The Internet is littered with quotes about how it’s the great questions and not the great answers that are important and shape history, science, and the universe as a whole. It’s not as if I had never thought about it; really, I had. I had just assumed this was talking about my research questions, the big important questions I could spend a lot of time crafting. I assumed those were the questions I was being judged on.

Then, last week, a good friend and fellow graduate student here noted mentioned that it’s always the really brilliant scientists who ask great questions in seminars. Flippantly, I told him I had noticed this, but once we got down to talking about how impressive it is that these scientists can watch a talk, absorb it, and then ask questions that propel research forward and really make you think, I realized I had not taken enough notice.

After a brief existential panic in which I convinced myself that I had never asked a good question and never will, I decided to practice and to pay more attention. I want to share what I’ve learned from this.

1) The impressive, big-wig scientists aren’t afraid to ask clarifying questions, even if they seem simple. I noticed that the scientists that I admire will ask during seminars or meetings very specific questions about what is going on to make sure they are following correctly. Trying this same tactic this week taught me two things. First, asking questions when you’re wondering about them helps clarify talks immensely and also saves the brainpower that you would have let fester wondering about that point for the rest of the talk. I realized this is sort of counter to how I approach questions in class, because I know I can go read a textbook or try homework problems later. This has helped me a lot while listening to lab talks and seminars. Second, sometimes those simple clarifying questions can be more interesting than you originally realize. If something seems confusing, it might also be because there is something complicated going on. And what complicated thing isn’t interesting?

2) Practicing asking questions isn’t as scary as it seems. I asked my very first question during our weekly departmental seminar this week. During the talk, one slide struck me as really interesting, so I decided to tuck it in the back of my head to ask about later. After making that decision, I spent about a quarter of my energy analyzing every later slide to make sure it didn’t invalidate or answer my question, but after all that, I still managed to raise my hand and ask it. And what do you know, I got an answer. It was a good answer and it was interesting. It gave me the courage to ask questions about the interesting things I found in another talk later in the week. Nothing catastrophic happened, except that I learned some new things and now have even more research ideas I don’t have time for than I did before.

3) Asking questions leads to interesting conversations. This may seem obvious, but after asking questions, in every case, I ended up having a great conversation later with the scientist who was speaking. I could wax poetic about science being about communication and questions being the gateway, or academia being about seeking knowledge, or I could be cynical about how scientists all want to talk about our work, but I don’t really know why those conversations happened or why they were so good (or if they were just a fluke!). The moral of the story is that as far as I’ve experienced in my short-lived experiment, asking questions produces some great results and I plan to keep trying to ask more questions! Practice makes perfect, right?

Ask A-theist is a column by Aaron Scheinberg G, an atheist, and Stephanie Lam G, a Christian, which uses contrasting worldviews to explore questions and misconceptions about philosophy and religion. This week, Stephanie chose the question. Send us the burning questions you have always wanted answered by an atheist or Christian (or both), and we’ll tackle them!

Q: Is there such a thing as absolute right and wrong? If so, where does it come from? If not, why is the idea of right and wrong engrained so deeply into our society, and in fact, almost every culture in the world?

All societies — even non-human ones — develop a code of behavior because any culture that didn’t condemn certain actions would quickly disintegrate. However, because we must make decisions every day about ambiguous situations, we often wish for reassurance and clarity beyond what our fellow humans can provide. The concept of absolute morality may placate our yearning for the external endorsement of our choices, but that doesn’t make it real.

In practice, we choose actions based on whether we believe they will help or hinder the realization of some larger goal. Secular morality is actually pretty straightforward: when choosing between two actions, we need only evaluate which choice better serves the goal of increasing human well-being and dignity.

Evidence-based reasoning enables that evaluation. Like science, the experience-based approach is imperfect but perpetually self-correcting. Because it cannot change and its authors didn’t share the same goal, the Bible has proven an unsuitable guide. For example, it doesn’t condemn all rape or slavery, except through creative interpretation clearly not intended by the authors and undertaken to conform to modern moral standards.

