Day 60: Commencement

Lesson learned today: sleeping through alarms and phone calls due to karaoke-induced exhaustion and therefore arriving three hours late to your MIT graduation does not mean you cannot walk. It did, for me, mean that people were worried, but also that I got to stand in the shade with friends for 60 minutes rather than sit in the beating hot sun with people I barely knew for three hours and then slip into the line to walk across the stage to receive my diploma.


It was a beautiful day until about 3pm, well after graduation was finished.  Commencement at MIT is held in Killian Court, the lawn in front of the dome on Memorial Drive, on the Charles River.  Absolute perfection for a graduation ceremony in which everyone, undergrads included, gets to walk, so there is a lot of watching and waiting.

After graduation, I did a brief stroll around campus with the friends who came (E., T., and two of my roomies), which was lovely and resulted in many pictures.  Then to BCS, for a brief reception, and back home for some rest. Z. cooked one of my favorites, mac and cheese, for dinner, which was great, and then we all met up with some folks from my choir for the monthly karaoke sesh at Charles Playhouse.  Great end to a somewhat stressful day.

Cheers to MIT for being organized enough to remember to call the name of the girl who overslept by about three hours.

Day 58: MIT Optical

Today was yet another reminder of how things just WORK at MIT. Though I walk at graduation this week, the date on my diploma will say that technically I graduated in February, 2012. I'm not sure if it's just because MIT is fantastic to their alums or because I haven't really left the system due to graduation being later in the week, but at any rate, I am still in their system for pretty much everything other than health insurance (I guess you have to draw the line somewhere, right?).  Meaning that my card access still works, I still have space in the graduate lounge of the building I used to work in, and my student ID doesn't even expire until sometime in 2013.

Today I took advantage of one of those perks and stopped by MIT optical.  I had broken my glasses a couple of weeks back but kept putting off having them fixed because I was scared of what the cost might be.  So I meandered over to the student center on Mass Ave (anyway can go in there, not just MIT students) and headed to the basement where MIT Optical is located.  I have never actually purchased eyewear from the store, but the guys who work there are as sweet as can be and will give your glasses a "tuneup" for free (i.e., cleaning/tightening etc.). Usually my problem is that my glasses are too loose and fall off my face, but this time I was told that my glasses busted apart when dropped because they were too tight. The method the guy described for fixing them sounded pretty intense, I'll admit, so I was a little worried it would be kinda pricey. Newp. Five bucks.

Apart from relieving myself of eyewear, I also picked up commencement tickets. Not yet sure who is going to be able to make it, but they are pretty tickets [see above], so I have high hopes for the ceremony.