Hi, Im New Here

Hi, I’m New Here This past Sunday night, my friend Hanna 10 and I did our first radio show with WMBR, MITs campus radio station. Our shows pretty straightforward, actually play some good music for people to enjoy while they work on their psets due the next morning, crack a bad joke or two (and when were on a roll, even the occasional good one), put on long stretches of music when weve run out of nervous banter and cant think of anything to do but yell, OH MY GOD WEVE NEVER DONE THIS BEFORE WHAT NOW WHAT NOW WHAT NOW?!, all that. Of course, we both ran around panicking like little girls for about a week beforehand. What if we screwed up every three seconds and ended up with more dead air than anything else in our two-hour set? What if we both sounded like bumbling idiots on the air would anyone be convinced if we said it was due to a severe lack of social skills (um, yeah! Thats right! We never really learned how to talk to people or into microphones), or would they see through our lies and realize that we had absolutely no clue what was going on? What if our music collections really arent that good at all? Anyone looking for their college radio fix at midnight on a Sunday would be subjected to two hours of torture from us, and the following backlash would be so immense that wed be known as those two frosh who somehow managed to ruin the reputation of the entire radio station all in one go. Great. Now look what wed up and done. What were they thinking when they gave us the time slot in the first place?! Didn t they realize what they were about to do? Irrational, you say? Um, sure. Go on ahead. We prefer the term fixated now it sounds like there isnt anything wrong at all! Perfect. I promise, Im not insanely worried about everything this way. With that said, Ill leave you to wonder whether or not this blog is eliciting the same level of panic while I introduce myself. My name is Keri Garel, and Im a member of the class of 2010. (Yeah. Im new here. Lets hear it for built-in excuses for not knowing whats going on!) I was born in Jamaica, but I moved to the Miami/Fort Lauderdale area in Florida at age seven. (Kellas 10 from England, who lives a floor above me, says this makes me half an international student. I dont agree. Yet.) Notice the aforementioned locations. Jamaica. Florida and the very tip of it at that. Im still struggling to understand this concept of it being cold (whaaaaaaat?!); Ive never even seen snow, so its a sure bet that Ill be the girl running around in the courtyard screaming at the first sign of flakes. Yes, Ill do it even if there are only maybe three and a half of them and they melt before they even reach the ground. Its the principle of the thing. I live in Senior Haus, which is awesome. (You mean I dont live on Conner 2? Wow, and there you were thinking that it was a prerequisite to be a blogger by now, what with these three cool people living there.) We host Steer Roast every year. We have a tire swing. Enough said. Among other activities, I was a devoted slave to my high schools Drama Club, acting in plays and musicals for two years before I switched to the dark side and became a techie. (Power tools are my friend.) This has carried over to college, where Im a cast member of the Musical Theatre Guilds fall production of Children of Eden. They cast me as Young Cain, which only reinforces the fact that no matter how seventeen I am, the rest of the world will still be convinced that Im twelve. In addition to MTG, Im in the middle of training to become one of MITs Medlinks. I sit with this blogger while we learn about how to deal with everything from cuts and scrapes to stress and alcohol poisoning. From midnight to 2 AM on Sundays, theres the radio show I went to pieces about earlier. Its actually pretty good, but we werent convinced of that until the end of the first show. Things happen that way sometimes, you know? I have a general idea of what I want to do with my life, also known as a double major in Courses 9 (Brain and Cognitive Sciences) and 5 (Chemistry). Then again, a million people come here with a set plan in mind and they end up changing their minds entirely, so who knows? Im hoping that this will give me the necessary background to go into cancer research and become a lab monkey, making me quite possibly the only frosh in course 9 who doesnt want to go to med school. I like brains. I like chem. Upperclassmen have said that 9/5 is a reasonable possibility. If they turn out to be wrong, though, its absolutely fine. This is MIT. Many of us have spent years being told that we were the best and smartest people ever ever ever, and that wont hold when were with four thousand other students just like us. I dont have to be the best at everything. Neither do you. Its kind of a relief, actually. Everyone else has done one of those lets give you a random fact or twelve about me things, and now that its my turn, Ive blanked almost entirely. I do, however, like pie. A lot. Its a running joke with nearly everyone I know, actually. They announced me that way at one point during my high school graduation Keri likes pie. Formal, that one. I also do ballet on the side, and Im just getting into photography. Theyre fun. Do those count? So with a far-too-long introduction, youve all been sucked into my freshman year at MIT. I could tell you what happens next, but that would just spoil the surprise. Also, I dont know about it myself, but if I pretend I do, then you just might believe me. Or not. But lets humor me here. Please.