Why choose increasing humanity’s well-being as the goal to begin with? We choose it because we possess empathy. It’s part of my personality and yours too, shaped by nature and nurture alike. I have no desire to hurt others, and instead envision a world where suffering is minimal. In my experience, those who embrace love and eschew hate lead more contented lives.

Religious morality is ultimately goal-focused too; we just don’t know the goals ourselves — instead, ancient writing supposedly explains how we can do our part in a deity’s plan. But there are many biblical cases where Yahweh’s actions and commands directly conflict with the goal of increasing human well-being; for instance, when he exterminated mankind (including children, though sparing Noah’s ark). Would you willingly follow his orders if that increased suffering?

Literature, holy books included, may give us ideas for how to act morally, but those actions should be subject to reasoned analysis of whether they increase human well-being. Thankfully, most modern theists do just that and are comfortable disregarding the parts that are clearly incompatible with that goal. The alternative — blind attachment or submission to the moral judgments of others — is dangerous whether you’re a believer or not.

Intrinsically, most people are born knowing some actions are right and some wrong. Murder is wrong. Cheating is wrong. The atheist might say this is the result of evolution and personal empathy; a Christian would say this is the nature of God reflected in his created man. This leaves us with a chicken-and-egg problem — did our ideas of morality originate from man, who then extrapolated to a perfect good in the form of God, or did God, as the perfect lawgiver, imbue his created man with sensitivity to his laws? I don’t think we can so easily dismiss either option. However, evidence-based empathic secular morality is far from a silver bullet. Nor is it superior to faith-based morality.

Without God and an absolute law, secular morality purportedly developed to benefit and preserve the species. Empathy advantageously arose along our evolutionary journey, but it has no more intrinsic value than walking on two legs or four. There’s nothing innately good or superior about it. We could have equivalently gone the route of lions, another social species, where takeover of a pride is accompanied by infanticide of all existing cubs to efficiently enable the new male to maximize progeny with females. Empathy is not the only solution that works. You can choose your goals based on empathy and human well-being, but absent external standards, you don’t have to — it’s a personal preference. And human well-being and dignity is nebulously-defined at best. How do you implement it without boundaries? Is infanticide always wrong? In a constantly changing worldview, there are no guarantees.

Perpetual change is not always good. Changing an answer is needed only if you were wrong initially. Taken in its entirety, I believe the Bible to be reliable. You cannot cherry-pick select passages from the Bible to represent the whole of Christianity. The Bible may be unchanging, but that does not mean Christians cannot also be self-correcting to its truths. Yes, some Christians twisted religion to justify slavery. But others, William Wilberforce and John Woolman, for example, devoted much of their lives to ending it. From their own writings, it was clear — it was not less faith that motivated them, but more. They saw a clear violation of many aspects of God’s law in slavery and took action. Clearly these men were deeply motivated and informed by, not in spite of, the living word of God.

Sitting in class, 50 minutes always seemed like a lifetime. I never thought it could feel longer after leaving undergrad.

Boy, was I wrong.

Preparing a lecture — finding the content, making it look nice, and figuring out how to explain it clearly — makes those 50 minutes seem eons long. Teaching my first full lecture gave me a newfound respect for the professors who do this two or three times a week and a mild sense of terror at the prospect that I may one day be in that position!

The class I am TAing, biological oceanography, gave me the opportunity to teach a lecture about the large organisms in the ocean — fish, whales, sharks, octopi, all of it. It’s a broad topic, so my first task was to decide how I wanted to structure my talk. I wanted to throw in a little physiology; a decent amount of information on trophic cascades, nutrient cycling, and turbulence as the broad scale phenomena that make these large creatures important; some fisheries; some habitat information and fish adaptations to those habitats; and at least a little marine reserve information. And while I knew I had too much information to cover already, the slides seemed dauntingly empty as I made the skeletal outline.

