and never finished, and I always really wished I did. Shadowing Dr. Abner during my last IAP was one of the most valuable experiences I had during my breaks at MIT, and I will never forget seeing my first surgery (a brachytherapy case, in which radioactive seeds are inserted into the prostate to help reduce the cancer), nor the 62-year-old woman with substance abuse problems, no insurance, and a bad tumor in her pitutary gland, nor the way the different radiation oncologists and medical oncologists and radiologists worked together to diagnose a particularly difficult case. And I'll definitely never forget holding a still-warm enlarged human kidney, moments after it was extracted from the body, after a six-hour laproscopic nephrectomy. These were all experiences that definitely contributed to my desire to go into medicine, and it was all because of connections through the MIT Alumni Association. Which I guess I'm now a part of. Man that's weird.

5. From March 31, 2010:
"Last week was my last spring break ever, a fact I was not fully aware of until I noticed my boyfriend, who graduated last year, was making plans for a mid-April vacation in which he and his friends would take two days off from their Jobs, capital J, to go to the Carribbean. "It's Adult Spring Break," he explained, and then it finally hit me that when you graduate you become an Adult, with Obligations, and Jobs. And no spring break. Which I was a little sad about, until I remembered that most of my spring breaks through 17 years of education (16? Do kindergarteners have spring break? Did anyone else just envision a bunch of toddlers sipping margaritas from sippy cups in high chairs on a beach in Cancun?) entailed me going home for a week, and my mom telling me to wait in the car while she bought six packs of toilet paper on sale at our neighborhood Safeway."

*This entry was, as you can probably tell, initially intended to be about my senior spring break. In between glorified photos of hiking up a volcano, scuba diving, and lounging on the beach, I intended for this entry to have a deeper purpose: to express gratitude for the people I consider to be my closest friends. Those who know me (or at least those who have been following along all these years) know that I moved dorms between freshman and sophomore year - to a place where I knew almost nobody - and ended up with some of the kindest, funniest, and good-looking people around me. So my advice to you is to never accept anything less if you know something doesn't feel right. Fortunately, MIT has a very flexible housing system, but I'm not just talking about that. Move around. Not just at MIT. There is always something better; it's just up to you to go get it.

And with that, I'm getting away from my laptop and heading outside! Stay tuned for Things I Never Finished, Part 2..

For those who aren't familiar with the i3 DVD, i3 stands for the Interactive Introduction to the Institute and serves a first introduction (or second, after CPW) to all the different dorms. Each dorm makes a short video showcasing the culture, talent, and innovation of each dorm, while also welcoming the incoming freshman class. Most i3 videos, especially Burton Conner videos, are a montage of parties, study breaks, and people running around the dorm yelling a lot set to loud music, but when we were elected i3 chairs we decided we wanted to do something a little... different. So without further ado, I present to you: the 2010 Burton Conner i3 video.

A few notes about this video:
* The film stars over sixty different people, and took over 40 hours to plan, shoot, and edit over a period of two and a half months.

* There are at least 14 different memes in this video.

* I sent 107 emails having to do with the i3 over the course of this year. A lot of them were very wordy and long-winded. Some of them were "oh my god, can we do that" emails. Other ones were "I can't believe we're doing that" emails.

* The video is currently posted on YouTube in HD, YouTube (regular quality), Vimeo, and TechTV, amassing over 10,000 views (10,377 to be exact).

* Snively and I each make cameo appearances in the video. (Garrett, on the other hand, was our camera man and didn't show up until we finally get a hold of a tripod at the end.) See if you can find us?

The point is that they're two people who are my age, both of whom I love and mean a lot to me, pledging to spend the rest of their lives together. And the last time I checked that was something that only grown-ups did. (Also buying gifts for people off of a registry. And saying the word 'registry'. What I really want to know is do people ever use registries for anything else? Because they seem like something I really want to sign up for.)

It's a weird feeling, this growing up thing. Last Thursday I walked out of my very last lecture at MIT (9.65, Cognitive Processes), expecting the Lightning Bolt of Adulthood to strike me down to the sidewalk as I walked out the door of building 46, but it never came. After I finished my last exam this Tuesday, I began packing to move into my new apartment, for which we've already paid first and last month's rent, and looking for cheap furniture on Craigslist. Still nothing. I picked up some more prunes and denture cleaning solution from Shaw's on the way back to the retirement home. Even then, nothing.

