All these days I spend away

All these days I spend away BREAKING NEWS: Stu Schmill 86 Named New Dean of Admissions go wish him congratulations! Shockingly, MIT does occasionally grant its students reprieve and respite from the constant deluge of problem sets, essays, and tests so commonly found throughout the dread halls of the Institute. These beautiful, glorious lulls come in a variety of flavors, ranging from ever-welcome three-day weekends to (most beloved of all) the month of relatively controlled insanity known as Independent Activities Period. As holidays go, Id say Spring Break falls somewhere in the high middle end of the spectrum. On the one hand, its an entire week without any class. But on the other hand, most professors still expect us to put in a reasonable amount of effort over the break. (Kind of like high school. Yeah, its sad.) Im not sure if my situation is representative of the MIT populace as a whole, but I have some amount of work to do or to get a head-start on in four of my five classes (the only class without any actual assignments is 5.12). For the past few days, though, Ive mostly been enjoying myself. I am, by the by, back home in South Bend. I use the word home somewhat hesitantly, becausewell, yes, South Bend certainly is my hometown. I was born here, I spent eighteen amazing years here. My house is here, as are my parents and all my siblings. Ive spent the past three nights in my own bed, in my own room, and it certainly still feels like home. But on one level, Ive come to realize South Bend is only really my second home now. My home-away-from-home, as it were. My real home, as strange as it sounds, is MIT. I didnt expect that to happen. Last year, if youd told me I would be writing these words, I probably would have just laughed you off. MIT, home? I would have told you that those words dont even belong in the same paragraph, let alone the same sentence. But its actually true. And in the long runI wouldnt want it to be any other way. I think this is part of the reason MIT gets so excited about Campus Preview Weekend. And when I say MIT, I dont just mean the Admissions Department and the other administrators in charge of planning CPW, I mean that the entire campus comes together to make CPW as enjoyable and awesome an experience as it possibly can be. Sure, maybe we complain a lot about how ridiculously challenging MIT is, about how hosed we all are all the timebut, paradoxically enough, were also ridiculously proud of our school, of the communities, cultures, and student groups we have helped create and CPW is our chance to show those off to you, to show you what MIT means to us. And, even more importantly, its your chance to discover if you really want to become part of MIT part of our culture, our communities, our traditionsin a word, our home. Because maybe, someday, MIT will be your home too.