"Signed, Rebel Scum"
IHTFP - Interesting Hacks to Fascinate People
(one definition among many)
Before I begin, you should know that I feel sort of overwhelmed simply by trying to write this entry. Hacking is a long and storied tradition at MIT, and yet I'm only a freshman - who am I to write about this sort of thing?
And the reality is, I really can't. Yes, I've been to some interesting places around campus; yes, I've started to meet people who can legitimately be called hackers. But I, myself, am not a hacker by any means. Not yet, anyway.
Funny story: I first ran across the word hacker when I was about six, and I had no idea what the word actually meant, so I did what any good six-year-old would do and asked my mom about it. She replied, understandably hesitantly, "Why do you want to know, Paul?" To which I said, "Because I think I want to be one."
Ah, the innocence of youth.
But back to business. What I want to talk about right now, you see, is not the great hacks that have been pulled in the good old days of hardcore yore - because although I've heard of them, and read books about them, I don't really know about them.
What I do know, what I feel qualified enough to talk about, is the hackers themselves.
No names will be named.
The first thing you need to realize is that hackers break stereotypes. Like MIT students in general, they have traits in common, but they aren't clones. Some are social and some are shy, some are serious and some are hilarious. Some have green or purple or rainbow hair, some have brown or black or blonde or red hair. Some wear riot gear, some wear trenchcoats, some just wear dark T-shirts. Some tell stories, some make their own stories. Some are in the UA, some are bloggers, some do UROP or IM sports or hundreds of other activities. Some are from the East, some are from the West, some are in fraternities and sororities and independent living groups.
I'll say that again, because it's important - hackers are from the East, and the West, and the FSILGs. Don't forget that.
But hackers do share many things in common. Creativity, innovation, unconventional attitudes, a unique sense of humor, a code of ethics, a love of rooftops and tunnels and enclosed spaces, a certain disregard for the rules...just to name a few.
They are, in short, a great group. I'm still so incredibly grateful for all the experiences I've had with them. After all, it's not every club that trusts freshmen (and even some pre-frosh), yet the hackers do. They're just cool like that, and I hope to get the chance to do the same, a year or two down the road.
I said before that being at MIT feels like coming home.
Going hacking feels like coming into an inheritance.
Some informative links: IHTFP Gallery, MIT Admissions, Wikipedia, The Jargon File, Where the Sun Shines, There Hack They
Showing posts with label top ten. Show all posts
Showing posts with label top ten. Show all posts
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Top Ten Reasons I Love MIT #8
Mens et Manus
I have never met a Latin motto I didn't like - and, since I took Latin for over six years, I've met quite a few of them. Up until recently, my favorite was probably a quote from Virgil: Audentes fortuna iuvat - Fortune favors the bold. Appropriate enough for me, since I enjoy trying new things and getting involved in as much as I can...even if that does mean ending up with a little too much on my plate sometimes.
Actually, for the longest time I was a very shy kid, socially-speaking anyway - Young Paul would probably be shocked to hear what I've been up to these past few years. In grade school, I always had a very tight group of friends, but we ended up all going to different high schools - which meant I basically had to start everything over again as a freshman. My solution? I joined the tennis team.
I know that doesn't sound particularly risky, but for me it was. Not only did I know no one else on the team - the primary reason I joined was to meet people - I was a true beginner when it came to playing tennis competitively. And, as anyone could tell you, I'm not exactly a natural athlete. Still, I stuck with it - and my reward was that I ended up meeting three guys who are now among my very best friends.
Looking back over the past four years, in each year I can easily identify one pivotal event, one risk I took, one choice I made, that utterly changed where I was going with my life. As a sophomore, I volunteered to coordinate a service project and ended up learning what leadership really means. Junior year, I started doing biomedical research and ended up discovering a new passion for science. And my final, senior year, I convinced my principal to let me found a new club dedicated to investigating and debating global issues. All of those look totally unrelated, I know. But, at the same time, each one of them is an equally part of who I am.
The funny thing is that, as I made these choices, I never realized just how significant they would become to me. To put it another way - I never woke up and decided, I'm definitely going to take a huge risk before noon! or went to bed thinking, Wow, I did something really bold today. Everything I did, I did because that was what I wanted to do, because that was what I loved.
