Through My Eyes
Women, how many cows are you worth? Men, how many cows would you be willing to pay as a dowry for your wife? Two? Three? How about forty? How many of your wife’s extended family members would you be willing to support? My last day in Kenya, I was invited to have tea with the directors, chairmen, and head staff of the Association for the Physically Disabled of Kenya (APDK). They invited me to hear about my accomplishments during the week, what I hoped to do with the information and media I had obtained, a reflection of my visit, and my personal future plans. The issue of gender arose as we spoke about my desire to become a surgeon. Surprisingly, the differences in the role of women in East Africa versus in the United States turned out to be mainly based around the concept of dowries.
Brouhaha Rhythm
I’m going to miss spring break. I realize that’s true for all but the most masochistic among us, but after such a long and lustrous on-campus vacation, telling myself to return to the academic schedule is like asking Robinson Crusoe to vacation in the Bahamas. He’ll do it, but don’t expect him to leap for joy at the opportunity. Especially not after he’s had a week to get used to sitting at home eating processed snack foods and leftover pizza in front of a perpetual YouTube header.
Couture 101 Figuring Out Fashion
When most people think of fashion, they don’t picture this column or the average trip to the mall. Instead, they think of the glamorous world of couture, replete with catwalks and coat hanger-thin models, wearing outrageously impractical creations and strutting among crowds of high-brow socialites. Though this world exists, it has not been the focus of this column, as it is a world none of us will likely ever inhabit. What goes on there, however, does have a direct impact on the clothes we wear. So we decided to take a peek into that world to see why people care at all about designers, fashion shows, and the trends they bring.
Ramblings From Hell
I spend eight hours of my week in the undergraduate chemistry labs on the fourth floor of Building 4. If you are not Course 5, 10 with a minor in 5, or premed, I will now share with you a little secret: the labs are disgusting.
Rants and Raves
It was the beginning of my junior year, just four short semesters until my day of liberation from this stress inducing hell we call MIT. Wait … It was my JUNIOR YEAR, and I had no idea what I want to do with my life. I had to figure out my life plan just like all my other ’09 friends had already done. I needed to get an internship this summer and get ready to apply to grad schools or get a job next year. I needed to know what I was going to do, and I needed to know NOW.
Brouhaha Rhythm
On the long and not-so-distinguished list of things that we do even though we know we shouldn’t, daydreaming is bound to be in the top ten. Daydreams, also known as longings, fantasies, or delusions (depending on the subject matter), serve as a way of withdrawing from the world around us. We daydream because we’re uncomfortable, or because we’re bored, or because we think that the person sitting in the next row in math class is attractive enough to merit additional mental attention.
Figuring Out Fashion
With all the shopping we’ve done for Figuring Out Fashion, we found ourselves with a new trouble — waking up in the morning, staggering in a daze to get dressed, and finding so many choices, colors, and styles that we would just throw on the first thing we could see. We quickly realized we needed to simplify our morning routine by building a base of, well, basics. Comfortable clothes that always look put together without much effort. Here’s the list we came up with:
Ask A TA
This week features a fairly serious question that I think many of us have had to contemplate before. While normally we pride ourselves on answering questions we’re absolutely unqualified to handle, this week actually features knowledgeable answers from experienced TAs. As always, if you have any questions, e-mail us at <i>AskaTA@tech.mit.edu</i>.
Rants & Raves
When I first arrived at MIT, I went to a few graduate student orientation events to meet my new schoolmates and find out more about what other students at MIT were up to. While many were already too inebriated to speak or understand anything coherently, I did talk to quite a few new faces. The conversations went mostly like this.
It’s a Big, Big World
Every morning in Bangalore, my host father, Prabhakara, awoke at 6 a.m. to select fruits and vegetables from a freshly stocked sidewalk stand on the main road of Thyagarajanagar, his residential neighborhood. Afterward he stopped by a local restaurant to pick up warm idli (a white rice cake) or masala dosas that were neatly packaged in one sheet of thin wax paper, newspaper, and string. After his morning exercises and prayers, he prepared breakfast: sliced apples and carrot sticks, idli and chutney (think Indian salsa), homemade roti (flat bread) and curry, or my favorite — scrambled eggs packed with chopped vegetables and spices. Each morning I was greeted with a cup of chai tea and a food-filled circular metal plate with a vertical rim that I used to wipe away excess food from my eating hand.
Brouhaha Rhythms
Decorating my dorm room poses a peculiar problem. On the one hand, I don’t trust myself to nail anything to the wall that won’t bleed. On the other, the surfaces in my dorm, for some cosmic reason, are incompatible with duct tape and render it completely unsticky — which, if what you’re trying to hang is a) above your head, and b) heavy, is bad.