Wicked pissah

Magnet #975 - Harvard

Today's pitstop was Harvard.

When I was in junior high or so, my parents took me to Harvard and Yale. I remember lying down in the back of the van, looking up out of the windows, not seeing much, just the occasional tree and building and thinking, nope, I don't really want to go here.

Not that it was a possibility, really - once that first algebra grade showed up those parental dreams of Harvard or Yale disappeared into the ether. Really, they should have known the first, second and third time they had to pick me up from school, fresh from my after-school chalkboard sessions on 6th grade long division with Mrs. Misenheimer. But, it didn't stop them from having us visit.

But, my cousin and I figured since the T stopped there on the way in to Boston that we owed it a visit. The funny thing was seeing it from a standing vantage point, versus the floor of the blue van. Even funnier? How familiar it felt, walking through the Yard.

That's when I realized (like MIT the day before), I was familiar with the campus only through the movies. The first thing I thought of when I saw Widener Library was With Honors with cuteboy Brendan Fraser. Fabulous movie.

Which lead to the running question for the weekend "Did you see the movie _____? That's where this was!!!!"

Which lead to the running answer for the weekend, "No," with an implied, damn, do you only know movies from the 80s and 90s?

So, yeah, the cousin hadn't seen Good Will Hunting, or With Honors which were the two that I thought for sure she'd have seen!

(She hadn't seen The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, either, which had nothing to do with Boston, I don't think, but yeah, we got to talking about Kurt Russell, too. Silly, I know. But don't you think she's better now for knowing that Kurt Russell was the last thing Walt Disney was thinking about before he passed away?)

We spent the next hour or so walking around, joining random tours and taking pictures with random statues (of which we should have thought twice about the posing with John Harvard, it brings added meaning to our pitstop). Contrary to the smart/not smart MIT trip yesterday, I found myself way more intrigued by this campus...of course, it helped that we joined a tour right when it was talking about the the history of Massachusetts Hall, where John Adams, John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and James Otis lived back in the day.

Seeing their old dorm fit right in with the rest of the morning's Freedom Trailing.

Sigh. I love Boston, it truly is the most historic town in America...and way better when seen from foot, than the floor of the blue van.

The joy axiom

Magnet #974 - MIT

For the most part, I'm a relatively intelligent chick, I think. But my downfall is and always will be anything having to do with numbers. Anything. Whether it's counting blocks or figuring out 20% tip, I cannot do it.

So, today, when we roamed the hallowed halls of MIT, land of the smaht people, I felt pretty unsmaht. Particularly at the student stores cash register, when I looked across the room and stared for a bit figuring out the "May The m x a Be With You." on the wall.

First, I got distracted by the random initial caps of the phrase and wondered who did a such a silly thing. Second, I was like why didn't they just use "force." And finally, the light went on in my head for mass times acceleration. (In my defense, I never took physics. Shut it. I've lived to my mid-30s without taking it. I'm fine.)

Anyway, my cousin (who is exceedingly smarter than yours truly, I'm learning) and I did the self-guided tour which took us all around the campus from the classrooms and labs to Gehry's Stata Center and the fun student union. (Also in my defense, I knew that this piece in the Stata was an Anish Kapoor before I saw the placard, which also made me feel a little smarter.)

Though, honestly, aside from the student stores thing, I probably would have felt a little more intimidated on campus, had we not taken a stroll down the Infinite Corridor of this building on this magnet. In addition to the fun exhibit on fonts (no, really) and on strobes (no, really), the halls were lined bulletin boards with all their fun things to do, and once I got a load of the student life activities, I pretty much stopped being intimidated.

That's what MIT Quidditch(!), the MIT Marching Band (with Strolling Strings!), the MIT Gilbert & Sullivan Players, and the MIT anime library collection (the largest in America!) will do for ya. I kinda thought, oh, wouldn't it be fun to be at MIT.

But then I remembered the joy axiom:

If it has numbers, no.

Wait. Is that a postulate? Definitely a fact, not theorem.

Sigh. I hated Geometry.