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Campus Preview Weekend

May 4, 2025

CPW noun
acronym for Campus Preview Weekend, an event occurring in late April

Campus Preview Weekend, a time for many firsts: solo flight, playing pool, witnessing a divorce, sleeping 30 minutes over two days, riding a Bluebike, climbing pipes, magnet fishing, sword-making, touring cursed events, and driving combat robots.

After leaving school Wednesday, I headed to the airport where I would first fly to SFO. BOS would be the final destination, and I’ve always found it funny how I would have to fly west first before flying east. Both flights were uneventful, and soon enough, I arrived from a red eye flight to the Boston Logan airport.

At this point, it was around 6:30am—though it felt like 3:30am because of not having adjusted from PST. This also meant that pretty much nowhere was open, so I took a stop at Live Alive Cafe. It was slightly nostalgic from when I went to its other location just across the Charles River months ago.

I was still completely delirious, so after completing some tasks, I headed to New Vassar to drop off my luggage at my hosts’ dorm. I immediately had a pretty strong impression of the dorm, since I liked their modern, clean, hotel-like interior. Otherwise, I wasn’t there for too long before heading to orientation, which basically just said not to do stupid things during CPW.

Afterwards, I visited the Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building, the new music building. I didn’t know how to get anywhere, so it seemed like there was literally nothing to see. I asked someone studying there if there were practice rooms, and they didn’t know either. Everyone up to that point I’ve talked to was really nice, so that was comforting. I love the community there.

In terms of events, there wasn’t much to do, so I headed back to New Vassar where they would be hosting a lamp-making event. I actually got there too early, so I ended up helping the two leads of the event clean up the makerspace before the event started. There were only enough materials for twelve lamps, and around twenty-five people ended up showing up, so that was extremely funny. The leads were super nice, and one of the leads had some really cool projects going on, like this rotating drinks dispenser and an image → etching converter using AI. The makerspace definitely elevated my impression of New Vassar.

I headed to the Morningside Academy afterwards, which ended up taking a while because we missed the entrance the first time, which led us to circle around the building for a bit. We made UV flashlights there, where I soldered something for the first time! That ended up being pretty fun, though I totally screwed up the flashlight. It acts more like a strobe light, but oh well!

Next was the lockpicking and lawyers event at Simmons! I didn’t really learn how to lockpick, but it was fun to watch people lawyer and hang out with the people I’ve met up to that point. This was also where we accumulated a larger group, and they all ended up being really cool! We tried to find food for a really long time, originally heading to a BBQ from a fraternity. When we got there, somehow, there were only two grills for the few hundred people who were there, so we decided that was ridiculous and headed to a “will it raclette” event at Burton Conner… except we got lost quite quickly. The cheese was not ready when we got there, so it did not raclette. 😔

On our third attempt for food, we tried heading to New House for henna and snacks, except there was no one there. Instead, we played pool for a bit—this was when I played physical pool for the first time and realized why it’s an actual sport. Turns out that holding the pool cue is at a really awkward angle, and it’s even harder to aim at the billiard ball.

We finally got food at New House’s dining hall, and I was going a little nuts because the last time I had food was at 7am. Apparently, their food is a lot better during CPW, which makes a lot of sense.

After dinner, the group split up—one group heading to a demo held by the physics department, and the other heading to the Nekomimi maid cafe at Random. Guess which one I went to.

It's... I... we may have...

Top ten choices. It was literally just because it would be funny (it was).

Afterwards, we headed back to Simmons to witness a bisexual marriage. We immediately got distracted by a ball pit, and I think that was the first time I’ve ever been in a ball pit. Unfortunately, we got so distracted that we were late to the marriage, but we were there for the divorce immediately after. They apparently take two random upperclassmen from a drawing, marry them, and divorce them afterwards. None of the documents are actually sent in, but they’re official, and the person officiating the wedding is actually allowed to do that because they have an officiant certification.

Then, I speed-walked with a group to the dome, because there was supposedly a massive tug of war event there. Turns out there wasn’t actually anything there, which was unfortunate, but the extra steps were funny. We headed to orientation very quickly because it was very soon.

Orientation itself was pretty nice! Stu Schmill spoke for a while, and there were some performances. This was where I learned a Mariachi band is not like an orchestra with string, woodwind, brass, and percussion instruments, but rather, an ensemble of folks who play Mexican music.

We then had some icebreaker activity, during which we played ninja. For some reason, I like taking the strategy of being defensive in the beginning and staying away from chaos, watching what everyone else does. This strategy ended up working, since everyone else ended up eliminating each other and I watched the last person standing enough to know how he played.

At this point, it was like, 11pm, and I didn’t know what to do. I hopped around events with a friend, peeking through a ridiculously long line for waffles at Maseeh and then an extremely loud and blue party at Burton Conner. It was a difficult evening from other things going on, which took me out of the moment of CPW in a bit. I ended up going to sleep at 3^5am.

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Bagels and boba at McCormick!

In the morning, I headed to McCormick for their bagels and boba event, which was honestly one of my favorites. I had caffeine for the first time in a couple months, which felt very wrong given the reason I stopped caffeine… but anyhow, there was a piano there with a book of Studio Ghibli music flipped to Ashitaka and San, which I thought was a funny consequence. I wanted to go to the bajillion other breakfast events to meet more people, but there wasn’t time before the welcome event, so we headed to the Kresge Auditorium. It was alright—there was an interesting presentation about how traffic could be alleviated with autonomous vehicles and a philosophy program called Compass—but we left in the middle of the event, heading to the Morningside Academy again for an event mysteriously titled “snake (BIG) (nefarious purposes).”