Regardless of the fact that I've spent four years here and still feel like I haven't changed much at all, there are still a few things I hadn't done in Boston until last week - first of all, go to a Red Sox game:

I don't know why it took me so long to go see the Red Sox play. I actually sort of like baseball and I actually REALLY like Fenway Park hot dogs, which I didn't figure out until halfway through the third inning. I also didn't realize it was going to be freezing even though it's been fairly nice out, and so I spent half of the game burrowing my face into my scarf and the other half peeking out to see what the score was. It was still pretty enjoyable, though, and I left filled with Boston pride and a serious craving for more hot dogs.

Speaking of Boston pride, last week was also my first time at the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO), which seems pretty ridiculous considering I grew up being taken to, and falling asleep during, San Francisco Symphony concerts as a kid. The night we went to see the BSO was a special event - John Williams, composer of such famous theme songs as those from Harry Potter, Star Wars, Jaws, Close Encounters, E.T., Indiana Jones, Cinema Paradiso, and pretty much every other movie soundtrack that gets stuck in your head for days on end, returned to conducted the BSO (he was the principal conductor from 1980 to 1993) in a special event called "Hooray for Hollywood!", in which the orchestra paid tribute to Williams' most famous compositions, in honor of the BSO's 125th anniversary. And it was amazing. Maybe even more amazing than the fact that we'd gotten student rush tickets on the main floor for $10 with our MIT IDs.

And in case you don't recognize them by name - this is Hedwig's theme, from Harry Potter:

For a few of the selections, they also rolled down a video screen and played clips from the films:

And finally, they ended with:

It was a pretty amazing concert, and even though I had two papers due the next day, both of which I didn't start until about 1 AM that night, I couldn't help but think that this was not something I would have done freshman year. I would have given up the concert tickets, and missed hearing selections from one of the greatest composers of our time. I'm pretty sure those papers - which did get finished, by the way, something else I learned to do in four years here! - won't go down in history as the greatest papers I've ever written, but I'm also pretty sure that I'll remember that night for a really long time. At least until I start losing my memory and my hair, but then I wouldn't have remembered those papers anyway, would I?

Tonight we drove through the city at the latest we'd ever been out here - we've been making a point to get back before dark, since some of our professors were concerned about safety - and saw the city in a whole different light. The majority of people here don't have electricity at night - or at all, so even more people come out than during the day (if it's possible) after dark to huddle around the one light bulb, or one candle, at one store on the corner. It's such a common pattern that when you look out over the city, instead of seeing wide windows filled with electric light, you see dots everywhere, as if you're looking at the stars but against a city, not a sky. It was so incredible that Amritaa '10 and I both stared out the window in awe, agreeing that even though we both considered ourselves decently well traveled we'd never seen anything like it before.

Tonight is also our last night in Haiti. The last few days were all such a blur - I got pretty sick yesterday, so I wasn't able to write or go anywhere or stay conscious, really - but our project actually came together, and we were able to coordinate with four different NGOs. We spent all of today training representatives from International Action, a physician who runs two HIV/AIDS clinics that in total see over 2,000 patients a day, and the German Federal Agency for Technical Relief on how to use our kits before leaving them here in Haiti, after sitting in on meetings with NGOs and NPOs and government organizations and soaking in as much as possible as we could about the current state of water quality in Haiti. And somehow, it all came together.

We also heard so many stories. We listened to our professor's cousin's husband tell us that he and his seven colleagues had been in a meeting when they slid four stories down to the ground, and then he walked a half hour home only to find that his wife wasn't there. (She came back two hours later, but for those horrible two hours he had no way of knowing she was safe.) We heard a student tell us about how he'd had to wait for hours under the collapsed remains of a building until someone came with an ice pick and dug him out of the destruction. We listened to the president of the state university of Haiti describe how he pulled his father out of the rubble, but his mother wasn't so lucky. "His wife, my mother, died in the earthquake. They were married for sixty-five years, and it was over in thirty seconds."

It's been an overwhelming week, filled with sorrow and enlightenment and the realization that there is so much more that needs to be done, so much that needs to be changed, that won't get done any time in the near future. It's been something I still can't describe, after writing all this just now, and something that I will never forget.

Tomorrow we'll leave Haiti, and this part of our project will end, but I fully intend to continue working with our partners here in Port-Au-Prince when we get back to Boston. Tomorrow we'll leave, but the street vendors will still be selling mangoes by the dozen and the tap-taps will still be screaming through the unpaved streets and the people will still come out at night to see by the light of one little light bulb.

