Trees, fashion, homework, and email.

I've been slowly composing this list just because I can't remember all the things that are different at once, which, I suppose is a little disappointing, since there's only 4 here. I don't spend all my time comparing my alma mater to my current situtation! Well, anyway, here are the few I've got right now. There are the obvious differences . . . like no really-tall-asian dude, and no integration bee, no spectacular IAP, and no dome dressed up to resemble the one ring which is also powered by solar energy. By the way, my little brother is in calculus right now, and when I was helping him with integration, I mentioned that MIT has an integration bee. He just blinked at me (incidentally, it was similar to the way I would have blinked at my professor from the last post...strange). But here's the list:

4. What they post on trees

At OU in certain nicely vegetated places, they have the trees labeled with their names for to better inform the public who are tree studying...or something. This, for instance, is the Chinese Pistache. Guess where it's from? China! sweet.

This is nice, and surprisingly scientific. MIT, on the other hand, has each of it's trees barcoded. (When I google image searched 'MIT trees barcode' in an effort to find a picture of said barcoded trees, I came across this picture. For young vegetables, too! gotta love German ad campaigns)

3. The presence of fashion.

I'm not saying whether that's a good or a bad thing, but I am saying that I had a whole conversation with my Peruvian labmate about whether or not he should buy more shirts from Hollister and Abercrombie. I told him he could, but that I would make fun of him if he did. I don't think he really knows why. His undergraduate lab assistant and I have been teching him fun words like tacky, preppy, sketchy, and hobag. haha. There's also the possibility that he's reading this. Hey Israel! Say hello to my friends from MIT and also possibly members of my family! I have also started wearing some interesting fashions. I really like the show Bones, and the main character is a kick-ass nerdy girl heroine, and I love it! I also really like her style, so I went out and bought a few brown jackets. Unfortunately, Oklahoma gets unbearably hot in the summer, and I'm sure I'll be leaving those brown jackets at home pretty soon.

2. Pset/homework

I want to preface this one by saying that I was prepared here! I was looking out for this difference. I realized that MIT has some weird slang 'hack, punt, pset, toad sexing, etc.' and I wasn't about to complain to my labmate about how I really wanted to punt this next pset. I noticed the professors sometimes used the work 'set' or 'homework set' or even 'problem set,' but I knew that didn't mean the students did. So I thought I would do a little experiment. I planned to use the word 'Pset' and if I got a funny look the first time, that meant it wasn't widely used, if I didn't, I was safe! So that's exactly what I did. I used the word, and the dude didn't even blink--"oh, it's due Friday." So I figured I was free and clear, no longer worried about it, and started using it. That's when the funny looks started. Turns out the guy on whom I ran the initial experiment had a friend at MIT who used the word, so he understood what the heck I meant. No one else did. And now I can't stop using it. I flipped the switch and now it won't go back. Good job, Kendall. Everyone knows a test group of 1 doesn't produce good results!

1. email/phone for get-togethers.

Uh, so I didn't know this was weird, but at MIT when you wanted to get together with someone--especially a group of people--you would email them all or even evite them all if it was a big party or something. Sometimes if you wanted to have lunch with someone, you'd still just email them, because you never know if you'll get them at a good time, or if they will have reception if they are in the main buildings, or if they are in class, or whatever! Here, I did that one time, and the guy thought it was hilarious. It makes me wonder if that is an MIT thing, or if we all were just technologically advanced or socially awkward or what! Anyway, they apparently do things by text message or like actually calling people here--weird.

Those are my observations thus far! And now I'm going to have a great Friday night. I hope you all do as well!