Talk to Strangers

Talk to Strangers Sometimes I cant help but wonder what people at MIT, students, professors, and even tourists think  about MIT. Why are they here? What kind of things are they working on? How far have they come to get here? What do they not like and what do they absolutely love about it? Wouldnt it be great to actually be able to just stop someone in the middle of the infinite and ask if they have a few minutes to talk about this without, well, seeming strange or feeling too uncomfortable? For example, like  this. Or like this, or even this.* Last semester, I found the remedy to most awkwardness derived from verbal adventure-seeking and a fascination with humanitys personal experiences.   Lealia 15 reveals the solution:  a microphone! (If you actually want to  record  anything youll also want a complete radio kit.) Remember when I said that I would be taking Terrascope Radio way back when? For you prefrosh whove signed up for Terrascope or for those of you that will eventually sign up, its a class you can take spring semester after youre done with Mission. Among the many things we listened to were funny, intriguing, silly, classy, hilarious, and inspiring pieces of sound. I actually had no previous experience with listening to radio shows that youd find on NPR, and before taking this class I thought it wasnt worth it to listen to them when you could just listen to music instead. -___-  The naivety! Among the many memorable things we did in that class was fine-tuning our ears by being guided all over MIT while blindfolded. But learning how to listen to a  piece was only half of the class charm. We also produced pieces such as the ones you heard above about MIT with Adobe Audition and other equimpent they provided for us. One of the bigger projects was to create a person-place piece. (I made mine about Sandy Tenorio, from the Office of Engineering Outreach Programs, which you could listen to  here). The final project in the class was to produce a larger, 20-minute piece using sound from the spring break trip that Terrascope takes every year. In the Terrascope way, it was up to us to decide exactly how we were to produce, split up into groups (or not), organize, and eventually air it on WMBR, MITs radio station. The location of the trip is always somehow related to the problem that the class tackles in the fall. Since last fall our mission dealt with biodiversity, we went to the amazing, biodiverse country of Costa RIca. (You could look at even more pictures, videos, and details of our trip in this blog.) A miniscule portion of what we saw: (All of these pictures were taken by the talented Alexandriya 15)                                       The trip was an amazing part of the Terrascope experience. I never realized how important it was to talk to strangers, not just about what they do to conserve their country, but about their lives in general. People everywhere like their opinions to be heard, and its unbelievably simple to empower them by simply listening to and recording their voices. Rosa, pictured below, was a villager  we initially approached to ask questions about how she interacts with the environment. She ended up telling us many more stories, and her husband went to their yard to give us a cacao fruita gift for simply listening to what they had to say.         When you hold a microphone, you dont have to answer any questionsinstead, you get to witness peoples confused, surprised expressions. Youre the one that gets to watch how people unfold, digging into their memories, their fundamental values, their pasts and their futures. Sure, it was an MIT trip, but it was not all math and science. As is true with biodiversity, life in general is all about interactions. How we interact with each other as well as our environment. These are huge things that Im glad Ive been able to experience. Thats the amazing thing about Terrascopeit really puts the world, its people,  its problems, and possible solutions into perspective. P. S. Ill be helping out with Terrascope next semester as an Undergraduate Teaching Fellow, so Terra-Posts arent over! *All of these were produced by Terrascope Radio studentsmany thanks to my fellow 15s Alex, Rebecca, and Sabina. Just so you know, they recorded all sound in no more than an hour and finished producing these in class! Post Tagged #Terrascope