Interphase

Interphase Its ironic that I post this entry now Matt just posted an entry about deferring for a year, and here I am giving you information on how you can get to MIT significantly before September. Well, the choices are yours. Soon youll be getting The Next Big Mailing, (or have you gotten it already?) with lots of information aboutthingsTo be honest, I never really read through all that paperwork MIT sent out there was so much of it! Anyway. I had fellow Senior House resident Milena write an entry for you guys on one of many summer opportunities for you guys Project Interphase. *Summer is quickly approaching, and I’m guessing you prefrosh are trying to figure out the best way to spend that last summer before you come to MIT and get screwed over by the tsunami of work that is a term at MIT. For some of you, this might entail working a part-time at the mall scooping fro-yo for snotty little kids or watching people unfold shirts and throw them back with the rest of the neatly folded shirts that took you forever to get right. Some of you might decide that you worked your pretty little butts off during high school and you need a nice, long summer to, uh, recover from all that hard work. (Right we all know you’re trying to catch those I Love New York marathons!) Well, rounding it up, some of you might also be so freaking excited over going to college that you wouldn’t mind (or, heck, you’d give your left pinkie for) getting an early start. And that’s where the OME comes in! The Office of Minority Education (more commonly known as the OMEâ€"you know how we abbreviate everything!) sponsors a summer program for incoming freshmen called Interphase. And now some QA, ranging from somewhat inane to completely relevant! Just so you don’t have to :-) 1) How long does Interphase last? Interphase starts at the end of June and goes until mid-August. So I’d say it lasts for about 7-8 weeks. Plenty of time before and after Interphase to catch those marathons on VH1! (It’s OK, we’re cool here, you can profess your undying love for trashy TV!) 2) How much does going to Interphase cost? A summer at Interphase will set you back a total of Nada! On the house! The OME sponsors the program, which means you only have to pay for your laundry and your frivolous expenses (mine were shoes and dining out, but hey, don’t judge!). On top of free housing, you get a little plastic card with a very nice amount of Tech Cash on it to spend on foodâ€"sorry kids, it doesn’t work at the Coop or the laundry machines. 3) What exactly do students do in Interphase? Well, just about everything normal students at MIT do. You take four classesâ€"calculus, mechanics, chemistry and writingâ€", have p-set parties, order take-out from campusfood.com and go out to Boston during the weekends, among other things. Also, every other weekend, you’ll go somewhere to do something fun (my year we went to Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard). The OME plans cool things for the students to do even on campus, such as basketball games against the MITES people, talent shows (I opened bottles with my mouth as my talent!), and parties. AND you also get to take the swim test early and take a PE (there was sailing, swimming, tennis and some other stuff my year). 4) But Milena, isn’t it all the hardcore people who live and breathe school the ones that do Interphase?! Why would a normal person like me want to take classes during the summer!? Well, first off, dear prefrosh, let me start that deliciously cold shower for you and help you wake up: odds are, if you go to MIT, you are not, at least in one way, normal. You’re smarter than most of the world population! Just the kind of person who would get excited over the prospect of eight more weeks of school! Lame jokes aside, no, it’s not all hardcore people at Interphase. Sure, there are some, but that’s just part of, uh, having a group of 80 people that accurately represents the demographics at MIT. Most of the people I met were refreshingly normal: they bitch about p-sets, and they bond over bitching! Sounds fun, right? Most people at Interphase are simply trying to ease the transition from high school to college without having it count for creditâ€"which brings me to 5) Do the grades I earn during Interphase actually count for anything? Well yes, and no. For every class you pass (i.e., get a C average or higher), you get two units of general elective credit (or whatever it’s called). Basically, you use those units in case you need them to complete the X number of units you need in order to graduate. The grades you get will NOT earn you class credit, so even if you passed that mechanics class with an A++, you don’t have any 8.01x credit until you take the Advanced Standing Exam during orientation week and pass it. That said, the instructors really go out of their way to make sure you learn enough so that, with a little more prep, you actually stand a chance at passing the ASE. But above all things, Interphase is just a really good way of “practicing” taking the class. You cover pretty much the same stuff you’d do during term if anything, it’s a little watered down, reason being it’s summer and you can’t cram a term of work into seven weeks. The exams you take are comparable to what you’d see during term, so it’s also a good way to gauge how good your study habits/exam-taking skills are. 6) Is it fun? Yes! I thought Interphase was loads of fun, when it wasn’t stressful, just the way MIT usually is. I met my best friends during Interphase some of them were my classmates, some were my TA’s, but either way, they were all undergrads! You also get to meet lots of different kinds of people that you’d never think you’d interact with, which I personally think is really interesting. The possibilities are endless when it comes to having fun; my friends and I were particularly fond of going to Briggs Field at midnight and playing with the sprinklers! 7) I don’t want to come off as insensitive, but what do I get out of Interphase? Ah, I knew this was going to come up. We always wonder what we can get out of situations! Well, you ask, I dish it. You’ll get a unique summer that only 80 people in every class get to experience. Very useful connections, if you’re into social networking and the sort. But I believe the most useful thing you’ll get out of Interphase is the strong sense of community the students and faculty build over the summer. Each Interphase class is one big support system, and even though everybody’s really different and not everybody gets along with everybody, they (we) all help each other. Interphase sets up a mailing list over the summer (meant for sending out memos) that, come term, doubles as a support group during term where you can send out emails at 4am asking about that 7.013 p-set and people will email you back with helpful hints. So this, in my opinion, is the beauty of Interphase. 8) What if you totally did not address all of my burning questions and I have more to ask of you? Well, you can do one (or more) of the following: *Check out the OME website here *Email the OME! I am not sure of who’s handling the Program this year, so I’ll be very generic and direct you to ome(at)mit(dot)edu * For non-logistics-related questions, and if you want an honest answer from someone who’s been there, you can email Karen at kfig at mit dot edu and she’ll forward your questions to me. So, what are YOU doing this Summer? Post Tagged #Interphase EDGE