It's the same way with MIT. The students there don't do the amazing things they do simply to pad their resumes or to feel important. The research, the clubs, the academics, the crazy little things like Mystery Hunt - those things happen because the students want them to happen and then make them happen. In that sense, it's not just the faculty who have built up MIT's reputation for excellence, but also the students themselves.
I think, for a lot of people, a motto is just that, a motto: a funny little foreign-sounding phrase, appropriate for invocation at formal occasions, but on the whole fairly meaningless. That's not the way I think of it, and I'm confident in saying that most people at MIT are the same way. Even from the little I've glimpsed of MIT, I know that the ideal of Mens et Manus - the vision of theoretical knowledge and practical arts working together side-by-side to create a better world - is very much alive and kicking on campus. I've seen it in the labs, in the classrooms, in the dorms...even, on occasion, in the eyes of the students themselves.
I have never met a Latin motto I didn't like - and, since I took Latin for over six years, I've met quite a few of them. Up until recently, my favorite was probably a quote from Virgil: Audentes fortuna iuvat - Fortune favors the bold. Appropriate enough for me, since I enjoy trying new things and getting involved in as much as I can...even if that does mean ending up with a little too much on my plate sometimes.
Actually, for the longest time I was a very shy kid, socially-speaking anyway - Young Paul would probably be shocked to hear what I've been up to these past few years. In grade school, I always had a very tight group of friends, but we ended up all going to different high schools - which meant I basically had to start everything over again as a freshman. My solution? I joined the tennis team.
I know that doesn't sound particularly risky, but for me it was. Not only did I know no one else on the team - the primary reason I joined was to meet people - I was a true beginner when it came to playing tennis competitively. And, as anyone could tell you, I'm not exactly a natural athlete. Still, I stuck with it - and my reward was that I ended up meeting three guys who are now among my very best friends.
Looking back over the past four years, in each year I can easily identify one pivotal event, one risk I took, one choice I made, that utterly changed where I was going with my life. As a sophomore, I volunteered to coordinate a service project and ended up learning what leadership really means. Junior year, I started doing biomedical research and ended up discovering a new passion for science. And my final, senior year, I convinced my principal to let me found a new club dedicated to investigating and debating global issues. All of those look totally unrelated, I know. But, at the same time, each one of them is an equally part of who I am.
The funny thing is that, as I made these choices, I never realized just how significant they would become to me. To put it another way - I never woke up and decided, I'm definitely going to take a huge risk before noon! or went to bed thinking, Wow, I did something really bold today. Everything I did, I did because that was what I wanted to do, because that was what I loved.
It's the same way with MIT. The students there don't do the amazing things they do simply to pad their resumes or to feel important. The research, the clubs, the academics, the crazy little things like Mystery Hunt - those things happen because the students want them to happen and then make them happen. In that sense, it's not just the faculty who have built up MIT's reputation for excellence, but also the students themselves.
I think, for a lot of people, a motto is just that, a motto: a funny little foreign-sounding phrase, appropriate for invocation at formal occasions, but on the whole fairly meaningless. That's not the way I think of it, and I'm confident in saying that most people at MIT are the same way. Even from the little I've glimpsed of MIT, I know that the ideal of Mens et Manus - the vision of theoretical knowledge and practical arts working together side-by-side to create a better world - is very much alive and kicking on campus. I've seen it in the labs, in the classrooms, in the dorms...even, on occasion, in the eyes of the students themselves.
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Top Ten Reasons I Love MIT #9
Mystery Hunt
"Please do not endanger the life of the duck at any time."
Every January, MIT holds a special four-week term called Independent Activities Period - IAP, for short. IAP, in my humble opinion, is one of those crazy things that really epitomizes the unique way MIT looks at education, entertainment, and life in general. Basically, it's MIT's idea of a breather between the fall and spring terms, where "breather" means anything from doing research to taking accelerated classes to playing with boffer swords to going to Charm School. ("All of the above" is also an option.)
Really, I'm serious.
