Welcome, freshmen, to the most prestigious institution this side of the Monongahela River! (And this side of the Allegheny as well, and the other side of Forbes, and the other other side of Schenley, and, well, you get the point.) Some of you are probably (understandably!) nervous about going to the school that spawned the monstrosity known as the Duolingo owl, has an inscription on one of its buildings suggesting that women should be responsible for “domestic pleasures” or whatever, and has had almost every one of its buildings flooded, and those of you who aren’t are beyond my help anyways. So, without further ado, I will use my vast year of wisdom to answer REAL questions REAL freshmen have asked.
Where can I get a fake ID?
For best results, you should probably hit up the CMU Police—they’ve probably seen a lot of them in their day and likely have an entire archive of confiscated ones, so they’re likely at the cutting edge of how to make one look extra convincing! If you choose to go a freelancer and find that you’ve gotten scammed with a bad fake ID, you should immediately call CMUPD, explain your situation to them, and see if they can issue you a new one.
How do I get into Jane Street?
Legend has it that sometimes, if you’re walking home from a long day at Gates, frustrated by the seeming uselessness of computer science, a stray poodle may lead you to the crossroads where the Mall meets the Pausch Bridge. Oh, don’t be afraid! Little known fact, this poodle is a Jane Street recruiter. Unless you can successfully compress all fifty states into a 5x5 grid, or perhaps create a more optimal solution for the Enigma, he’ll disappear into the night. This will leave you with no more chances to be hired, and no more job prospects.
Heed this word of warning, though. One doesn’t realize that part of the “working for Jane Street” bargain means that you can’t ever feel a single moment of bliss and job satisfaction. Unfortunately, those who do forfeit their souls. Given souls will be immediately possessed by the recruiter and put to work continuing to make real-time market valuations.
(Haha, your Jane Street test has already begun. This advice is a puzzle!)
Best ways to fuck with my roommates?
Start by putting one grain of sand on the floor. For every day that passes, double the number of sand grains on the floor—two for the second day, four for the third, etc. This should remain undetected for the first few weeks or so.
Eventually, your roommates may see trails of sand on the ground, and start to have some questions. If you’re lucky, and you’ve cultivated your Bay Area persona well enough, they may dismiss this as a natural part of growing up near a beach. They will be unprepared for the day that sand leaks from the closets and under beds and out of drawers and pushes them out of the room entirely.
How to deal with bad professors?
Find their most groundbreaking/notable/cited paper, or their dissertation for grad school or whatever. Write one proposing the same ideas. Backdate it to exactly one year before they published theirs (yes, this may be before you were born. If questioned about it, say that you were just a really precocious child). Bring forth charges of plagiarism and watch as they are pushed out in academic disgrace.
If that fails, I may have an idea about a lecture hall and some bags of sand...
Where’s the best place to secretly drink?
If you’re a School of Computer Science student who wants to keep other SCS students from finding out about your emerging alcoholism, you should try Baker-Porter, or any other humanities building, or really anything that’s outside the Gates/Newell-Simon/Wean triangle. I guarantee they won’t be able to find it.
How do I transfer to MIT?
Now that is an iconically Tartan question! Props for already embracing one of the iconic CMU mottos— “my heart is in the work”, “everyone at this school is better than me and I’m an imposter”, and “why did MIT have to reject me?” are words we live by around here. Now you’re really getting into the Carnegie Mellon spirit!