Maybe it only takes one.

Today began with a trip to the mechanic at the Technique Club Garage, about half an hour away from our hotel. Darryl and Marvin '10 are working on a project that uses pedal power to generate electricity through an alternator, to be used to charge a cell phone battery at bodegas or local shops, so they'd planned to visit a Haitian mechanic to discuss the feasibility of the idea and put the machine together. Our mechanic was a really friendly guy who picked up on the idea right away. In fact, he even began adding his own contributions to the project, drawing out alternate designs that they could use. The limiting factor was, as usual, electricity - his power had gone out that morning and wouldn't return until the afternoon, so since he didn't have the capability to weld anything we told him we'd return back before the day was over.

We had one particularly awesome moment with him when he kept saying "facil," meaning "easy." Marvin asked "If it's so easy, then why haven't you done it yet?" To which the mechanic replied, "Because I didn't have the idea."

After leaving the parts that Marvin and Darryl had brought from MIT behind, we headed off to Darbonne, the epicenter of the earthquake, to see the school where the Waveplace pilot program was being executed. We were a bit early for the meeting, however, so we stopped by the side of the road to look around one of the tent cities and wait for our friends from last night. While we were waiting, a fourteen-year-old boy wandered up to us and began speaking to us in Creole. Marvin, who speaks French, asked him if he spoke French as well, and the boy said yes - but he couldn't understand most of the things Marvin was saying to him. He did, however, understand when Marvin asked if he liked music - and replied with "Akon!" So Marvin handed him his iPod, and then we were serenaded with Akon's "Beautiful" by a fourteen-year-old Haitian kid. Which is probably one of the top ten things I've ever experienced, save for surviving Mt. Fuji and flying an airplane. (Shortly thereafter, our professor emerged from the trees and was like, "WHAT are you doing to that poor guy?")

(I should note that we have extensive photo and video documentation of all this, but it'll have to wait until I get back to more stable internet connection. Aaand literally as I just wrote this, the power went out.)

The Waveplace people - Beth, John, and Bill - arrived to take us to Darbonne, where we sat in on a meeting with several of the mentors who worked with the kids and the XO laptop. Most of the meeting involved discussing the educational goals of the program, but we also talked about the structure of Haitian education as a whole, as well as the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program in Haiti. The Waveplace program, which is distinct from the OLPC program, lasts six weeks and is the third of its kind. Its main focus is to see how children learn best using the eToys software - a programming and storytelling software - and how these programs can be improved in the future. After the program is over, the XO laptops stay with the children forever, although there is the problem of energy - most all of the children do not have electricity at home, and as such can only use it for a limited time after school, where most of the exploration and self learning happens.

After the meeting, we headed over to the school, where we hung out with the children during their class time and used the bare minimum of Creole we had learned (mostly just "Koumon ou rele?", or "What's your name?" I also learned "Kilaj ou?", or "How old are you?", but since my French is pretty lacking I couldn't always tell what they said in response. Should've paid attention more in school..) Watching the curiosity and creativity brewing there was amazing. As I mentioned, Waveplace is separate from OLPC, but the programs share a lot of similar goals in getting the children to love learning - which is especially important in Haiti, where many schools still use rote memorization techniques. Professor DeGraff also told me that when he was a child most all schools were taught "to be silent in French", since using French is seen as a status symbol here, and even though everyone speaks Creole most schools still teach in French. These classes, however, were all taught in Haitian Creole, and the children were as raucous and joyful as any fourth or fifth grade class in the United States might be.

We said goodbye to our new friends and returned to the mechanic, where we dropped Marvin and Darryl off for two hours while the rest of us went to a university-turned-camp. There we met the president of the university, who is also Haiti's leading expert on earthquakes. He told us that there were 20,000 people living at the camp on their campus, or about 4,000 families of around 5 people each. He also explained that the camp was run by ADRA, an NGO, and that the university had not been in session until about two weeks or so ago. Now that the students were coming back to school, both refugees and university students attended classes together.

We returned to pick up Darryl and Marvin, and made the long trek home, where I incubated our water samples from yesterday. During dinner, we sat with a group of nurses who were working with International Medical Corps, who told us that they had been working for around two weeks and were mostly leaving the next day, although one was planning on staying until June. They told us about their major problems - infrastructure, access to reliable lab results, lack of equipment and specialist physicians - as well as shared a few crazy stories, such as the man who had taken a machete to the head and had to have a craniotomy performed right on the ER floor, since the OR was too dirty. They also invited us to come with them one day and observe, so hopefully we'll get to go either Thursday or Friday.

