June 28, 2022: Last Day :(

Last day of MOP 🙁

During breakfast, MK mentioned that she was somehow added to the talent show program for presenting the superlatives, but she wasn’t really sure what to do for presenting it as she hadn’t even planned to do so at the talent show in the first place. We ended up making a slideshow, each slide containing someone who won a superlative and a bunch of photos of them. It was really stressful because though I’ve been taking a bunch of photos throughout my time at MOP, it was still difficult finding enough for everyone who won a superlative. 

MK told me that she got some hundred or so superlative suggestions. Most of those suggestions she received in the middle of the night on Saturday. I wOndEr wHy.

Classes

When we entered the red classroom, we found all the blackboards covered with “It’s Morbin Time” and various variations of it. Apparently, HZ decided to spend thirty minutes last night doing this because he was bored :P.

The first class of the day was counting in two ways, taught by OS. We sort of did a competition. We split into two groups. For the first thirty minutes or so, we worked on solving the questions, and then for the rest of the time, we “challenged” the other team to solve a problem that we’ve solved. If they could solve and present it, they got a point, if they couldn’t, your team got a point and had to present it.

At least, that was what OS told us to do. In reality, it sort of… degenerated. For instance, we drew a L-directed graph at Turtle.

During the break, I visited all the classrooms. When I visited Green, I discovered that somehow, IZ had managed to fall asleep in the midst of the ruckus of Green break. Also, LZ decided to write “IZ is so sexy” on the whiteboard and credit it to DX. Then she did one for SR, as well (That is, attributing, ah, admiration on the whiteboard to DX)

The second class of the day was “Just do it,” taught by AS. It was very fun. The essence of the technique is when trying to prove that a sequence or set of some form exists, just… do it. Just start constructing such a set. I know it sounds simple and a bit stupid, but it’s actually really cool.

Superlative Work

After classes ended, we went to lunch. There were once again some water bottle shenanigans, but I can by no means do justice to it. Go read DX‘s blog for a really really good description of it, it’s absolutely fantastic <3

During lunch, we went up to the top of Egg Shoppe. MK and I kept working on the slideshow for superlatives. We didn’t actually finish it during lunch, so I worked on it on my phone as I walked to the assembly (and a bit during the assembly, too).

Some of the highlights of the superlatives: most likely to lose the game, honorable mention was Alice, who does not exist; my slideshow for “most social” consisted of a bunch of photos with the same five people; JC was both “most likely to be arrested” and “most likely to date two people in two weeks,” not to mention that in the forms, people misspelled his name in six different ways (one of which being “Jeff has a hat?!”); honorable mention for “most mature” was FYe; and clearly, Po would be the most likely to survive the hunger games because he’d spend all his screen time doing story time and all the sponsors would want to keep him alive. And just imagine: blood and gore and, like, the Hunger Games as a whole filling the screen and then, the scene changes. Po sits, smiling and waving. “Just remember. Achievements do not define you. Just remember that people love and care about you!”

Midday Wanderings

The assembly was SO COOL! We did a Q&A with the Grant Sanderson, 3Blue1Brown oRz, and we saw his kiTTy!!!!!! He was very friendly. LR asked what he would suggest for a math video podcast :PPP *thonk*

After the assembly, we all gathered out on the steps to take a huge MOP group photo. IZ and I sat in the front and did splits! It was horrible because we had to sit still for minutes and the ground was actually on fire. Eventually, we finished, dumped some water on MK, and then sat there for at least fifteen minutes trying to figure out what to do. We considered returning to Stever, but singing troupe practice was in less than an hour and very close to Doherty. We considered climbing a tree, but honestly, it was just far too hot outside. 

Eventually, we went back into Doherty and wandered around until we found an empty classroom, where we just sprawled and sat on the desks and relaxed (and I kept working on those superlatives slides). 

We left an offering of a few chalk drawings of turtles in the room.

Singing Troupe

Once the time for singing troupe drew close (by which I mean “once it was past 3:30”), we begrudgingly peeled ourselves off the desks and trudged out into the muggy world outside.

