Prospects for the future, a new blog tagline, and a cake!

Just over a month ago, I moved 3000 miles across the country to a new city.

And got to move in to my dream school.

Clearly my selfie angles need work. 

It seemed only appropriate to ring in this new period of my life with an appropriately-themed cake. Which my mom got to with a knife before I could with the camera...but you get the idea! 

This change of scenery, of course, will necessitate some radical changes in sewing and cooking habits. Fortunately, I don't have to give up sewing and cooking entirely. Mainly because MIT is an awesome school. For these reasons.


1) My dorm room is a single!!! And I'm a freshman!!! That's practically unheard of for US colleges. MIT has one dorm on campus that is almost entirely composed of singles, so if you're like me and you need occasionally privacy to function, you won't go stir-crazy within the first two weeks. ;) PLUS, no roommate means that, conceivably, I would have no one to bother if I decided to install a sewing machine in my room and get some garment-making done after I finish my homework...which would probably be after 3:00 in the morning. xD

2) There's actually a sewing room on campus.
Ok, it's more like a sewing closet. And based on the pictures I found online, its usage is not super advanced.

From the MIT housing website

(Though come to think of it, a portable backpack pillow sounds like just the thing...)

One of these days I'm going to have to make it over to the dorm in question and check it out!

3) Maker culture

When someone is building this in front of their dorm, I just don't think people would find me sewing in my room to be so terribly outlandish.

4) ...secondary only to food culture.

Food is a big deal at MIT.

At some of the other schools I toured, if I asked about the quality of the dining on campus, I got this dismissive look like "Ye naive peasant, we're too busy cogitating to concern ourselves with matters of the flesh!"

When I toured MIT, they offered me food.

That's when I knew I had found my people ;)

I mean really, the attention paid to and the sheer quantity of food around campus is kind of ridiculous. I'm so well-fed I don't think I actually paid for a meal during three weeks of Orientation. I even went to dinner at a frat that served me a free steak and lobster dinner. (Like we're talking an entire crustacean, ready for the dismembering.) Which is pretty remarkable considering that I'm not even a dude.

There's a big "free food" mentality around campus with people flocking to events that will feed them. During the prime of the school year, when the stream of low-cost sustenance starts to wear thin, you can actually sign up for a mailing list to have free-food@mit.edu shoot you an email whenever an opportunity arises. ;)

5) But if scavenging isn't your thing, cooking will be.

Yet another thing I love about MIT. Whereas most universities force you to purchase a huge, gut-stuffing, wallet-busting totally superfluous meal plan, MIT doesn't force you to buy a meal plan at all. Which is completely awesome because it means that *gasp* I'm cooking for myself this year!

EVERYTHING! Not just, like, cookies and granola!

It's going to be a challenge finding dishes that are reasonably restrained in terms of ingredients, prep time, and space (the kitchen I'm working with is itsy-bitsy) but I'm looking forward to it. I already made quinoa burgers the other week

and they turned out delicious. I've got some more delicious dishes planned for this week!

Plus, cooking communities around campus are really prevalent. I'm shopping for a great group of people to cook with!

5) And some exciting news...

Ok this isn't strictly related to sewing or cooking, but it is related to blogging so I thought I would share...

I AM NOW AN OFFICIAL MIT ADMISSIONS BLOGGER!!!

Here's my little official admissions avatar! Look familiar?

On their admissions page, MIT hosts an admissions blog with posts from current students writing about every aspect of their experience at MIT, from student life to academics to new opportunities to hacks to where to buy groceries to the cats that populate the pets-friendly floors of some of the dorms...and guess who's one of the newest writing recruits from the class of 2019!

Here's the link to my feed!

On the MIT blog, I'll be posting general stuff about my life at MIT. On this blog, I'll continue to post the excess of sewing- and cooking-related exuberance that MIT doesn't want to hear about.

Like I'm pretty sure most prospective MIT pre-frosh wouldn't totally care that I attended an event at Boston Fashion Week last weekend...(but you might ;D).

But that's a post for another day! Stay posted and cross your fingers for me that I don't get overwhelmed with homework and have time to post again soon!

Thought I would share a picture out my dorm room window. That's a view right over the Charles River right into downtown Boston. The view is AMAZING :)