Although I have yet to experience firsthand the beautiful craziness that is IAP, I'm eagerly anticipating that glorious day. And my excitement is primarily due to what what might be the most famous IAP event of all...
The Mystery Hunt.
On the surface, it's a seemingly simple proposition: solve a series of puzzles and riddles to find a "coin" hidden somewhere on campus. Yet the Mystery Hunt itself is actually anything but simple. There's well over 40 or 50 puzzles to solve, some of which require some truly arcane knowledge and/or some really inventive guesswork. Many of the puzzles are somehow related to MIT's campus or culture, and there's almost always a puzzle or two that involves running around various buildings searching for the next clue. One popular type of riddle, called the Duck Konundrum, involves using a "live duck" to help you follow a ridiculously detailed set of instructions to produce the correct answer. (The quote at the top of the entry was from the 2000 version of the Duck Konundrum.)
One of the most interesting things about the Mystery Hunt is the prize - which is nothing more nor less than the honor of writing the next Mystery Hunt. It's totally intangible and, from a pragmatic standpoint, utterly worthless - yet for anyone deeply devoted to the Hunt, it's the greatest prize possible.
But I think the real reward of the Hunt goes even deeper than that. The Mystery Hunt is as much fun to play as it is to win. The ridiculously mind-boggling nature of the puzzles, the sense of competition with the other teams, the inside jokes your team inevitably will create, the buzz of stretching your sleep-deprived body and mind as far as they can go without breaking, the thrill of testing your wits and your knowledge against a nearly insurmountable challenge. That's the reward.
I know it sounds crazy.
I love it anyway.
Blogger's note: For more information on the Mystery Hunt, the interested reader may enjoy perusing the official Hunt site, the MIT blogs, and this excellent article in Discover Magazine.
"Please do not endanger the life of the duck at any time."
Every January, MIT holds a special four-week term called Independent Activities Period - IAP, for short. IAP, in my humble opinion, is one of those crazy things that really epitomizes the unique way MIT looks at education, entertainment, and life in general. Basically, it's MIT's idea of a breather between the fall and spring terms, where "breather" means anything from doing research to taking accelerated classes to playing with boffer swords to going to Charm School. ("All of the above" is also an option.)
Really, I'm serious.
Although I have yet to experience firsthand the beautiful craziness that is IAP, I'm eagerly anticipating that glorious day. And my excitement is primarily due to what what might be the most famous IAP event of all...
The Mystery Hunt.
On the surface, it's a seemingly simple proposition: solve a series of puzzles and riddles to find a "coin" hidden somewhere on campus. Yet the Mystery Hunt itself is actually anything but simple. There's well over 40 or 50 puzzles to solve, some of which require some truly arcane knowledge and/or some really inventive guesswork. Many of the puzzles are somehow related to MIT's campus or culture, and there's almost always a puzzle or two that involves running around various buildings searching for the next clue. One popular type of riddle, called the Duck Konundrum, involves using a "live duck" to help you follow a ridiculously detailed set of instructions to produce the correct answer. (The quote at the top of the entry was from the 2000 version of the Duck Konundrum.)
One of the most interesting things about the Mystery Hunt is the prize - which is nothing more nor less than the honor of writing the next Mystery Hunt. It's totally intangible and, from a pragmatic standpoint, utterly worthless - yet for anyone deeply devoted to the Hunt, it's the greatest prize possible.
But I think the real reward of the Hunt goes even deeper than that. The Mystery Hunt is as much fun to play as it is to win. The ridiculously mind-boggling nature of the puzzles, the sense of competition with the other teams, the inside jokes your team inevitably will create, the buzz of stretching your sleep-deprived body and mind as far as they can go without breaking, the thrill of testing your wits and your knowledge against a nearly insurmountable challenge. That's the reward.
I know it sounds crazy.
I love it anyway.
Blogger's note: For more information on the Mystery Hunt, the interested reader may enjoy perusing the official Hunt site, the MIT blogs, and this excellent article in Discover Magazine.
Thursday, July 5, 2007
The Top Ten Reasons I Love MIT #10
The Assassins' Guild
"You see a flock of 20 screaming chickens. Roleplay accordingly."