Professor DeGraff's brother and sister-in-law also came and met with us for dinner, who told us a lot about Haitian politics, and Clinton's involvement in the relief effort. What I found most striking was that the current president, Preval, has been in power for ten years - and is the only Haitian president to have served out a full term without being overthrown or driven out of the country - but there's still so much dissatisfaction with him, since people believe that he hasn't accomplished anything in his two terms. There are rumors that he'll try to revise the constitution to serve a third term, since there's a two term limit - to which I asked what the restrictions were to revising the Haitian constitution, and Professor DeGraff's brother replied: "All you need is the political will, and a signature."

Shortly after I put my samples to bed and headed up to wash off all the dirt - you know it's bad when you blow your nose and it comes out gray - and jump into bed. Tomorrow, we'll return to DINEPA for the WASH cluster meeting, as well as meet with students from Dale's cousin's university and go to the Haitian television station for the broadcast. For tonight, I'll keep trying to get the dust out from between my toes. And fingers. And ears.

Jean Francois sent us to Madame Elise, a woman involved in the testing aspect of DINEPA, whom we showed our testing kits. She told us she had used our method before and would be interested in helping us distribute them but needed to call around for us, which was again, really exciting - our biggest problem thus far has been trying to get in contact with people on the ground here, so to be offered instant help by the biggest water organization in Haiti was definitely a plus. We told her we'd be back on Wednesday for the WASH cluster meeting, a big organization put together by the UN based around water and sanitation issues, when we'd speak to her again.

DINEPA was actually not the first organization we went to - we'd also stopped at CAMEP, a company that distributed water to several camps, but were turned away because the man in charge there did not have permission from his bosses to speak to us, and as such didn't want to say anything that could misrepresent the organization. His reluctance to answer ANY of our questions, even the seemingly innocuous ones like "where do you distribute", was explained to me as fairly representative of business culture in Haiti by one of our Haitian professors, Professor Michel DeGraff. Our other professors are Dale Joachim, a visiting scientist to the media lab and a Haitian American, and Barry Vercoe, who works in music processing as well as with One Laptop Per Child.

After DINEPA, Amritaa '10s noticed a radio/TV station across the street, where she wanted to go since her original project was in health education programs on Haitian Radio. So she and Marvin '10 ventured in with Professor DeGraff, who returned outside shortly afterwards full of excitement. "You have to come in!" he told us. "The wife of the man who owns this radio station is my childhood friend, and she wants to meet you!"

And so, by complete coincidence, we entered the building to receive a tour of the station. The station was run out of a pristine-looking house, in sharp contrast to the other buildings we'd seen throughout the city center. The people working there explained to us that they'd been based more inside the city until they'd bought this house, and had been in the process of moving everything up when the earthquake hit. They also asked about our projects, and the man who ran the station (who incidentally looked and sounded a LOT like Quincy Jones - anyone? anyone?) said he liked what we were doing, and that we held a lot of power as young people, and that he wanted to broadcast us speaking about our projects for television. And that is the story of how we're going to be on Haitian television. (!) I wish I brought something other than free t-shirts and sweaty jean shorts. Oh well, it isn't like MIT's hygienic image is getting much better.

After this fortuitous meeting, we stopped for lunch, after which we wandered around town for a bit more. We also visited Dale's cousin's house, whose husband is a dean at the state-owned university, and whose students will be visiting us on Wednesday. These students have been out of school since the earthquake hit, and the dean mentioned that although many of them wanted to help after the earthquake - as many of them were civil engineering students - the government has not issued any request for help from these students, so they haven't done much. Dale's cousins also showed us how their house gets power - basically by ten big batteries that get power from the city during the day, and at night they use an inverter. The city shuts down power during the night to save money since not many people can afford an inverter, and so most people go without power. I should also mention that many people have told us that there isn't a great feeling for the government here. Many people don't believe the government is doing everything they can to help the people, and are hoping for more significant action come the October elections.

From Dale's cousin's house, we returned to the hotel for our last meeting of the day, with three Americans who work with WakePlace, an organization that has a series of programs for the XO. These people had distributed forty laptops each to seven different schools in Haiti, teaching a drawing/storytelling/programming program called eToys for a period of six weeks. We spoke to them for over an hour about their stories from working with the children here - one encouraging fact is that the laptop does belong to the children, who take them home and often play with them with their families. After a long night of playing with the computers, however, many of them run out of power in the morning - and electricity is a major issue for these laptops. Dale had brought a solar panel from the United States to help with the electricity issue, but its power can only be used for so many computers.

