MIT Freshman Year Recap — Spring Semester
Hi, this is Pari! I just finished my first year as an undergraduate at MIT and have shared some of my experiences throughout the fall semester during MIT’s Independent Activities Period (IAP) in the linked blog posts. Through this post, I hope to share some of the highlights from this past spring semester. I hope to divide this blog post into different sections covering academics, research, and social life. Now, getting into it!
Academics
Academically, I took 5 courses, totaling 60 units per week. This was on the upper end of what an average workload at MIT would be and it was definitely evident throughout the semester. Coming out of my first fall semester’s Pass/No Record grading system, it was a bit difficult to adjust.
These are the courses I took:
6.1010 (6.009) (Fundamentals of Programming): Standard programming class in Python. Having taken 6.100A in the fall, this class built on the basic Python knowledge and consisted of many, many labs that applied Python to various different scenarios–such as audio and image manipulation, creating a minesweeper game implementation, building a Scheme interpreter, and [many] more. There were about two hours of in-class instruction for this class, but I did spend the majority of my time in the evenings during the week at office hours for this class.
6.1200 (6.042) (Mathematics for CS): This class was an introduction to discrete mathematics. It was a bit difficult to grasp, especially because I wasn’t able to attend all in-person lectures because of class conflicts with 21L.020. I also spent quite a bit of time in office hours for this class to understand what was being taught and to work through the problems on the PSETs.
7.05 (General Biochemistry): This was my second higher-level biology class at MIT, after genetics. Compared to genetics, this class was way more fast-paced and challenging, but also more fun. Through going to office hours and lectures where I got to talk with the professors, other students, and TAs, I felt more integrated into the BE community at MIT. This class was time-consuming but also probably a favorite.
8.02 (Electricity and Magnetism): This was a standard General Institute Requirement (GIR) class, following in the track of taking 8.01 first semester. Attendance was mandatory and the learning sequences were long, but I had scheduled class at a later time in the day, so it was more engaging. While the demos and experiments were sometimes confusing, they were definitely cool!
21L.020 (Globalization: The Good, The Bad, and the In-Between): This class fulfilled a humanities, writing, and program requirement, and it sounded interesting. This class primarily consisted of readings for homework that would then be discussed, dissected, adn contextualized in class. It was interesting but it could also often take up quite a bit of time. For my final project in this class, I researched medical tourism in the context of globalization which was interesting! Below is our final presentation :)
Clubs
Throughout this semester, I also joined and tried out various new clubs such as SAAS (South Asian Association for Students), SWE (Society of Women Engineers), etc. It was fun to learn about and engage with different communities and organize events.
I also continued my research at the Broad Institute, learning to apply the concepts I learned in my biochemistry class and carrying out more wet labs to build hands-on experiences.
City Experiences
I also spent a lot of time this past semester exploring Cambridge and Boston more, from Boston Public Library to Frog Pond to Central Square.
Here is a compilation of pictures highlighting the places I visited and events throughout the semester!
