 Hey, welcome to MIT. I'm Quentin McArthur, the Associate Director of Admissions. But I actually prefer the title Director of Overall Inspiration. Are you ready for this? I'm here with the great Dexterina Booker from Brooklyn, New York, Brooklyn's finest, who's doing it all here at MIT, majoring in mechanical engineering, performing in bands, your roping at the media lab, designing clothes, traveling around the world, and just being all around fantastic. Good to see you, Dex. It's good to see you too. How are you doing? I'm doing great. You're from Brooklyn? I'm originally from Bed-Stuy. My family moved around a lot within Brooklyn. But I claim Bed-Stuy, home of the greatest rappers. Do you have a rank order of your favorite Bed-Stuy rappers? So I'm just going to go Lil' Kim. Kim? Yes. She is very talented. I don't think she gets the credit that she deserves. Shout out to Lil' Kim. Yeah. If you're out there, if you're watching, Lil' Kim, shout out to you. That's right. And then Biggie. He's very, very talented. Did different things with hip hop. Take it to a new place. Lil' Kim will be the greatest of all time in terms of Brooklyn rappers. That was nice. I went to the secondary school for law. And because of a lot of budget cuts to our programs, we didn't have very many courses. But the teachers there did the best with what they had. We got to send a big shout out to SEO. Oh, SEO. SEO was huge. SEO is sponsors for educational opportunity. The scholars program is specifically for high school students in New York City. We had to really immerse ourselves in opportunities that we didn't have at our high schools because of the lack of funding. If I didn't have SEO, I wouldn't have even known about MIT. And all these really good schools that I had no idea existed because I just wasn't exposed to that. The Black Lives Matter stuff, there were a lot of protests and demonstrations and some activism and discussions around the events in Ferguson and Staten Island and just kind of more broadly Black Lives Matter. And I think that I found out that you were involved in some of that stuff, right? Yeah. I was involved because it really solidified this idea that it doesn't matter where you go or what you do or whatever you think your credentials are. There are still things that people are going to believe about you because of the color of your skin or because of your gender or whatever it is that's very on the surface. Being at MIT doesn't protect me from that. I'm still going to experience microaggressions or being followed around a store. And I'm still going to experience those things. And so I can't just say, oh, I have to do this piece that I can't worry about what's going on in the outside world. Well, I have to say that I've been very impressed by the student activism here around this particular issue. Because for me, I don't think of MIT as a particularly activist type of campus. It's a place where you've got students who are ambitious and thoughtful and hard-working, but they're super busy. And like you said, they're doing p-sets all the time. They're going to classes. They're still trying to be engaged in whatever they're interested in. But activism requires that you invest yourself into something bigger than yourself for a sustained period of time. And I know that can be difficult for MIT students. I think a lot of times that MIT people think that we're too smart for racism or we're too smart to be sexist or we're just too smart for those kind of things that happen here. And just ignoring that it may happen here, like that these kind of things do actually happen, is a part of what keeps them going. It's kind of like this new age racism where it's like I didn't physically do anything to you or people are like, I mean, I'm not in the KKK, so I'm not racist. But that's not what racism is. It's not always about burning crosses. A lot of times, it's like your professor telling you you don't belong here or being at a frat party and someone calling you Laquisha. And those are my experiences. Like those literally happen to you. Yeah, like not the cross burning, the Laquisha and the professor telling me like, maybe you shouldn't be an engineer. So Brooklyn's finest, you come out of a great long tradition of great Brooklyn rappers. What's your inspiration for your rap lyrics? So the first time that I, I guess kind of performed, it was spoken word. So I decided that I was going to rap my high school graduation speech. And it was like, yeah, I was just, I just decided that that's what I was going to do. And from then on, it kind of just was a thing that I did. And so I do a lot of poetry and spoken word. And whenever you produce something, like an article of clothing or like a piece of art or whatever it is, it's a snapshot of who you are at that time. So I can really look at my own personal evolution. The first time I performed at MIT, it was what does it feel like trailblazing? It's like waves and physics and phasing, basically always trying to fit in in a foreign location where I wasn't meant to win. Always the first to do it in my skin, but never really achieving perfection. Too busy breaking down doors when they won't let me in. Well, half fast, no longer cut it. Half fast failure always causes the what if like, what if I were lighter? They're calling me a rebel when I'm just a fighter, who won't settle for my pockets to be lighter. And that's like a part of, that's like the only thing I remember. Bars, bars, bit your weight up. You know about that. What do you know? That's strong, come here son, Dex, come on. You're right. That's strong. I'm very proud of you, Dex, Tina. You've been doing your thing and your creativity too. Using your creativity to share your voice. Because these are powerful messages that not just MIT needs to hear, but a lot of different types of people need to hear. So keep going, keep going, don't stop. Thank you. You can't stop. Won't stop. You won't stop. No, she won't.