I dove in and started fleshing out slides with figures from my favorite papers. I searched for new data that showed the current relevance of these topics. I found great images and new graphs to clearly illustrate the concepts. I marked up the slides with boxes and labels so I could easily walk students through complex experiments.

I looked at my slides again and realized I had only prepared 15 thus far. White boxes glared at me in Powerpoint, a reminder of all the holes left in my presentation.

I dove in again, filling in one slide at a time, popping back up to the surface occasionally to re-arrange slides and add transitions. Slowly, so slowly, the lecture started to take on a structure and looked closer to full than empty. I eventually filled 25 slides and started the process of going through my slides in order and running through the content I would be delivering orally. As I did this, I found more gaps and remembered new papers that would be great to introduce. Hours later, I made it to the end.

Fairly pleased with this, I sent the draft slides to the professor of the class and started preparing a class activity. I remembered my lab-mate had taught a class for fourth graders and used a costume kit wherein students dressed up another student as a fish with custom adaptations for different zones. Phew, I thought, an easy activity I can add. I would only need an extra 20 minutes or so to run through the costumes to make sure the activity went flawlessly. My heartfelt thanks still go out to the long-graduated student who originally made those costumes.

Then came the edits. And last, the nervousness the night before, when the content kept running through my head, and I couldn’t stop questioning whether I had chosen the best example for this slide, or whether I was prepared with the clearest explanation. By the time the lecture came around, it had consumed my life for the better part of a week.

I think the lecture went well, but this experience also made me realize how hard it is to assess how it went. Students seemed engaged — they offered up information they knew on the topic during class, they participated in my fish costume activity, and they didn’t fall asleep. I was glad I had prepared so thoroughly, because I was confident and had ready explanations for most every question they threw at me.

But in the end, I’m still impressed by the professors who do this multiple times a week and terrified to someday (hopefully) join their ranks. It’s hard — really hard — work!

“Did you know,” I said to the eight-year-old boy in a Red Sox cap, “that about 50 percent of the oxygen in our atmosphere comes from the ocean by way of the tiny, drifting marine animals and plants called phytoplankton? So for every second breath you take, thank the plankton!”

He greeted me with a blank stare.

I tried again. “Have you ever seen the cartoon Spongebob Squarepants?”

“Of course,” he said, seeming intrigued.

“Well, I’m sure you’ve heard of his arch nemesis, Plankton…”

Did either of these questions make you curious about plankton? Those were two of the most successful lures I used to attract young and old visitors to the booth “Making the Invisible Visible: The Secret, Bizarre, and Amazing World of Plankton” at the Cambridge Science Festival’s Science Carnival on Saturday, April 13.

As terrestrial beings, feeling a connection with microscopic creatures that live in the ocean is challenging, especially if you don’t study the ocean or live near one. My aim in running this booth was to bridge this gap by exposing the watery realm of plankton through a live microscope demonstration, awesome video footage, and a crafts activity to design your own Super Plankton refrigerator magnet. Just as many visitors went home with a new appreciation for plankton and perhaps a Super Plankton magnet in hand, I went home with some great experience at putting my communications skills to the test.

The other motivation for this festival booth was including science outreach in the activities of the Broader Impacts Group (BIG), a student-run organization based at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and MIT. Formed in Spring 2012, BIG has produced a variety of science communication workshops, but organizing and executing a booth at the Cambridge Science Festival was our debut in further refining these communication skills in a practical setting.

This event provided a great opportunity to apply some of the skills cultivated in BIG workshops in areas as diverse as public speaking, blogging, and radio broadcasting. These workshops have featured acclaimed communication professionals, including journalist and media producer Ari Daniel Shapiro, science writer John Bohannon, and communications professional Linda Pogue.

Seven graduate students from the MIT/WHOI (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution) Joint Program and MIT Microbiology helped with the festival booth. While we were all armed with an arsenal of scientific knowledge about plankton, most of us had no prior experience with public outreach. No one really knew what they were getting into, and all of a sudden, after the carnival kickoff at noon, our booth was inundated with hoards of kids and their families.

