Speaking of procrastination, I should probably get to writing about something that I should’ve written months ago: what happened at MPfG?
Ok, so. Where do I start?
MPfG, or Math Prize for Girls, is a semi-invitational girls-only invitational math competition held at MIT in early October. Two of my friends from my school (Soar and MHG, if you recall those pseudonyms from “Chronicles of Thievery”) also went this year. Soar, her dad, and I happened to be on the same plane flight over to MIT, so while we sat waiting in the airport, we pranked another friend by texting him from both our phones and constantly switching, to confuse him about who he was actually talking to.
But anyway, onto more important things: DAY 0, wherein I mostly talk about my brother!
Day 0
The Search for a Brother
We got to Boston very early morning on October 8th, staying in the lobby of the hotel Soar and her dad were staying in (the hotel was conveniently right outside the MIT/Kendall Station, so though the three of us were basically walking zombies at six in the morning, we managed to make it there safely, with all our limbs intact), listening to Taylor Swift and reading Mistborn, until ten. That was when my brother, Jason, woke up, supposedly, and Soar+parental figure would be able to get into their room soon, so I decided to go bother Jason.
Jason’s an MIT student living on campus. He told me a few days before the trip that he’d treat me to a wonderful, absolutely gourmet and fancy meal at his dorm’s dining hall, by which he meant he’d sneak me in and I could eat an omelet, or something :p. Thus, once it struck ten, I hopped out of my seat on the lobby couch and rushed off in search of him.
The thing about MIT, though, is that it might be a school recognized for its STEM and logic, but apparently it’s very bad at applying it. For instance, my brother’s dorm room has wiggly, non-straight concrete walls and 19 whole windows. Each window opens individually, but some of the cranks that open the windows are broken. Jason, employing the absolutely stellar engineering skills he’s learned at college, pokes a fork stolen from the dining hall through black foam insulating the windows to close it. He has another interesting use for said forks, as well. Sometimes, when he forgets the key to his dorm room, he can stick a fork into a tiny gap between the door and the doorway to somehow leverage the door open.
Not to say I don’t still love MIT. It’s just apparently very lovably ridiculous.
The point is, their naming system is also a tad confusing. They mainly use letter-number combinations to denote the buildings—his dorm, for instance, is Building W79—and a lot of the buildings are basically only referred to by their letter-number combination. As an outsider visiting for a competition, however, I did not know these letter-number combinations. Instead, I just went on Google Maps and searched “Simmons.” That’s what my brother always called his dorm, so I figured I couldn’t go wrong searching for that.
Maps gave me “Simmons University.” For a moment, I thought the “university” part might’ve just been a quirky name, to symbolize that the dorm was the whole university experience, or something? But I highly doubted my brother walks an hour every day just to get from his dorm to the campus, so I tossed that option.
After that, I thought perhaps I’d misspelled the name and it was supposed to be some variation on “Simon.” And, lo and behold! Right there on MIT’s campus, a mere 11 minutes away: “The Simons Building.”
Skipping and singing, I made my way toward Simons Building. But once I reached it, I was once again struck by a momentary confusion. At that moment, I’d forgotten about Jason’s 19 windows, but I did remember it being somehow extremely wonky. This building didn’t look wonky. It was big, and white, and looked far too grand to live in. It looked a bit like a mausoleum, in my utterly uncultured architectural opinion. (I’d later learn that it’s Building 2, home of math).
I thought about trying to get in, anyway, because I didn’t want to have come all that way for nothing. After gazing at the Charles River for a few seconds, however, I decided that being able to take a morning walk by the river was enough of a something that it wasn’t nothing, so I touristed for a few minutes, taking photos of the river.
After I decided I’d been roasted enough by the too-hot sun, I decided to give Maps one more chance at redemption. Third time’s the charm, right?
Yes, indeed. The third time was the charm, and fifteen minutes later, after jaywalking, taking a shortcut across a sports field, and being immensely proud of myself for recognizing Taylor Swift songs from a radio (because I never recognize songs), I was standing in front of what my phone claimed was “Simmons Hall.”
And I knew without a doubt: this goofy, walking advertisement of a Tetris game must contain my goofy, walking Wall Street advertisement of a brother (because basically every math or science competition he’s ever done gives out free Jane Street or Citadel merch).
