Bad Ideas

Bad Ideas On Friday morning, I walked into Lobby 7 to head up to the Edgerton Center, where I work most mornings. As usual, I looked up in Lobby 7, more as a perfunctory check than anything else, and low and behold, there actually was a hack there! Floating in the center of Lobby 7s dome was a model of MITs famous Green building. Interestingly enough, this model was embellished with a QR code. Now theoretically, if one were able to scan the code (unfortunately, the rippling surface of the fabric made the code hard to scan), one would have found this site: http://bad-ideas.mit.edu/ Bad Ideas Weekend is an annual event at East Campus every IAP where   people get the opportunity to implement all those bad ideas theyve had over the course of the year. Some of the events this year are: The worlds slowest game of Simon Says, running up the Green Building stairs for 4 hours, a Python Bee, a water war (in the middle of the snow), and a Nutella eating contest. Only at MIT. My weekend was unfortunately engulfed by other plans (one of which Ill blog about soon!) but I did manage to make my way over to East Campus for two events: Chocolate Chess and the Nutella eating contest. [Now that I think about it, this weekend was unintentionally chocolate themed. Awesome.] As a freshmen, I feel that its my personal responsibility to take advantage of every opportunity to get a full MIT experience. So Saturday afternoon, I wandered over to East Campus where I promptly got sucked into a Chocolate Chess tournament. Yes, those are chess pieces are edible. Yummy. Interestingly, the black set had a special Mermaid pawns. Not going to lie, I was a little jealous. Anyways, the idea behind chocolate chess was that each player had 8 minutes to eat the King i.e. win chess. But you had to completely chew the chocolate pieces you captured before you could stop the clock. You might be thinking, well thats not a bad idea. But my friend, you would be very wrong. Although I ended up losing the game to my formidable opponent, I still ate enough chocolate to have a nice sugar induced coma for a hour after the game. Nutella Eating Contest Unfortunately, I arrived to the Nutella eating contest a little late and only made it to the aftermath. But considering that I was only 10 minutes late and theyd already gotten rid of some of the containers, Id say it was a pretty awesome competition to watch. My photo of the aftermath: More chocolate deliciousness coming soon! Post Tagged #Bad Ideas Weekend Bad Ideas So this weekend, East Campus hosted the Bad Ideas Weekend, which can be more or less dangerous than it sounds, depending on your imagination. Personally, I find this a lot more exciting than Mystery Hunt. I mean, theres something to be said for watching people do really random, stupid, amusing things. For me, there is nothing to be said for locking yourself in a room for countless hours solving really hard puzzles on little to no sleep. But to each his own! Whatever floats your boat! Insert other clichés about tolerance here! Just wanted to point out that contrary to what the blogs seem to indicate, not everyone participates, or even intends to someday participate. Dont forget no matter what, there are always exceptions to rules here at good old M.I.T. Anyway, I wasnt really around for much of Bad Ideas, unfortunately. But I did make it a point to go to one event. Friends, this is the Green Building, home to EAPS/Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences/Course 12, and 54-100, one of the most uncomfortable lecture halls at MIT: The Green Building is something like 21 stories tall Im never really sure because, as you can see, the first floor doesnt exactly exist, but anyway, its the tallest building in Cambridge. You may be wondering where this is going. Bad Ideas? Green Building? No, we didnt throw anything (or anyone) off, though on Halloween, East Campus does use the Green Building for its annual Pumpkin Drop. The Bad Idea associated with the Green Building was running up the stairs as many times as you can in four hours (bananas and Gatorade provided at the top, and you take the elevator down). You would usually run for a team, and the team with the most runs gets the much-coveted title of Most Masochistic. Or something. Do you still think MIT sounds fun? ;) Anyway, I really only showed up to take pictures, but I made the mistake of going on time (silly me), so almost no one was there for the big start. And I kind of felt sorry for one of the people there, because she would have to run by herself, so I thought, well, what the heck. I ventured up. I took pictures of the scenery along the way. There were some motivational posters, because sometimes the MIT Crew Team (though I prefer cult :P) have to run up them for practice: And there were also some random amusing pictures on the wall, like caterpillars and dinosaurs: Despite the artwork on the walls, I still only did it once, because, well, running up stairs for four hours (though most people dont do it for the whole four hours) is just a Bad Idea. The weekend also consisted of a rat-trap building contest (contrary to what you may believe, the streets of MIT are not paved in gold. We do have rats. Large ones. But they live outside, so as long as you don’t go out at night by yourself, you should be okay ;), eating and cooking contests, live Mario Kart racing, and (what I regretted missing the most:) Velcro Gladiators. I’ve been incredibly busy lately as student groups try to fit in one last activity before IAP comes to an official close. I didn’t even have time to make it Karaoke Night with ATS tonight because I had so many other things to do! But rest assured, I have lots of cool stuff to talk about for the next few days, even though technically (and I’m really sorry to have to say this) IAP is already over for me. Harvard started classes today. Now that’s a bad idea. Post Tagged #Bad Ideas Weekend