It quickly became clear what tactics worked, like referencing the cartoon Spongebob Squarepants for kids, and what did not. Was that a glimmer of understanding in someone’s eyes? Because the audience was so diverse in age, education, and culture, the message had to be tailored to make it relevant for each new visitor to the booth.

One particularly effective way to connect with kids was using the GIANTmicrobes® plush toys of Copepod, Krill, Algae, Sea Sparkle, and Red Tide to illustrate food chain interactions. These toys made plankton more approachable because they could be handled (and cuddled) and had human-like personalities. This made it easy to direct a kid to the microscope and say, “Here’s a real copepod and look how small it actually is!”

The Science Carnival left me exhausted yet tremendously fulfilled. The instant feedback I experienced of someone “getting” the concept I was trying to teach and then hopefully going home with a greater understanding of our oceans was so rewarding, yet absent in my day-to-day life as a researcher. Although I had lost a full Saturday from research (and then some from all the organizing), it felt as though I had gained something bigger. The day was also a “test-drive” of the science communications skills I had been honing through lab meetings, conferences, workshops, and even family gatherings. Kids provided the perfect practice audience because they were receptive, yet forced me to distill my message down to the basics and really think about why it was important.

Despite our limited backgrounds in public outreach, it seemed like the BIG team pulled it off — one woman even gave us her business card and invited us to participate in an environmental high school career fair. Hopefully, this will be BIG’s first step towards more education and outreach events.

Students of nuclear science and technology learned from experts in the field, presented their unique research, and captured on video what it means to be a nuclear scientist or nuclear engineer last week at the 2013 American Nuclear Society Student Conference. The first ever “I’m a Nuke” videos will be featuring nuclear science and technology students from across the world who participated in the conference hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Student Section of the American Nuclear Society.

The conference theme was the Public Image of the Nuclear Engineer. This was based on the conflicting views of the nuclear industry which many continue to hold. Although nuclear energy is safe, clean, and reliable, it has many obstacles in convincing the public of its successes. Our Theme Director, Mark Reed, interviewed and filmed conference attendees to create the “I’m a Nuke” videos. We captured the many faces of nuclear professionals to show that they are a diverse group all working to leverage the benefits society can realize from nuclear science. We plan to post the video on social media sites as well as share it throughout different media avenues in hopes of bringing a new generation of great ideas and great passion to the country.

The conference was led by three Co-Chairs: Nathan A. Gibson G, Ekaterina D. Paramonova ’13, and myself, with many amazing volunteers from the Nuclear Science and Engineering Department helping to make one of the largest and most professional student conferences for students in nuclear science and engineering a success.

Planning began one year ago at the 2012 ANS Student Conference and brought many interesting challenges and learning opportunities which don’t always get taught in a classroom. For example, planning a boat cruise for 500 people is not taught at 9:30 a.m. in Neutron Interactions, but it may be just as difficult to track down the caterer to get food served as it is to track down a scattered neutron.

Commissioner George Apostolakis, Ph.D., of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) served as the conference keynote speaker. “The theme for this year’s ANS Student Conference will be an interesting topic to explore,” stated Apostolakis in his remarks preceding the conference. “I plan to speak about my views on what shapes the public’s image, to provide some insights about how the NRC tries to engender public confidence in our work, and to offer my thoughts on how to shape the public image of nuclear engineers in the future.”

Students at the conference had access to the latest nuclear developments from industry, research, and academia. A team of nuclear engineers from Argonne National Laboratory presented a workshop on Generation IV fast reactors. They presented the physics behind fast reactors, which can use up the hazardous waste created from commercial (water-cooled) reactors as fuel. “Fast reactors also extract about 100 times more energy from each pound of uranium and provide a large improvement in safety,” commented Roger Blomquist, a Principle Nuclear Engineer at Argonne National Laboratory.

