We arrived in the States about a month and a half ago, and we already feel right at home in this glorious nation. After a week of housing uncertainty, the MIT Housing Office took pity on us, and offered us an apartment on campus, where we can enjoy all the perks of being MIT community members.
Thomas likes to compare the campus to a Sun Parks Holiday Village: people have their own private holiday villa (all right, it is nothing more than a small efficiency), but most of the action takes place at one central building that is open 24/7 and where you can buy expensive groceries or greasy junk food. Apart from a gigantic pool, there are a lot of other sports facilities we will probably never use, as well as an overpriced hairdresser, a gadget shop and an animation program.
Geeky shirtThe main difference between Sun Parks and MIT is that the latter is a lot geekier. Instead of giggly teen girls in bikinis, this place mainly has brainy nerds wearing witty shirts. Instead of karaoke contests, we get live-action role-playing games that are organized by the MIT Assassins’ Guild. Other activities include the weekly exhibitions of the Juggling Club or the Tech Model Railroad Club.
Indeed, “Nerd Pride” is the way to go at MIT.
Unfortunately, we do not get time to fully explore all possibilities the campus has to offer. Thomas is here to work, and he actually enjoys being a (temporary) Broadie. Not just because they encourage him to write on the walls, or because they have given him a cool desk chair with tons of features, but mainly because of the general atmosphere. On his first day, he was informed by the IT staff that they are entirely at his service. The general idea is that he should do his research, and that he should not even notice that there is an IT department. They have kept their promise: he has not heard from them ever since (but maybe that is because he still does not have a computer).
Another advantage is that there are no obligatory talks: there are a lot of interesting seminars at the Broad, but everyone is free to choose whether or not they want to attend any of them. Of course, they have found an interesting way to motivate their employees to show up: free food. During the talks, everybody (but the speaker) can enjoy a delicious buffet, and as far as I can tell, this system really works: Thomas goes to a lot of those seminars (though he can usually give me more details about the fresh bagels than about the content of the talks).
