My Complicated Love Affair with MIT… and That Special Somethin’ That Was Missing

It was my dream to come to MIT since I was in 5th grade. When I visited MIT for the first time as junior in high school, I just fell even deeper in love. And I very much still remember the day when I got my acceptance letter (though it wasn’t nearly as cool as the ones used today). So when I showed up to start classes here, I was a little surprised to find that not everyone loved MIT as much as me.

Tech is Hell

In fact, it seemed the longer somebody had been here the more they strongly disliked MIT. The place was nicknamed “Hell” and the acronym we used to express how much we hated it got five letters when most only got three. Upperclassmen told me that “MIT teaches you to hate the things you love” and it was taken for granted that the primary emotion of seniors (if not juniors) was bitterness. What on earth was going on? This was supposed to be the greatest place on earth for us nerds! Continue reading

Allow Myself to Introduce… Myself…

I was a perhaps a bit hasty in introducing myself in my first post. There’s probably more that my multitudes of readers want to know about me.

I should probably say a bit about my chaplaincy. I am the Blue Ocean Faith Chaplain here at MIT. Blue Ocean is a small and very new collection of churches with, what I find to be, a refreshingly simple (yet deeply thoughtful) approach to faith in God.

My big hope for my chaplaincy is that I can help everyone at MIT to thrive spiritually—with no pressure to change their religious affiliation or lack thereof. And I’ve promised to hazard some embryonic ideas about how this might happen in upcoming posts. Continue reading