Now that I’d finally found the dorm, all that was left to do was to get in. I texted Jason to let me in, but when he didn’t magically appear in, like, a minute, I started wandering around Simmons Hall, looking for a way in. I discovered some sort of open garage on the left side of the building, so I walked in from there and rode the elevator up to the second floor. (I now suspect that it was some sort of loading area to the kitchen, so I was possibly not supposed to use it. oops :p)
I know I’ve already talked a bit about how utterly confusing the architecture of Simmons Hall is, but let me just expound on it a bit more. It took me five minutes to even find stairs, which I could only find in the lounges on each floor. This meant that in order to take the stairs, I had to find the lobby on a given floor, take the stairs, and then find the next lobby, which was never in the same place. Not to mention, because of those holes cut out of the building like giant slices of cheese, the only floors on which you can actually cross from one side of the building are floors 1, 2, 5, and 6. If anything, Simmons Hall is so wonky it’s like a modernized version of Hogwarts. The stairs might not actually move around, but they’re so annoying to find it’s close enough to that, anyway. They have Hogwarts references all over the place, with the elevators labeled as “HOGWARTS EXPRESS 9¾” and random Dumbledore quotes on the windows.
After bouncing around between the second, third, and fourth floors for a bit longer, I took a different elevator down to the first floor, finding myself in the downstairs lobby. I poked my head into the dining hall, but couldn’t find any convenient “Jason sits here” signs. I then started asking around for my brother, specifically trying to ask the people who looked like they were probably nerdier because I couldn’t imagine Jason befriending jocks. Sadly, all MIT students are nerds, so it didn’t exactly narrow anything down, and none of the people I asked knew who Jason was. Eventually, I wandered back towards the lobby, and standing there, silhouetted in the bright morning sun, was “JASON!!!!!”
Brother Found!!
I flying-tackled him. Very disappointingly, we did not do the movie cliche thing of spinning around. Neither did he fall, which I was less disappointed by even though it would’ve been very satisfactorily dramatic. Then I rambled at him about how poor Simmons security was if I could get in on my own, he told me to lower my voice and we went upstairs to his dorm.
After a quick meet-and-greet with his roommate and poking around at all his stuff (he has such a ridiculous amount of merch from Wall Street companies though, it’s honestly ridiculous), we went downstairs for the promised dining hall meal.
Apparently, Jason and his roommate always get the same omelets every weekend. The omelet chef was like, “Your usual?” and they were like, “Yep!” and that conversation was over. I basically bounced over and asked his name and Jason was like, “Ah, yes. This little child is my sister visiting from Nevada,” and the chef was like, “Nevada! Cool! What’s it like living in a desert?”
Because apparently Jason sees the chef every weekend and he knows their orders but Jason doesn’t know his name and the chef doesn’t know Jason’s name or his Nevadan origins or, like, anything at all??????????
like
hOnEsTlY jAsOn?!?!
I fully expect you to read this, Jason, and feel my incredulousness through the screen. Or Dad can just read it to you and convey my disbelief.
because like
jAsOn. sErIoUsLy. Once someone knows your order, you really ought to know their name. And vice versa.
Anyway, once we finished getting our food and sitting down, Jason and his roommate got into a heated debate about what counts as a berry. Or, I suppose it wasn’t so much a debate as me guessing what they defined as a berry and them cheerfully telling me nonsense. Scientific nonsense, of course, because they were basing it solely upon the scientific definition of a berry. Apparently, blueberries, bananas, cranberries, tomatoes, and peppers are berries, while strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries are not. Wheat is also a berry, so they then began calling noodles “noodleberries.” This means a vegetarian stirfry could be made entirely from berries. Imagine that: you could eat a bowl of noodles and it’d just be a fruit salad! How incredibly healthy.
