Living in the Stata Center
We’re now three weeks into the semester at MIT where I just started a PhD program in linguistics. The Linguistics and Philosophy department is housed in The Ray and Maria [[Stata Center]], also known as building 32. It’s a [[Frank Gehry]] building and thus crazy looking.1
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We see photographers on the street from time to time taking pictures of the building. In fact, the first day I got to Boston this fall, I walked into my hotel room and there was a framed photo of Stata on the wall.
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| The department basically occupies the eighth and ninth floors of the [[Alexander W. Dreyfoos, Jr. | Dreyfoos]] tower side. There’s a nice common space with some red couches and a spiral staircase. |
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All of us first years share an office together on the ninth floor (32-D976). The room is elliptical, with our desks along the side with windows and the other “wall” being a series of wooden bookshelves. It’s great to share an office with the cohort, as we all take all the same classes the first year as well.
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Here’s the room for “Meg Data” just across the hall from our office. I was really hoping it was a woman named “Meg Data”… marrying her would get me one step closer to becoming “Dr. Data.” Alas, “Meg Data” or “MEG Data” apparently is simply a label for some data store—possibly some servers. 
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The majority of the building is the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) so there are posters up for fun-looking talks that I’m too busy for.
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Here’s my desk (with Foxkeh!) and my new bike which I’ve been bringing up to the office. The final photo is a photo of me with an “I ♥ The Web” poster in commemoration of OneWebDay.
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We’ve been getting pretty busy with the readings and work for our classes, as well as occasionally hanging out. I hope to write some more posts both linguistic and non-linguistic in the coming days on life at MIT.