This event was probably one of my favorites, as silly as it is. There were sewing machines, but our group insisted on being a Temu factory line. It was literally just wrapping a piece of fabric around a massive spring and calling that a day.

Our group headed to a UROP student showcase, but there were so many people that it wasn’t really worth it. Instead, we booked a tour to the Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building, where I actually got to see things this time! There were surprisingly few practice rooms, but they were very nice. Their concert hall was small, but very well thought out. They also had a UROP program analyzing the movement and posture of piano players to reduce injury, which goes to show the many sorts of interesting things going on everywhere on campus.

There was a lull in activities I wanted to go to for a while, so I toured the chapel for a while, playing their organ. The chapel also has a moat on the outside, and this was also when the USC Speak Your Mind Ice Bucket Challenge was ongoing. Later that day, a lot of people decided to complete the challenge in the moat, which I thought was… interesting.

I also got to see a couple of makerspaces before heading to a recital by Holden Mui, which was incredible. Unfortunately, I chose to miss the end to see a rocket engine along with race cars, both of which were decently cool. At this point, I was starting to miss a group of friends I met the previous day, so we met up in Maseeh for dinner.

At this point, I was definitely feeling like I missed out on a lot of events, but this is inevitable with everything going on. I was going to go on the underground tunnel tour with this group, but this would mean missing the bloggers event. Also, there was a mysterious event going around through word of mouth, which was to meet at Building 7 at 10pm, supposedly for some other tour. I decided to go to the blogger event despite thinking it would be a mistake, and this turned out to be one of the best decisions I made. Talking to the bloggers was genuinely amazing, and this would probably be my favorite event that I went to. I struggle a bit with feeling comfortable around people sometimes, but something about yapping about yapping with these people was so fun.

We went to Building 7 at the meeting time for a tour, and honestly… I don’t think that was worth it. There were a shocking number of people who showed up and it was also very well-organized, but it also felt cult-ish to me. I’m not sure how much more I can say, but that community just wasn’t for me!

The tour lasted until around 3am, and I walked back to New Vassar with Heliscone after playing with some children's strollers at Stata. We discussed a few things at the lounge until 5 or 6am… at some point I fell asleep for 30 minutes, and that was all the sleep I got for that day.

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In the morning, I headed out to the Charles River Esplanade for magnet fishing with friends, and it was exactly what it sounded like. We caught lots of bottle caps, and I caught some weird river creatures and fish roe somehow, neither of which are magnetic. The water also smelled very funny, and we deemed that there was The River Disease (RD). We got some food at Back Bay before riding around on Bluebikes. Turns out that the bikes were not accessible to short people (myself included), but we eventually figured that out and rode back to Cambridge, biking around campus for a bit.

We ran into Fort Washington Park where there was a circle of cannons, along with an abandoned train carriage. Upon trying to climb the carriage, I tripped over a rusty metal rod and scraped myself, and that was the start of a running joke within the group that I contracted tetanus.

After chilling at the Stud for a bit, there was a bit of running around to The Association of Student Activities club fair, fighting a nerf gun war at Simmons, peeking in at Technicolor Furs, driving a combat robot, and listening to a MITSO pop-up concert. Afterwards, some friends and I pretty much collapsed at a spot before we headed to a Catboy Cafe x Goth Girl IHOP, where we were fed freshly-made pancakes on paper towels. I decided that it would be funny to take a group photo, and afterwards, one of the maids/goth girls ask for my number so that I could send her a group photo. This results in another running joke that I somehow “rizzed” up a maid, so that was great.

Evidence of us attending the Catboy Cafe x Goth Girl IHOP event.

We headed back to Kresge for a closing ceremony, then to Stata for an epic fire show, and finally to Simmons to make mini swords.

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"When asked about how the ratio of caffeine to lemonade was calculated, someone said ... 'It’s close to the original ratio, although we could’ve gone a little over.'"

Last day, which was rather bittersweet. I missed the sunrise event over Harvard Bridge, probably from lack of sleep. After taking in some waffles at New Vassar and packing, I headed to the Stud again for an event called “Panera Bread Lost Menu Items,” which is exactly what it sounds like. They had some innocent items, like bagel chips, and nefarious items, such as charged lemonade. The way they made the lemonade was taking loads of caffeine pills, opening the capsules, and dumping the powder in the lemonade. Turns out that the powder did not mix in very well, and when asked about how the ratio of caffeine to lemonade was calculated, someone said something along the lines of, “It’s close to the original ratio, although we could’ve gone a little over.”

After all of that, it was time for goodbyes before heading home.

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I think in general, I wish I went to more academic events. I didn’t get a great idea of what specifically I wanted to do, but perhaps that takes more time than a weekend anyway. I don’t think that there’s a “wrong” way to spend CPW—what matters more are the people, and I’m happy to have met so many cool individuals.

Ahh, if only we as a species didn’t have to sleep, though. Actually, I think I’d go pretty crazy if I didn’t have to sleep at all—it would be weird to live life as a really long day. I amend my desires to wishing we didn’t have to sleep for as long. But we’ll keep living life with what we’re given!

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