In high school, I was involved in a lot of extracurriculars. Community service, political clubs, Quiz Bowl, Science Olympiad...I could list all of them, but since this (fortunately) isn't a college application, I'll spare you. Suffice it to say I was a very busy beaver in high school. And I've always figured that's not likely to change when I head off to college.
After all, colleges have lots of extracurriculars too. Nothing strange about that, right?
Wrong.
At least when it comes to MIT.
As most of you probably know, MIT is not a normal school. Now you could be nihilistic about it and argue that there really is no such thing as "normality" anyway, but I think MIT would serve as a superb counter-example to that hypothesis. Just being on campus is enough for almost anyone to realize that MIT - from the architecture to the classes, from the teachers to the students - is like no place you've ever been before. Whatever your expectations about college, MIT and its students will defy them in the most extravagant way possible.
That is, in a nutshell, the reason I fell in love with MIT in the first place, because real life is not predictable. Real life does not conform to your expectations. Real life is wild, crazy, inexplicable. Real life is not a straight line from here to there, from birth to death - it is a twisting path, riddled with sudden turns and departures, the different trails combining and separating only to merge again, a beautiful pattern that only really makes sense many years down the road.
MIT is real. Sometimes the lows are lower, but only because the highs are higher. And even if everyone embraces the same traditions, there are still hundreds, even thousands, of variations on those cherished themes.
Other schools have traditions, sure. Other schools have strange campuses or funny quirks. And maybe I'm biased because I'm actually going to MIT, as opposed to one of those "other" schools. But just the same, no college I've ever visited has felt as real, as unpredictable, as wondrously strange as MIT.
There are a lot of examples of how MIT is different. As I go through this little Top Ten list of mine, I'll probably mention most of them, or the most common ones anyway. For me, though, one of the most concrete examples of what makes MIT different is embodied in one of the clubs on campus.
That club is the Assasssins' Guild.
First things first, that is indubitably the most badass name for a club ever.
More importantly - and to be perfectly honest I only realized this now, literally as I'm writing this entry - the basic concept of the Guild almost perfectly mirrors MIT's actual mission. Just like MIT itself is dedicated to finding new solutions to big problems, the Assassins' Guild is all about having fun in completely new and unexpected ways. Which basically means conducting outrageous LARPs - live-action roleplaying games, kind of like a novel or a play, except that you're writing the script, along with a couple dozen other fellow Assassins, who have their own ideas about how the story should end.
Then there's Patrol - the staple of the Guild, which is run (played) every Saturday night. Think paintball, except with dart guns. But that description doesn't even come close to capturing the sheer chaotic enjoyment of the game. Ah, there's nothing really like adrenaline, is there? I ended up playing Patrol during CPW*, and let me just say I am looking forward to next time.
I could probably say more, but this entry is long enough already. There's only one thing I really want to say, though, which I probably haven't been too clear about. The point of this entry isn't really that the Assassins' Guild, itself, is the #10 reason I love MIT - rather, the extracurriculars in general are the #10 reason. After all, all of MIT's extracurriculars are fantastic and I could easily write an entry about any of them.
It's just that the Assassins' Guild was one of the first clubs I discovered, even before I got in to MIT, thanks to a cleverly-placed flyer I found in the Infinite last summer. Even more importantly, though I have always believed that the Guild is truly representative of what makes MIT so different from any other school - and that is the primary reason I felt it was only fair to honor the Guild with its own entry.
And, as I said, I love the name.
*MIT-speak for Campus Preview Weekend, when hordes of pre-frosh descend on MIT to partake in a veritable orgy of crazy activities, numerous visits to classes and dorms, random visits to random parts of campus, liquid nitrogen ice cream, and lots of free food. Because no college activity is complete without free food.
And because the corollary to that theorem is that no blog entry is complete without links, here's the Assassins' own homepage. And while I'm on the topic of extracurriculars, I'm also rather fond of - among others - OrigaMIT, the Debate Team, and Rune.
Am I shamelessly plugging for these clubs? Maybe.
Is that because I'm excited to join them? Hell yes!
