If you are looking for something fun to do in the Boston area, consider going to MIT as a tourist. Even if you are not a high school senior shopping for colleges, you can take a walking tour around campus and through buildings.
The company Tradmark Tours offers several tours each day. A current MIT student (a PhD engineering candidate in our case) led my small group of visitors. Joining our group were an Israeli father and his son who is moving to Cambridge for biotech research, a Ukrainian tourist, and a Chinese exchange student and her Cape Cod-based host mother.
The tour route wound us through research buildings, robotics labs, classrooms and social spaces, while our guide described the university’s history and operations as well as his personal experience.
The tour route wound us through research buildings, robotics labs, classrooms and social spaces, while our guide described the university’s history and operations as well as his personal experience.
MIT showcases the whimsy of its hacker culture -- wickedly clever pranks on steroids. Plaques and exhibits pop up around campus commemorating the more notable ones. One morning in 1994, a police car appeared on top of the dome of the main building, to the amazement of all (except the pranksters). Apparently, the car got up there not by a crane, but by chopping it up and carrying little pieces one by one. The hackers climbed to the dome’s top and while there, put it back together.
We walked along a portion of the Infinite Tunnel, the spine of MIT's underground network.
The tour wasn’t canned. We strolled by the blacksmith shop (that's technology, right?) and lots of little offices with grad students hunched over robots and other science projects.
Optional stop to look at T-shirts. Smart ones, natch.
