Home and Tiiiiired

We just got home from MIT in Cambridge, MA a little bit ago. It was a great experience to be back there again, and be able to see and find out more about the school. My daughter was able to go to 3 classes (Chemistry, Physics and Calculus) and is excited looking forward to actually being there. We also toured some of the dorms. It was interesting, because they are all so different in style and personality. I know which 2 I liked best, but my daughter isn't sure. They do things different at MIT than they do at most schools. You submit your top 4 choices before school starts, and during the week of orientation (before classes start), you are assigned to a temporary dorm. If you like that, you can stay there. If not, you go check out all the other dorms, and put your name in a lottery to switch. At the end of that week, all the switching takes places. Apparently this system allows 96% of the students to get their top choice dorm.

As far as we know, there is only one other student from the valley who is going to MIT as a freshman in the fall, a boy from Dinuba about an hour from here. My daughter had found him through one of the MIT sites, and emailed him. The weird thing is we just happened to start talking to his dad at the student center, not knowing who he was. We were happy to have met them. Nice to feel like we weren't the only ones there from "home".

We did get to see a little of Boston, walking around Boston Common and doing some of the Freedom Trail, and had an awesome dinner at Legal Sea Food. Our hotel was about a 10 minute walk from the MIT campus, so it seems like we've walked about a dozen miles in the last couple days with all the tours, running all over the campus, and back and forth from the hotel.

When we left on Thursday, we got up at 2am, arrived at MIT around 7pm. We spent all day Friday and Saturday walking around the campus and Boston. Today, we got up at 3:30am PST, and got home around 8pm. UGH......I'm sooooo tired. I'm relieved to have this next week "off", though I somehow need to find some study time before we leave on Wednesday for Disneyland. My daughter's 18th birthday is on Thursday, and we scheduled this trip months ago to celebrate (long before we knew we'd be doing the MIT trip). We come back on Friday, my birthday is Saturday, and Easter is Sunday. And then Monday, school and normal life resumes. Doesn't seem like I'm going to be very productive this week. But that's ok. My kids come first, and this week is really about and for my daughter. I'm happy to celebrate her, and all her accomplishments!