Post-Finals, Pre-Graduation

Post-Finals, Pre-Graduation At MIT, there are two weeks between the last day of finals and commencement. The second of those two weeks is called Senior Week: the class council for the years graduating class buys a whole bunch of group tickets to activities like skydiving or a Red Sox game, and the rest of us lottery in for tickets. The website is here, in case youre curious and want to see this years full event listing. I only had two final exams this year (although a lot of my senior friends had ZERO finalsbooooooooooooooo!!!) so I was done by Wednesday of finals week. That evening, I went with the Arts Scholars to see The Tempest at the American Repertory Theater (ART) in Cambridge. Teller of Penn Teller (a famous magician duo) was one of the shows co-directors, and went all out: Ariel (if youre not familiar with The Tempest, Ariel is a little spirit bound to serve the main character, Prospero) was an incredible magician himself and very good at card throwing. Large objects appeared out of nowhere, people were lifted into the air by invisible ropes or on invisible platforms (I still have no idea) and bodies contorted (mirrors?) The next day, a few friends and I rented a car and drove the ~2 hours to Cape Cod. It was cold and rainy but we had a blast anyway it was just nice to be off-campus and away from a computer so that I couldnt sit in my room refreshing Stellar*. Here are some pictures: *The Stellar website is where final grades appear. If you become an MIT student, you will probablylearn to obsessively refresh Stellar. (From left to right: Adam 15, Xiaoyue 15, me, Michelle 14, Emma 14) The day after that, I went to a Boston Pops concert  and two days after that  a different group of friends and I rented another car and drove to Montréal. Its a 5-hour drive if you take a straight shot, but we decided to stop at my friend Cams house in Vermont so the trip there took 6 hours instead. On the way back we stopped for a tour of the Ben Jerrys factory and got to sample a new mint fudge flavor that hasnt hit the shelves yet. The new flavor has my approval, in case anybody is wondering. Heres a picture of 4/5 of us climbing a sculpture: And scenes of the Old Town: (From left to right: me, Sophie 14, Lisa 17, Brynna 17, Cam 13) Here are some of the things I ate: I tried poutine as well and have to admit that I was not a big fan. On our second (and last; it was a short trip) day, we spent the morning walking up Mount Royal and the afternoon at the botanical gardens. The view from the top of Mount Royal: And the botanical gardens: aaaaaand finally, two days ago, I took a break from packing (how did I accumulate so much stuff? HOW?) and went hiking in the White Mountains, a ~2h45m drive away. On the way, we stopped in the very quaint (and very small) town of Canterbury, New Hampshire, and ate bagel bites in the country store (which advertised selling worms and crawlers): We hiked up to the summit of Mount Pemigewasset. It was high enough that a few dozen feet from the summit, the deciduous foliage morphed into conifers, the humidity morphed into cool dry air, the mud puddles morphed into bare rock, and the bugs disappeared. The views were pretty spectacular: aaaaand now its Thursday of graduation week. I picked up my regalia (cap and gown) from the Coop yesterday. Its hanging outside my closet in a (probably vain) attempt to get the wrinkles out. In 45 minutes my parents are coming to take me and my sister to lunch. Im half-convinced that any minute now Im going to get a call or an e-mail that says oops, sorry, you cant graduate because you forgot this or that requirement. Or maybe when Im walking across the stage to pick up my diploma, President Reif will say wait, who are you? we dont have a diploma for you. do you even go here? Or maybe in a little over 24 hours Ill actually have a piece of paper that says that I have received a B.S. in Physics.