After that, we went upstairs again. Jason had homework, but being the bestest, awesomest, most wonderfulest older brother, he decided to entertain me, instead. He and his roommate played a few rounds of Anomia and Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes with me. Then, for some reason, I took a selfie with his carpet. At around 1:30 pm, I left Jason so I could go to MPfG registration, which was open from 2 pm to 6 pm that day. On my way over, I may have possibly gotten lost a tiny bit, though to be fair, the setup of the building was very confusing and it was quite hard to find anything. I thought I saw Soar and her dad walking in front of me because there was a short Asian girl and a taller Asian man who was probably a parent. However, after calling Soar’s name three or four times and getting no reaction, I realized that it probably wasn’t Soar and ducked onto another road, whistling and pretending I was never so silly as to call out to a random stranger on the street. After all, considering at least 90% of MPfG contestants are short Asian girls and probably at least 30% of them were accompanied by a male parent, it really wasn’t a surprise the person I saw wasn’t Soar.
Registration
Eventually, I managed to find the registration place, which was in the lobby of the Welcome Center (Building E38, 1st floor). I got some lovely merch (Jane Street playing cards, Jane Street T-shirt, MPfG T-shirt, and MPfG backpack, gosh rich competitions are the best) and then started goofing around with a chalkboard. The organizers had set up a lovely blackboard where students could write what states they’re from and somehow connect over that, so clearly, I had to write a quick WCBC (west coast best coast) smack dab in the center.
It’s a bit of a MOP thing or maybe just a general math-kid thing. For some reason, a lot of the people I know get weirdly fired up about which coast is the best. I never used to care and thought it was quite silly, but like, after spending a month with people intensely concerned with coast superiority, it’s hard not to get caught up in it.
Soon, MHG and Soar also arrived at registration, along with MOP girls, g2 campers, and DC TAs (the LIVE program, but it originated from Daily Challenge with Po-Shen Loh so we call it DC).
It’s pretty interesting, honestly. If it hadn’t been for MOP, I probably wouldn’t know basically anyone, because I only got into g2 (or even heard about g2) because of MOP. I would still know the DC TAs, but it wouldn’t be particularly well since I’m bad at actually checking discord. It’s nice to know all these people, though. Like, the last time I went to MPfG (the year before the pandemic struck), literally, the only people I knew were MHG and JW (back then, I knew JW mainly because her brother made MOP the same year Jason did, so our mothers hit it off, even though our fathers were the ones who actually went to MOP together that year). The experience was fun, but a lot different from this year, when there were people I could catch up with.
To commemorate MOP memories, a few of the MOPpers decided to switch name tags. I traded with EB, and I honestly don’t remember how the rest of the switching went because it was too long ago.
Once some of the other MOP girls showed up, though, the coast wars truly began. EB (who’d died her hair orange) wrote the totally and absolutely false claim of “East coast best coast” (seriously, it doesn’t even rhyme!). KS showed up and helped buff up the WCBC side. There was some scrambling over the chalk, dropping the chalk and thus breaking it, and sabotaging previously written claims such as “East coast best coast” into “East coast NOT best coast.” By the time we finished, the chalk was fine dust, the blackboard was a mess, and a huge beaver mascot was standing there, clucking at us in disapproval.
The huge beaver mascot then tried to get us to sing the “MIT Beaver Call” with her and went through a whole, like, cheerleading routine, to our very lackluster applause. We were all very confused by how she could be so enthusiastic (I’ve asked my brother and he’s never heard of this song before, lol). The song went as follows:
I’m a beaver. You’re a beaver. We are beavers all.
And when we get together, we do the beaver call!
E to the u du dx,
E to the x, dx.
Cosine, secant, tangent, sine,
3 point 1 4 1 5 9.
Integral, radical, mu, dv
Slipstick, sliderule, MIT!
Go Tech!
Why Should You Go to MIT?
Anyways. Then, around 2:30ish, we filed into the neighboring auditorium to listen to MIT Admissions Office information session. I’ve actually already listened to this information session twice (once during the last MPfG and once when Jason was kind of doing a college tour sort of thing the summer before his senior year, and I tagged along, though granted I’m still not sure why he did that because he only applied to MIT and Caltech anyway), so I didn’t pay as much attention as I probably should have. Instead, I was working on creating a piece of art on my watch: namely, I was trying to create a Memoji of MHG on my watch. I’d already made one of the friend that Soar and I were pranking on the plane flight over, as well as Soar. After finishing MHG’s memoji, I did one of Jason and my chaos gremlin friend (who I mentioned in the introduction to “Chronicles of Thievery”), who I should really figure out a pseudonym for.