Students presented 171 podium presentations and 65 posters, which set new records for American Nuclear Society student conferences. These presentations also highlighted the global nature of the field with 88 registrants with international citizenship. Whether it was students studying law, nuclear medicine, quantum physics, computer science, or thermodynamics, the variety of backgrounds were united in bringing the conversations of nuclear science and engineering to new heights. With continued conversation, the nuclear science and engineering students at MIT and across the country will continue to improve the public image of the nuclear engineer.

Gripping the desk as waves rock the ship back and forth, it is occasionally hard to sit upright at sea, let alone walk about the ship. I have strapped my chair to my desk with a bungee cord to keep me from sliding across the lab. A few minutes ago a large wave washed across the stern of the ship and sent salt water into the lab. Some of our equipment got wet, but nothing too bad.

The days are long and the work is challenging, but watching the sunrise across a clear blue sky with nothing in sight makes all of this worth it. As an observational physical oceanographer, going to sea is part of life, and a part that I love tremendously. Leaving port, working far away from land, and knowing that everything you need is on the ship with you provides a feeling of joy and sense of fulfillment surpassed by little else I do in life.

I am currently on the R/V Endeavor, operated by the University of Rhode Island, for the second of three U.S. cruises, which are part of the Salinity Processes in the Upper Ocean Regional Study, or SPURS. The first SPURS cruise was on the R/V Knorr, operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), and took place in September and October 2012. That cruise was 34 days long, starting in Woods Hole, MA and ending in the Azores. The second cruise is 31 days, starting and ending in Narragansett, RI. On both cruises we steamed nearly eight days to the salinity maximum of the North Atlantic to find the saltiest ocean water in the world.

The project, funded by the National Science Foundation and NASA, hopes to answer questions specifically about salinity in the upper ocean, in conjunction with the Aquarius-SAC/D satellite that infers sea surface salinity from space. The data we collect provides in situ salinity observations to compare with the satellite observations. In a world with a changing climate, precipitation patterns are expected to change, causing wetter areas to become more wet and drier areas to become more dry. Understanding upper ocean salinity processes will unlock secrets of how changing climate may impact the water cycle, both over the ocean, where the majority of it occurs, as well as over land. Changes over the ocean will impact the entire cycle, including the water we drink on a daily basis.

Although my research does not directly look at the salinity process, it does focus on the physical processes that affect salinity in the upper ocean. As a physical oceanography student in the MIT-WHOI Joint Program for Oceanography, my research focuses on the stably stratified upper ocean. Just as oil floats on water, when the sun heats the upper ocean, a fairly thin stable layer floats atop the ocean. Depending on weather conditions such as low wind speeds and high incoming solar radiation, the upper ocean can warm and cool several degrees on a daily basis. At the surface of the ocean, heat and moisture are transferred between the atmosphere and ocean. Understanding the details of the physics in the upper ocean is fundamental to understanding how the sea and air interact.

In order to observe the upper ocean at very small scales, on the order of centimeters to meters, we are using special instruments that make measurements over 500 times each second. One type, called a Vertical Microstructure Profiler (VMP), is tethered with a wire and released over the stern of the ship. The VMP allows us to record a time series of measurements in one place by continuously releasing the instrument and bringing it back to the surface. The second type we use is a small package attached to autonomous Slocum gliders. The gliders use buoyancy to maneuver around the ocean for up to a few weeks at a time. This data is used to tell us how the ocean mixes, and more specifically what processes cause the mixing.

Although being at sea can be quite a bit of work, it is nice to take time to reflect on the beauty of nature when time allows. My favorite days at sea are when the wind is calm enough to create seas so flat that the clouds reflect in the ocean. Although I must admit, it is not just because it creates a beautiful sight, but also because on those days the ocean warms the most, creating a stable boundary layer.

Alec Bogdanoff G is a physical oceanography graduate student in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences.

