Chapter Thirteen, The Mother Son College Odyssey

Eli and I are sitting in a big lecture hall at MIT, waiting for the official information session. We’ve been reading through the orange brochure they hand out: “The Exploration Equation,” and have gleaned all kinds of fun facts about MIT. There’s a glass blowing studio here (something Eli’s wanted to do forever if only he had the time), a world-class nanotechnology lab, one long hallway that connects many of the campus buildings—called the Infinite Corridor. There’s a science fiction library with 90% of the science fiction titles ever published in English. And a corridor in Building 56 spotlights the greatest hacks—or pranks—engineered by MIT students—including disassembling and reassembling a police car on top of a very high dome at the top of a campus building—all in one night.

There are more than 300 clubs on campus, including of course, the origami club, the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Club, the Lindy Hop society and the juggling club. Clearly the people at MIT work hard and like to have fun. The words in the brochure stress things like, “irrepressible creativity,” “quirkiness,” “off-beat” and “ingenious.”

The info session is about to start. Eli is sitting beside me folding a piece of silver foil paper. There are a few hundred parents and kids in this room—parents with high hopes, kids with top test scores and a legacy of achievement. I can feel the stress and tension in the room—racheted up more here than at any other place we’ve visited. Its palpable. I can feel it. I’m sure many of the kids in this room have had their whole lives orchestrated to get them into this school. That’s scary.

Andy drove us over this morning and dropped us off, and on the way, he told us that there are no class rankings at MIT—just graduating from MIT is enough.

Chapter Twelve, The Mother Son College Odyssey

8:30 AM: Eli has now been sleeping for more than 12 hours. Remarkable! I’ve been up for an hour, editing the manuscript I brought with me. I, too, have fallen behind in my homework. Since I got off the airplane, I’ve barely looked at any of the work I hoped to do here.

Today, Eli has a date to meet Thomas Lipoma, an MIT junior from Santa Cruz. We were given Thomas’s contact info by Eli’s college counselor in Santa Cruz, and Thomas has generously offered to meet Eli at 1:00 on Easter Sunday.

Eli has wanted to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since he was 13 when we attended an international origami conference in New York City. Another of the world’s foremost folders, Erik Demaine, is a brilliant, young math professor at MIT. Around him, there is a cluster of top folders affiliated with the institution—students, grad students and professors. They were the group of young men signing up to learn to make--or to teach--all the super complex models at the New York conference. Eli sat side by side with them, folding his heart out and he’s dreamed of going to MIT ever since.

It will be interesting to see if Eli's interest holds when he actually visits the place. MIT is a completely urban institution—right in the center of Cambridge. It doesn’t have a lovely campus like Swarthmore, it isn’t a small liberal arts institution; it’s a world-renowned school of technology. It’s big. It’s intense. It’s demanding. And it’s very, very hard to get in to. Even if he falls in love with it after our two days visiting, applying to MIT is like taking a lottery number—there’s only a slim chance that he’ll get in. A crap shoot.

Chapter Eleven, The Mother Son College Odyssey

Eli hit a wall last night. It was after midnight. He’d been sitting in the bathroom, talking with his girlfriend, Ashley, on the phone for an hour or so. I’d been catching up on episodes of Grey’s Anatomy on Hulu on my laptop. Our hosts had long since gone to bed. I’d been nagging Eli to get off the phone. I could hear his side of the conversation through the walls and it was keeping me awake. I wanted to go to sleep, but I also wanted the two of them to be able to talk—this will be the longest the two of them have been separated since they started dating, a year and a half ago.

When Eli finally came to bed, he was in a panic over the homework that was piling up during this trip. “I’ll never get into all these colleges we’re visiting if I flunk all my APs. Do you realize my APs are three weeks after I get home from this trip?”

In addition to his spring break, Eli will have missed a whole week of school by the time we get home next Friday. Missing a week of school as a junior with AP Bio, AP Physics, Calc BC, AP US History and English on your plate means missing a lot. Until last night, the undone work was out of sight, out of mind. But Ashley, who shares A-Push (AP US History) with him, reminded him of everything they’ve been covering in his absence. Reminded him of all the the fun his friends are having at home that he is missing. Reminded him that he is here touring colleges, instead of enjoying spring break at home.

Chapter Ten, The Mother Son College Odyssey

Friday night....Eli and I are holed up at Diane and Paula’s house is Melrose, a suburb of Boston. Diane and I were friends as babies and went to Sunday school together in first grade. It's a great bonus of this trip to see old friends along the way. Diane and I just made a stir-fry with brown rice. I’m SO happy to eat some real, simple, home-cooked food instead of another meal in a restaurant.  It’s 8 PM and I’m already in my flannel PJs with my teeth brushed.

Today Eli and I both slept in-me, till 9:30 and he, until 11:00. We started the day relaxed, but then got lost trying to find Brown. Apparently there are two different places in Providence that share the address 45 Prospect Street. We picked the wrong one. I got a little testy with Eli, and he did with me, for the first time this trip, once we realized we were lost. Once we reprogrammed the GPS, and got going in the right direction, the tension dissolved.

The only other time Eli snapped at me was one day when I didn't feed him fast enough. Some things never change.

We had lunch in a little falafel joint on Thayer Street that our friend Nona recommended. She got her PhD at Brown a decade ago and she gave us great advice. I had four of the best falafel balls I’ve ever had and a terrific serving of smoky baba ganoush. Eli had some kind of wrapped steak sandwich. I paid $6 bucks to park in the only guest parking lot on the Brown campus, we walked over to Admissions to get a map and headed over, with a thousand other people (I kid you not) to a big hall for the Admissions lecture. Eli’s first reaction: “I don’t like this place. There’s no campus.”