Institute of Smashing

A team of student bloggers, hosted by the MIT Admissions Office, has first dips on defining campus life for prospective students. Of course, their musings can be pretty interesting to other readers as well. So Slice of MIT is passing on excerpts from a couple of choice posts by Chris Mills ’12:

The Institute of Smashing

Webster's dictionary has two entries for the word smashing when used as an adjective:

smash•ing Pronunciation: ˈsma-shiŋ Function: adjective Date: 1825

1 : that smashes : crushing; a smashing defeat

2 : extraordinarily impressive or effective; a smashing performance

Here at MIT, you'll find that both entries are equally applicable. In fact in studying here, no matter what major you choose I can almost guarantee one thing:

You're going to be crushed

Now before you start letting sweat bead upon your brow and frantically asking yourself what you've gotten yourself into, let me assure you of another truth:

It's good for you…..

I'm chugging into my 3rd year here at MIT blogging, studying, and being smashed. And every time I cross the threshold of a jet, settle into my seat and begrudgingly turn off wifi on all my TSA-worry-inducing gadgets, I realize just how much MIT has permeated every part of my life, and there are some serious perkus nonacademia. I've landed awesome jobs through MIT. I've destroyed and created things because of MIT. My entire brain has been rewired and my physiological response to stress and sleep has changed because of–you got it–MIT. I downloaded my favorite distro of Ubuntu in less than a minute because of MIT….

You will never see internet this fast again. And you will cry yourself to sleep because of that.

But to me MIT is like a T800's mission: It's about the people….