Somehow, though, Turtle arrived later than us! Haaaa.

After singing troupe (during which DX, RQ, and LR, DD, AR, KWu sang while lying on the ground), we had another dance practice! However, I wanted to help Turtle carry the piano back to Stever, first, so I did that with RW.

Sidetracked in Stever

Once I reached Stever, I got sidetracked by a bunch of shirts piled on a table in the main lounge. DebL told us that they’re giving out old MOP T-shirts because they have too many! So RW and I started digging through that treasure trove. We each claimed a shirt from years begone, and then I found a blue MOP tie! It was really cute, so I decided to put it on right there.

I went and begged JG to help tie my tie and I felt very classy, particularly in that golden shirt of mine. Then I started bouncing all over the walls again but that’s okay, it’s still cLasSy.

After that, RW and I tried to get something from the vending machine downstairs in Stever. However, after she put in her money, it just spat out a bunch of quarters, and then when she put in the quarters, nothing came out until we whacked the machine a few times, at which point the quarters that she put in came rolling out. It was rather bad. Eventually, we switched to another vending machine and RW finally got a drink, so that was good.

Lost in the Building

Then, the two of us began to walk to the activities room in Cohon. RW often watches us dance, but she never dances with us. She often just sits in the meditation room and works on a puzzle in there or draws. She’s a really great artist. She’s also really good at Chinese and we like to have arguments in Chinese like we’re sisters arguing over how the younger should clearly respect and listen to the elder, and how RW is clearly wrong when she says that the elder should spoil the younger.

The thing about Cohon is that apparently, it’s huge. There’s an entrance near the intersection, which was the door I took to go to the SIAM conference, and there’s an entrance near Resnik, which was the door we took to go to activities room the last few times (this was also where Entropy was).

This time, we took the intersection entrance because it was closer and then we…couldn’t find the activities room.

At all. 

We wandered around there for at least fifteen minutes, tried to phone EB and EW to no success, and finally managed to stumble into the activities room. >:(

Then we practiced some more! 

Talent Show

After a lot of dancing, we went to dinner. I worked yet more on the slideshow. It was mostly done, but some of the slides needed just a bit more photos. Then, we started walking to the talent show, and I finished the slideshow in the nick of time!

The talent show was really cool! The acts, grouped, were:

• The ones I was in: 
  • Singing troupe
  • K-pop
  • Dance (but because the sound wasn’t working, I didn’t do the dance until after the talent show ended, when we all went to Tepper and I performed in the middle of the lobby there)
  • Superlatives
• Piano
  • Brahms Intermezzo by TZ
  • Variations on a Popular Theme (aka Among Us Theme made classical) by EC
• The funny ones (or at least attempts at funny, anyway)
  • Stand-up Comedy by HJ and HZ (they made a slideshow that the other never saw before the talent show and then the other Henry had to improv an explanation of it)
  • Black MOP Skit
  • Grader Skit
  • A song by HJ (Dinosaur Pee was an eloquent reflection on water)
  • Working by RG, AGu, KC, and LH. (a parody of Life is Good)
  • Mitchell Lee’s Card Trick by ESh and his volunteer, FYe. An annual talent in which the magician randomly picks one of the cards and asks, “Is this your card?” Some day, it’ll succeed. Some day.
  • ASGS, a card game in which players try to get the best hand of four and must justify why it is best. 2469 is an auto-win, as 246 is an arithmetic sequence and 469 is a geometric sequence.
  • Not Sus Clapping, in which they clapped to the beat of the following song. 
• Impressive (and not in a prior group)
  • Naming every MOPper by AZ
  • Table abuse by CH (in which she did table flipping, which is solving a rubik’s cube using only one hand and a table)
• Awards

After the talent show, we went to Tepper to finish some of the acts because there were a few acts that we couldn’t get around to.

After that, we returned to Stever. On the way, DX and IZ got in a water bottle duel.

DebL announced that the curfew was to be extended from 11:00 PM to 10:59 PM.

And thus the all-nighter officially COMMENCED.

