#splash mit

It's that time of the year where MIT opens up its campus to thousands of students.  The college students, many of them from MIT or Brown, are there to teach workshops on topics from Circular Gallifreyan to Sex Ed to Advanced Calculus.  The students are there to pack as many classes as possible into a twelve-hour day.

Last year was my first year as a Splash! student.  I was overwhelmed by two things: first, the passions of the teachers, teaching subjects they were passionate about to share knowledge, not gain money or recognition, and second the freedom we were granted.  We had complete run of the campus.  One lovely hour was spent wandering through the hard sciences wing, completely lost but soaking in the fascinating displays and posters.  "Introduction to Classic Doctor Who" is not given priority over "Quantum Mechanics".  I'm sure I learned more in my energetic and fun Doctor Who class about the television business than I would have from a physics course taught in a monotone.  The flexibility, academically and other wise, was incredible.

The other thing that has always impressed me was the  kaleidoscope of humans that show up to Splash.  There was the goth girl who played violin for a dance class, the Muslim girl in hijab in my poetry class.  Every slice of humanity was represented through a few thousand twelve-to-twenty-two year olds.  I remember telling my mom last year that if school was like Splash!, I would go.