Ask A-theist is a column by Aaron Scheinberg G, an atheist, and Stephanie Lam G, a Christian, which uses contrasting worldviews to explore questions and misconceptions about philosophy and religion. This week, Aaron chose the question. Send us the burning questions you have always wanted answered by an atheist or Christian (or both), and we’ll tackle them!

Q: “Why are you not a Muslim, or a worshipper of the Hindu or ancient Greek pantheon? Why think that the Bible is more true than the Quran, the Vedas, or the Iliad?”

Every religion offers a characterization of God and reality. To the extent that we can, we should test their claims. Different religions and different religious texts have very different answers. God, if he or it existed, might be a person outside creation, like in Islam or Christianity, or God might be an abstract essence that makes up all of the universe, like in Hinduism, but God cannot logically be both. Truth is exclusive in a way that fantasy is not. We can argue about whether fairies need wings to fly, but there is no truth if fairies don’t exist.

Let’s look at one factual claim. Unlike Mohammed or Siddhartha Gautama or even Homer, Jesus Christ claimed not only to be an enlightened teacher, prophet or storyteller, but God himself. From non-Biblical ancient texts outside Christianity, scholars agree that a man named Jesus existed and was killed by crucifixion in the first century CE. We have explicit eyewitness testimony in the four Biblical books that discuss the life of Jesus. In them, we see an extremely unflattering view of his disciples as cowardly, petty, and constantly confused. At the death of their teacher, they scattered. Yet, within two months, we see a transformation in these men as they go out and boldly preach the message of their teacher as the resurrected Lord at great risk. All but one would give their lives for the message. Would someone knowingly give their life for a lie?

It is too simple to dismiss it all as myth. As Pastor Tim Keller notes, anyone looking honestly at history has to ask, “No group of Jews ever worshipped a human being as God. What led them to do it? Jews did not believe in divine men or individual resurrections. What changed their worldview virtually overnight? How do you account for the hundreds of eyewitnesses to the resurrection who lived on for decades and publicly maintained their testimony, eventually giving their lives for their belief?”

As we evaluate the respective claims of each faith, we cannot solely compare which life philosophies or moralities resonate with us. Either Jesus was God as he claimed or he was not. Either Jesus was crucified, died, and resurrected as Christianity claims, or never died in the first place as Islam claims. We have to look at the evidence and draw our conclusions. Both cannot be simultaneously true.

I once met a follower of an Indian mystic healer and philanthropist named Sai Baba. The follower described the miracles he personally witnessed and expounded with yearning on the incomparable bliss and love he experienced in Sai Baba’s presence. He and his comrades confidently believed Sai Baba was a god.

Cult members fervently believe they’ve witnessed supernatural events, and their reports are often consistent with each other. The same goes for UFO abductees. Maybe it’s social pressure. Maybe they just really want to believe. Regardless, we typically dismiss their unfounded stories offhand. So why are stories from millennia-old writing more believable?

The four gospels were composed by unknown authors — the names were appended in later copies. The earliest, “Mark,” was written 30–40 years after Jesus’s supposed death. Can an impartial investigator ever call anonymous writing “eyewitness testimony”? Mark, from whom the others borrow, doesn’t even claim to be. He’s likely just recording local oral tradition. We cannot evaluate the motives, biases, methods, or character of unidentified authors writing decades after events, so their claims have zero credibility.

That pastor’s arguments apply to anything. If Jews becoming Christians proves Christianity, surely conversions to Scientology prove Scientology! And martyrdom isn’t unique to Christianity. There are Muslim martyrs, secular martyrs, suicidal cults, etc. Dying for a belief doesn’t make it more true.

It’s presumptuous to confidently dismiss all other religions on these underwhelming grounds. I find the testimony of Sai Baba’s followers at least as compelling. Indeed, if the Bible passes the threshold for reliability, then I have a slam-dunk case that witches once roamed New England.