ALL-NIGHTER!

The Game

First, I wandered around a bit and discovered that the pre-college RAs were creating WELCOME signs to post on each floor. It was very cool. I helped, by which I mean I hung around and chatted a bit. Then we reached the second floor and I abandoned the RAs because I knew the TJs were on that floor.

I thus joined the TJs for a game of The Game on the second floor lounge. Essentially, The Game is a collaborative game in which we have four decks, two ascending, two descending, beginning at 2 100s and 2 1s, and we wanted to place all the numbers between 1 and 100 on one of those decks. There are some extra rules, but that’s the gist of the game.

We lost the game :(.

Food

After that, Turtle showed up drinking from a bottle. We were all like, tURtlE! (Except me, I had trust in him) And he was like, “This is ale.” And then I was also like, tURtlE!!! (He’s underage) And he was like, “Ginger ale.”

Then, I did some more wandering and eventually discovered IZ and VH having a spicy instant ramen face-off. IZ was very good: she ate the instant ramen with skill and speed and came out seemingly unaffected, while VH was most affected.

Fish

Afterward, Turtle and I went and played Fish in the fifth-floor study room with KS, VH, RW, and AGe. It was Turtle‘s first ever game of Fish! We’ve been begging him for eternities to play with us (we even thought about renaming it to “Turtle” to get him to play) but he’s always refused. This time, RW bribed him this morning by saying that she would join Singing Troupe again if he would play Fish with us. RW quit Singing Troupe in the first place because she was mad at Turtle, EB, and EW. When she told me she quit Singing Troupe, I thought it was because the activity ruined her voice, as she had mentioned many times. Then she told me it wasn’t the singing, it was the dehydration that did that :P.

Turtle was really rather, uh, not good at Fish. In fact, none of us were really good because we were all very sleep-deprived. There were many things that we should have remembered but didn’t. Then I started doing the self-portrait guessing form and became even more unfocused. KS, who was teamed with Turtle and RW, was, I think, very irritated with all of us.

The self-portrait thing is, essentially, as follows: each participant must pick a photo that they think represents themselves (not a profile picture or actual photo of themselves) and then everyone else guesses who is who. After the Fish game ended, AGe, VH, and I started working together to guess. We did quite well, ending up with all three of us being one off from one another and as the top three guessers.

Some fun self-portraits were: DX, who picked clipart of a dead person because he thought DIE was so cool; VT, who picked a grid of colorful squares because he was so interested in the hunter and invisible rabbit problem; JC, who had a box of cashews; AR, who had a mole; HZ, who has said many times that he’s here at MOP for the free food, had a plate of Resnik food; EC had OMMC; EW, who picked a pyramid of oranges, something that he stacked a few years ago before he met JC, who has oranges as his profile pic.

The Hat

Then, I did some more wandering around, this time wondering as I did so where in the world JC‘s hat was. When I spoke this wonder out loud, I was told that, a week ago, someone (possibly DD) took the hat and then put it on the table where VivL was sitting. As such, I then went and asked VivL, but though she remembered its existence, she didn’t know who took it. So I was at a bit of a loss trying to figure out where it was. I felt really rather bad that Jeff was probably going to lose the hat. Though I wasn’t yet sure if I’d return it or just keep it (if I ended up finding it).

It was the world’s greatest mystery. This hat, being bright blue, should theoretically have been a beacon in the darkness, color in a colorless world, a flickering candle at the end of a tunnel.

Instead, it had disappeared into the wind, a phantom of the night. Not even that, as phantoms’ glow stands out at night. It was a speck of white paint on a white canvas. 

And then EW told me that he, or more specifically, his roommate, had it the entire time?

So I was like EEEWWW!!!!

And so I wandered up to his room and peeked in (he and his roommate, who was JLef, were both not in the room). I’m not sure what I was expecting: a spotlight shining down on a red cushion upon which sat the hat? Because I didn’t find that.

I wandered downstairs and MLu or someone told me that JLef didn’t have the hat anymore, so after yet more wandering, I gave it up as a bad job. 

