A bit of explanation is probably in order. I’m a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. All male members of the church have the opportunity to, when they are nineteen, spend two years of their lives proselytizing. (Girls can go when they are 21 if they so desire.) When you apply, you are not asked your preference on where you would prefer to serve. You can be assigned to anywhere in the world except for the Middle East and China. You pay for the mission primarily out of your own pocket, although aid is available to help those who need it. You are not allowed to travel outside the area of your mission for any reason. The only contact you have with the outside world is through letters, emails to family members, and a phone call to your family twice a year — at Christmas and Mother’s Day. You wear a suit and tie every day except when you are doing service or activities that would mess up your suit. Every day is spent proselyting except for one day a week in which you can do laundry, write letters, etc. You go everywhere with a companion. You can only listen to uplifting music and read church approved books.

That gives you a general idea of what the mission is like. Of course I’ve only told you all the rules, but that’s really all I know of right now. Yes, it is completely intense and I sound like I’m possibly totally crazy, but I believe it will be worth it.

I decided in February that this was something I wanted to do. It took a lot of pondering and weighing options, but I finally decided to go. I submitted my application in late July, received my assignment in mid August, and am leaving on September 22. I report to the Missionary Training Center for three weeks of training and then I head out to my mission area. The Tacoma, Washington mission covers the entire north-western corner of Washington state and my two years will be spent in different areas within the mission, changing on a semi-regular basis. Once I get off my mission in August 2012, I will return home, pack up my stuff for college, and then head back to MIT.

So why am I doing this? I believe that it will be something good for me. I believe that I will grow as a person from seeing new places and meeting new people. I believe that I will be able to develop new skills — like learning how to talk to literally anybody. I believe that I will be able to develop my character after spending two years talking to people about how to make their lives better. And finally, I hope that the time I will spend will help someone to find a little more happiness and joy in their lives.

Tennis was a lot of fun. I couldn’t play tennis when I started, and I still can’t play tennis. I’ve finally gotten the scoring down, but only after a night of playing ping-pong with a friend using tennis scoring. (Unorthodox I know.) I don’t see tennis being a big part of my future, although I might take it again just to see if I can improve.

I really enjoyed pistol. It’s one of the popular classes offered, so I was lucky to get in. I went to the pistol range twice a week and shot at a target. I actually got to be pretty decent at it (unlike tennis). Below I’ve included two photos of some of my targets from the class.

Here are my two targets from our final match, which I won!

Here are targets from a regular class.

A prom invitation appeared on the Dome during campus preview weekend.

A hack on the roof of lobby 7 celebrating the opening of CERN.

This bunny hack happened on one of the official posters for the Mechanical Engineering Department.

I'm not 100% sure this counts as a hack, but it's on the chalkboards of one of the classrooms.

Also during the 2010 campus preview weekend: This room appeared strapped to the top of a large arch on campus.

Those are all the photos I have. There were some other notable hacks however such as the bandaid on the dome after construction finished, the musical notes on the scaffolding around the dome, and the fuse on the roof of lobby 7 advertising a party.

Note: There is one other hack on this page. Points if you can find it.

Edit: Below is a photo of the notes on the dome courtesy of my friend Aubrey.

Musical notes on the scaffolding around the dome during construction.

In the spring, they changed to flowers!

Some highlights:

Intro to Programming class (6.00). I started out writing simple programs computing interest, and I thought that they were sooo hard! After the course of the semester, I ended up writing programs to simulate the spread of viruses in a person and word games like TextTwist (http://get.games.yahoo.com/proddesc?gamekey=texttwist). Hopefully I’ll find a way to post some code on the internet so you guys can play it. Summer project.

2.00b — Toy Product Design. This class was a lot of fun. During the course of a semester, I was on a team that started from nothing, developed a concept, built prototypes that brought it to a polished idea, and presented it before an audience of hundreds. I’ll be doing a post on that later.

My UROP (Undergraduate Research OPportunity). I helped to build robots for an opera that’s being put on in Monaco in September. (http://opera.media.mit.edu/projects/deathandthepowers/index.php) It’s been really cool, and I’ll be working on it over the summer, so you’ll be hearing more about this, too.

So keep reading, and I’ll be more regular.

• 8.02 — Electricity and Magnetism
• 18.02 — Multi-variable Calculus
• 6.00 — Intro to Computer Programming
• 2.00b — Toy Product Design
• MAS.111 — Intro to Research Writing

They should all be pretty good classes. I’m particularly excited for 2.00b and 6.00. This semester should be a good one.