Our final meeting of the day was another random encounter, in which we met a bunch of ER nurses who are actually from about five minutes away from my hometown. They told us that said they were with some program based in Southern California that sends nurses to help out for two weeks or more. One of the most difficult things about the experience, though, is that many of them don't speak Haitian Creole, which is much more commonly used than French here. On top of that, since many of the Haitian doctors and nurses are no longer getting paid, many of them abandoned their posts after the earthquake. The nurses also told us they see a lot of tetanus, rabies, machete wounds (apparently machete is the weapon of choice here), and gun shot wounds, as well as hypertension and high blood pressure - since now people know they can get free care from these volunteer health workers, they just get sent down to the ICU.

After speaking to the nurses, we finished up our water tests and headed upstairs to tend to our sore feet and many mosquito bites. Today we'll go to an XO school in Dalebrun, at the epicenter of the earthquake, to work with the children and see what they've come up with. We'll also bring one of our water kits to potentially teach some of the children at the school how to test their own drinking water. Michel is also teaching us a little Creole, so - N a wè pita! (See you later!)

So today, we're in Haiti.

I don't know what I expected - I guess I didn't really think about how bad it would be here until I stepped off the plane. I've traveled to developing countries before, and I've traveled to areas after they've been hit by natural disasters before, but never of this scale. We got off the plane, and the airport was mostly intact except that immigration was in a warehouse - that was the first clue that something was off. After hopping in a van, we rode through the mostly unpaved roads of Port-Au-Prince to see signs of destruction and devastation in every direction. There are tent cities for miles. People everywhere. Concrete rubble and garbage flow in waves down long streets; turn the corner and what was once a house lies in shambles.

It seems like an impenetrable problem. How to rebuild after all this, how to deal with so many displaced people, how to implement infrastructure in the poorest country in the Western hemisphere - and most of all, how to make sense of all of this in just one short week. This is what I'm struggling with the most - I feel like we can never do enough, and yet I want to do so much. I feel ridiculous and strange sitting in a hotel room with air conditioning writing on the internet about how I feel when there are thousands of people outside our door without a roof or running water. I wish there was more that we could do.

But there is also the undeniable sense of hope here; there are still people dancing and singing in the streets. As we stood on the roof of our hotel after dinner, looking out at the mountains and the stars hanging above Port-Au-Prince, we listened to salsa drifting over from a neighboring restaurant and watched women carry huge buckets of waters on their shoulders, stepping to the beat of the music. There is something so resilient about the spirit here that I can't help but naively hope that maybe we will be able to do something small to contribute, even if we're only here for one short week.

Tomorrow, we'll go to meet with representatives from the Haiti WASH cluster, which is a UN organization that deals with sanitation and water issues in Port-Au-Prince. Tomorrow, we'll begin to work away at the impenetrable problem, doing whatever small things we can to contribute. Until then!

In my 9.65 (Cognitive Development) class, we've been talking a lot about the nature of memory and how it's divided into various type (conceptual short term memory, working memory and the visuospatial sketchpad, long term memory, etc.), and one experiment we ran in class involved everyone writing down their memories of an emportant emotional experience, a phenomenon called "flashbulb memories". In this case, specifically recalling the day you found out you got into MIT. What it felt like, what you were wearing, what you did before and after, etc. Crazily enough, even though that was way back in the dark ages of 2006 (in my day, I read my acceptance letter by candle, before saddling up my horse and picking up some celebratory goose fat from the general store), I can still remember exactly how it happened - driving home from school, seeing the tube sticking out the mailbox, SCREAMING MY HEAD OFF, screaming my head off some more, jumping up and down, scaring my dog, running in circles, shooting off fireworks, setting my house on fire, having to call 911, etc.)

(No. Not really. But everything short of fireworks, yes.)

Things are a little different now, since decisions are released online. But you still get a tube and/or big packet in the mail eventually, so whether you're early decision or just found out - what's your story? Feel free to share in the form of pictures, haiku, sonnet, or just plain comment below. Or read some old stories for inspiration (as well as a more comprehensive version of my story, sans fireworks).

Looking forward to meeting you all in a few weeks! :)

(In reference to this.)
(Photo credit: Liz Kimball '11.)
(See part one.)
(Yes, we ate it afterwards.)