Morning Walk

After that, I went downstairs, did a bit more vlogging, got some coffee from the vending machine because I thought that was the appropriate thing to do at an all-nighter, bounced off the walls, and, with a crowd of many many people, went out for a morning walk! It was 2:17 am but that’s fine, the best time for a social excursion is always!

First, we went to Doherty because apparently, LR wanted to show us all a geo problem. A bunch of people decided to ditch that (though JW and JC and their lot of friends ditched because they didn’t want it spoiled, which was a good reason, unlike me, who just wished to not do math at early in the morning). DD, DX, and I somehow, completely by chance, ended up in the classroom the TJs visited just a few hours ago (by a different door, too). We told DD that we actually visited this classroom and drew the turtles at the start of camp because, being clairvoyant, we knew we would come here on the last day. DD was like, “Really?!”

No, DD. If you still believe us, then no, not really. We are not, in fact, clairvoyant, and, in fact, we did not even know about Turtle’s obsession with turtles back then. We were fresh-faced, clueless little kids back then, and now we have grown into sheep indoctrinated in the chant of “I Lost the Game” (kid=small goats~small sheep, pun fully intended). 

After that, we left Doherty, and somehow, everyone ended up on the track outside Resnik. And by “everyone,” I mean that everyone who got sidetracked in various rooms somehow ended up at the track at the same time, without communication? Some people ran a few laps around the track, others stared at the sky and stargazed, HJ apparently attempted to act as some kind of top and spin around on the ground on all fours, and eventually, we all started to sing “Let it go.” We never got to sing it during the talent show because we ran out of time, so this was the first time we sang it today! I did the whole unravel braid thing like in the movie and it was very fun.

After spending an hour on the track, we returned to Stever. While standing at the intersection between Morewood and Forbes, we spent at least ten minutes discussing what to do next (whether to keep wandering around outside or return to the dorm) until eventually, we went to the dorm simply by virtue of never making a decision. At around 4 am, we started singing songs (mostly singing troupe songs) around the piano as Turtle played the piano. IZ fell asleep as we were singing (at around 4:44 am) and only woke up as we were singing “Another Day of Sun” because it’s just such a great song, no bias at all.

Sunrise

We sang until the sunrise, at which point we decided to go and watch the sunrise. All of us TJs set out for the sunrise, but MK and IZ were running too fast and, when we turned the corner, they were suddenly gone (along with the huge group that we were supposed to be with).

So RQ, LC, DX, LZ, and I wandered a bit, took a left turn, and then found ourselves on a huge grass lawn, otherwise known as a golf court. We took some troll photos, some good photos, and a great group photo! Eventually, after taking an absurd amount of time to cross the grass, we ended up in front of some visitor’s center or other and realized that the sun had basically completely risen.

We decided that we were, in fact, hungry (despite the overload of snacks we ate during the all-nighter), so after realizing that basically nothing was open at 6 am, we went to get bagels at Squirrel Hill. Somehow, we’d managed to get halfway to Squirrel Hill, yet it still took a good half hour before we reached food.

Once we got our hungry hands (which makes it sound like our hands are horror movie characters and can actually eat but it’s okay, it’s funny) upon the bagels, we devoured them. They were very delicious.

By the time we returned to CMU, it was 7:45. We spent some time chilling on top of a pillar taller than us which required a great Herculian effort to climb. Eventually, we got off of it and returned to Stever.

Hat p2

Now, remember that hat that JC supposedly owns? After returning from the sunrise, I was told that apparently the hat left with the 4 am bus. ESl had it!!! Mmeeeh.

In the discord channel a while ago, someone sent “objectively correct” responses to the superlatives. For instance, “sexiest” was objectively SR and, apparently, “Has JC‘s hat” was objectively ESl. I suppose I should’ve actually listened :(.

(ESl and JC are both going to SPARC, so he’ll probably get it back eventually.)

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And so MOP ended, with hugs and love and suitcases for all. I hugged more people in that last day than I did in months. I’ll miss y’all, may we meet some day soon!

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(Sorry, the link you want for “Working” is here)