"You see a flock of 20 screaming chickens. Roleplay accordingly."
In high school, I was involved in a lot of extracurriculars. Community service, political clubs, Quiz Bowl, Science Olympiad...I could list all of them, but since this (fortunately) isn't a college application, I'll spare you. Suffice it to say I was a very busy beaver in high school. And I've always figured that's not likely to change when I head off to college.
After all, colleges have lots of extracurriculars too. Nothing strange about that, right?
Wrong.
At least when it comes to MIT.
As most of you probably know, MIT is not a normal school. Now you could be nihilistic about it and argue that there really is no such thing as "normality" anyway, but I think MIT would serve as a superb counter-example to that hypothesis. Just being on campus is enough for almost anyone to realize that MIT - from the architecture to the classes, from the teachers to the students - is like no place you've ever been before. Whatever your expectations about college, MIT and its students will defy them in the most extravagant way possible.
That is, in a nutshell, the reason I fell in love with MIT in the first place, because real life is not predictable. Real life does not conform to your expectations. Real life is wild, crazy, inexplicable. Real life is not a straight line from here to there, from birth to death - it is a twisting path, riddled with sudden turns and departures, the different trails combining and separating only to merge again, a beautiful pattern that only really makes sense many years down the road.
MIT is real. Sometimes the lows are lower, but only because the highs are higher. And even if everyone embraces the same traditions, there are still hundreds, even thousands, of variations on those cherished themes.
Other schools have traditions, sure. Other schools have strange campuses or funny quirks. And maybe I'm biased because I'm actually going to MIT, as opposed to one of those "other" schools. But just the same, no college I've ever visited has felt as real, as unpredictable, as wondrously strange as MIT.
There are a lot of examples of how MIT is different. As I go through this little Top Ten list of mine, I'll probably mention most of them, or the most common ones anyway. For me, though, one of the most concrete examples of what makes MIT different is embodied in one of the clubs on campus.
That club is the Assasssins' Guild.
First things first, that is indubitably the most badass name for a club ever.
More importantly - and to be perfectly honest I only realized this now, literally as I'm writing this entry - the basic concept of the Guild almost perfectly mirrors MIT's actual mission. Just like MIT itself is dedicated to finding new solutions to big problems, the Assassins' Guild is all about having fun in completely new and unexpected ways. Which basically means conducting outrageous LARPs - live-action roleplaying games, kind of like a novel or a play, except that you're writing the script, along with a couple dozen other fellow Assassins, who have their own ideas about how the story should end.
Then there's Patrol - the staple of the Guild, which is run (played) every Saturday night. Think paintball, except with dart guns. But that description doesn't even come close to capturing the sheer chaotic enjoyment of the game. Ah, there's nothing really like adrenaline, is there? I ended up playing Patrol during CPW*, and let me just say I am looking forward to next time.
I could probably say more, but this entry is long enough already. There's only one thing I really want to say, though, which I probably haven't been too clear about. The point of this entry isn't really that the Assassins' Guild, itself, is the #10 reason I love MIT - rather, the extracurriculars in general are the #10 reason. After all, all of MIT's extracurriculars are fantastic and I could easily write an entry about any of them.
It's just that the Assassins' Guild was one of the first clubs I discovered, even before I got in to MIT, thanks to a cleverly-placed flyer I found in the Infinite last summer. Even more importantly, though I have always believed that the Guild is truly representative of what makes MIT so different from any other school - and that is the primary reason I felt it was only fair to honor the Guild with its own entry.
And, as I said, I love the name.
*MIT-speak for Campus Preview Weekend, when hordes of pre-frosh descend on MIT to partake in a veritable orgy of crazy activities, numerous visits to classes and dorms, random visits to random parts of campus, liquid nitrogen ice cream, and lots of free food. Because no college activity is complete without free food.
And because the corollary to that theorem is that no blog entry is complete without links, here's the Assassins' own homepage. And while I'm on the topic of extracurriculars, I'm also rather fond of - among others - OrigaMIT, the Debate Team, and Rune.
Am I shamelessly plugging for these clubs? Maybe.
Is that because I'm excited to join them? Hell yes!
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