Then came the actual tour part of this MIT school tour. I don’t remember much about it except being tired and somewhat impatiently waiting for it to be over because we were doing a MOP+g2+athemath meet-up somewhere in the East Campus dorm, and MHG being an absolute saint and putting up with my incredibly annoying complaints.
Once the tour ended (5 pm ish), MHG and I went to East Campus, where the lovely people who’d set up the meeting had a bunch of free boba! Turtle was there!! I stole Turtle’s yellow bucket hat, but I was already wearing a visor, so clearly, I had to layer the two hats. Then, I played a game that I think VH or KS made up called Turtle with RW, Turtle (obviously), EB, LZ, VH, and KS. There was a chaotic group selfie with everyone at the meet-up/party thing where I might have fallen off a couch, but at least my boba didn’t spill so all was fine.
Game Night
Around 6 pm, we set out for Game Night in Building E38. Technically, the schedule says that Game Night was only in the Hacker Reactor (Building E38, 7th floor), but apparently, the space wasn’t large enough and they used the space on the 5th floor, as well. There was some chaos when I forgot my backpack in East Campus, so I had to go back to get it, but then I lost MHG because I couldn’t find where she’d been waiting for me and thought maybe she’d gone ahead because she thought I’d gone ahead? So I walked with EB and EW to Building E38, but then MHG called me and I realized she was waiting for me and then I went back, and then couldn’t find her and then found her and anyway, eventually we got to the Hacker Reactor after far too much confusion.
Game Night itself was quite fun! The food was okay, with good chips (because chips, in general, are good, you’d have to mess up royally to have bad chips). I sat with MHG and Soar. After eating, we got to the “games” portion of the night! Soar went to play some Figgie, a Jane Street game about trading, so I went to join her. Since a Jane Street representative had only just taught the game to us, though, none of us were actually any good. Some people were trading cards for 20 or 30 chips and other people were taking those offers, even though no card should ever be worth more than 20. Like, ever.
After Figgie, I wandered around a bit, ate some food, and found the MOPpers. The thing about math-ers (but particularly MOPpers), apparently, is that we love going places we’re not supposed to be. At MOP, for instance, we snuck onto the fifth floor and had a sleepover. At g2, it was the second floor that we weren’t supposed to visit, but of course, we did that anyway. At MPfG, we all flocked to a random conference room on the sixth floor to play Nertz with far too many people (RW, SLu, KS, VH, AGe, and like, people from g2 I haven’t actually mentioned anywhere on here yet). As more and more people started to join us and the conference room became a tiny bit too full (and it may have become a tiny bit perilous for the various fragile objects around the room, such as the TV and the glass wall), we realized that it would probably not be great if people found us here. Like, sure, they probably wouldn’t kick us all out, but also, was it worth risking?
So we dispersed, and soon afterward, Game Night was also over.
Winding Down
After Game Night, I had to go to Jason’s dorm first because I’d left a lot of stuff in his room. Essentially, MPfG gave competitors two options for how to stay for MPfG. We could either come with a parent and stay at a hotel or we could come alone and they’d set us up with an MIT student hosting us in their dorm. I went with the dorm option. Interestingly, the host they set me up with is actually one of the people Jason knows at school. Even more interestingly, she actually has some sort of something going on somewhere (I know, very specific. I think that weekend she happened to be in New York or something?), so in reality, it was more like I was staying with her roommate. This meant my host’s bed would be unused and she’d actually told me I could use it, but it felt intrusive so I just slept on their air mattress instead. I was able to use some extra blankets and sheets that Jason had, so I had to go to his dorm before I went back to my host’s dorm in order to get that stuff.
It also just so happened that MHG was doing the dorm thing, as well, though her parent had still come to MIT with her. MHG’s host’s room was actually in the same building (Burton-Conner, which has suites with, like ten people per suite) on the same floor as mine, so MHG and her host walked with me on the way back from Game Night to Jason’s dorm to our dorm. It was pretty fun because MHG is an icon and actually talks to her host like social-ness, unlike me who knows nothing about either my host or my host’s roommate. Apparently, MHG’s host’s friend is ~dating the cousin of a famous K-pop idol. She also talked to us a bit about photography and journalism at college, and how there are opportunities to mAkE mOnEy from it.
Anyway, eventually, we got to the Burton-Conner and parted ways.
Lights out!