We can’t honestly distinguish between the various supernatural claims floating around. Acknowledging that fact might make you skeptical, but doesn’t necessarily render your religion meaningless: one can value traditions no matter what their ultimate origin, and if you like the life philosophy outlined in a certain text then by all means study it.

The trouble arises when we lose perspective — when certainty in our favorite unreasoned claim prevents us from rethinking moral opinions shown to be harmful. When we can’t see the damage a religion imparts on outsiders and many of its own members. When politicians manipulate that blind spot. By moving beyond superstition, we can better protect ourselves from those dangers while still appreciating tradition.

“JUST DO IT!” rang the screeches from far off in the distance. As I teetered over the edge of the stone cliff and peered out at the water below, I could see the jagged outlines of the sharp rocks lurking below the surface. I wasn’t very keen on getting too friendly with those rocks, and their closeness did little to appease the nervous, bubbling feeling in my stomach.

“JUST. JUMP. NOW!”

The yells from my fellow Pi Phis were getting more and more impatient. I sighed, clutched at the frayed rope swing in a death grip, then pushed off and swooped out into the unknown.

All my time spent wavering on the edge of the cliff resulted in me spectacularly flailing throughout the entire swing, losing my grip on the rope, and then flopping ungracefully into the water below. The whole rope swing + cliff + swimming hole adventure looks fantastic when other people are doing it. I remember feeling antsy while waiting in line for my turn, and happily envisioning what type of cannonball I would do for my grand entrance into the water.

What I couldn’t imagine until I climbed up the side of the cliff, however, was the feeling of unexpected fear that took over me. I felt incredibly far away from everyone at that instant, with my closest companions being the sharp rocks waiting to catch me under the water. The yells of my sisters were what snapped me out of my daze, and gave me the extra push I needed to jump away from safety.

My cliff jumping escapade took place in the El Yunque National Forest in Puerto Rico this past spring break. Two spring breaks ago, I was still just a freshman. My freshman year at MIT passed by in a blur. I was stuck in a comfort zone of what I was used to from high school, so other than playing violin, cooking for myself, and hanging out with my floormates, I didn’t do much outside of schoolwork. I desperately missed my friends and family back home in Iowa, and I saw each holiday as an opportunity to enjoy precious time away from MIT. At the end of a glorious summer break, it seemed almost cruel that I would have to go back to MIT. I tried to think about things that I would have to look forward to, but other than seeing a few friends, I came up sadly short.

The start of sophomore year passed by much the same way freshman year did. I was stuck in the same routine of school, food, and violin. I felt as though I had missed my opportunity to join different clubs my freshman year, and it was too late for me now. While others had explored and found new activities that they were interested in, I had shrunk back and reinforced my shell of familiarity.

In the spring, however, a new, unexpected opportunity presented itself. One of my friends all the way back from middle school, Amanda Evans ’14, approached me about an informal recruitment opportunity with Pi Beta Phi. Before then, I had never given sorority life much of a second thought. I probably wouldn’t have been able to name all five sororities if asked, and sorority life existed well outside the range of my comfort zone. My initial thoughts really mostly consisted of “free food” and “more free food” (they had some awesome tacos), and even as I went to more and more events, I still had no serious intention of joining.

I have a tendency to be a very complacent person. I am neither proactive nor aggressive when it comes to pursuing things that I want, and I see that as one of my weaknesses to be worked on. After receiving my bid, I stared at the small slip of paper and thought about all the opportunities that had slipped through my fingers, all the mailing lists I had signed up for in a spurt of enthusiasm but never followed through with, and the very possible monotony of my remaining two years at MIT if I didn’t finally take a risk and put myself out there.

So, I surprised myself and joined a sorority. I’m trying this new thing now where I don’t sit back anymore and wait for things to come to me. Every new experience I’ve had through Pi Phi has reinforced my resolve that to grow as a person, I have to actively put myself in unfamiliar situations. Familiarity only creates expected outcomes, whereas some of my best memories have come from exploring the unknown.