 This is the MIT Comparative Media Studies and Writing Podcast. I'm Andrew Whitaker. And today I want to introduce you to Lily Chin. I'm Lily Chin. I'm a senior here at MIT. I'm in Course 6.2, which means electrical engineering and computer science. I'm minoring in mechanical engineering and minoring in comparative media studies. She's incredibly smart. In high school, I did a lot of math and science competitions, heavily involved in robotics and research competitions. And about as polymathic as you can get. Medical services, president of MIT's paleontology interest group, trap shooting, little clay pigeons get thrown into air. I shoot them down with a shotgun. And what's someone like that do for kicks? I was on the two-week Jeopardy! College championship. A senior at MIT from the State of Georgia, Lily Chin. 15 people are competing from different universities. And there's a semi-finals, a quarter-finals. And I made it all the way up to the finals. And I won, winning both $100,000 and a trip to the next Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions. That's right, 100 grand. Quite the story there already. But we also wanted to know what interests someone at an institute of technology, heading to a grad program in robotics, to also minor in comparative media studies. I was sitting behind someone. And then I was looking over their shoulder. And it looked like an academic paper, except there were screenshots of Mario. And I was like, what is this? This sounds amazing. So let's get to know Lily Chin, her past Jeopardy! champion, and the story behind her now famous final Jeopardy! response. But then we'll talk to her about how a media studies education helped her deal with the weird aftermath of becoming other people's media object, even ours. First, walk me through how you qualified. OK. First, there's an online test that's held in October. So I just kind of took it on a whim. I actually took it during one of the CMS classes that I was taking. But fortunately, I qualified. So it wasn't just totally goofing off in class. What did you mean you took it during class? So the test is a 50-question test. And they only offer it at one time to prevent cheating during the middle of discussion. I was quickly reading a trivia question. And I had 10 seconds to answer it, so typing in the answer before moving on to the next one. So yeah, that was the online test. How did you find that that you were picked? You take the test in October, and then in November, they give you an email that just says, like, show up in New York at this time. And they don't pay for transit. So I took the megabus up there. And you go to a hotel. You take another written test. And you also do an interview portion. So you play a mock game of Jeopardy. And the contestant producer, Maggie, kind of interviews you and makes sure you're good for television. Good for television, what does that mean? Yeah, so one thing that is really funny is that Jeopardy is fundamentally a TV show. So they're looking for, as charismatic and as extroverted as you can be. So for example, at the auditions, she asked everybody to dance. And I'm very sure that's one of the reasons why I got chosen, because I was just like, I don't have anything to lose, so I just danced really well. Tell me about your dormitory actions. OK, so then November, I was over in New York. And then December, I got the phone call. And so it's sort of funny, because you get this California area code, and you're all excited. And then you go through 15 minutes of paperwork. And then they're like, if you can guess already, you're on Jeopardy. But afterwards, I was just running up and down hall, being very excited. And I think it was funny, because my friend's immediate reaction was like, we get 10% of all your current and future earnings. Lily walked me through what happens next. She has to get herself to LA. She arrives at a hotel paid for by the show. Then, maybe surprisingly, maybe not. The show immediately takes steps to prevent cheating. They keep Lily away from other competitors. They make or sign non-disclosure agreements. And no one gets close to Jeopardy host Alex Trebek. That's all followed by the nerves you get from the hurry up and wait that comes with television production. One restless night, like I couldn't sleep at all that first night, like waking up every two hours, just very nervous. Then we're taken on a bus. And the contestant producer is there. Cameras start rolling immediately then, because they need to start getting B roll footage for the YouTube videos. And then it's an hour-long bus ride from Universal Studios to Sony's Picture Studios. And during that time, Maggie, the contestant producer, is just giving us the low down of how the format works, like general strategies. Most of the staff on Jeopardy has been doing this for 30-plus years. So she's got it down pack. So now you're in the studios, and you're sitting in the green room, and you're doing more paperwork. And then pretty much after doing makeup and paperwork, then it's time to get on stage. Picture yourself at the podium now in a college hoodie. Cameras are directly in front of you. Just to their right, just 10 feet away from you, is the iconic six-by-five wall of categories and clues. Next to it, Trebek. And then turn to your far left. Unlit so they're practically a black void, is your audience. The game start, and Lily, of course, kicks butt. Lily. Who's Lil Wayne? Lil Wayne, yeah. Lily. Who is Rick and Morty? Good, Lily. What is a radius? What are tulips? Who is Iris? Iris, yes. Now the lead is yours, and there are no more daily... Now what I didn't know, games aren't played one per day. Production crammed as many as they can into single shoots with just minutes between. It's not only intense, but surreal. Since the college tournament's multi-round structure means players are in the building but sealed off from the set, stuck waiting their turns. So because of that, everybody's actually sequestered in the green room until it's their time to play. Because otherwise, if you knew the previous scores, you'd have an advantage. Fortunately, I was one of the first people called. So I didn't have to wait in the green room, but everybody else was just kind of twiddling their thumbs, watching movies, being very nervous and just waiting. So yeah, so that was the first day of shooting, just getting all the quarterfinals done. Then went back home, slept, second day of shooting. It's now the semi-finals and the two-day finals all packed into one day. And there's literally only five minutes between games. So in the two-day final, it was basically, go to the green room, change out of your sweatshirt, get your makeup retouched, and then you're back out there. So it's very funny. Funny, she says. I'll mention, funny's a word she uses a lot, but you hear how it's often a catch-all, how she describes anything not 100% comfortable. But first, let's hear about the two questions deputy viewers always have for players. How do you win? And what's Alex Trebek like in person? Turns out, on Trebek, even players don't really know. I think that's a question lots of people have. He can't really afford to get close to the contestants because I think they said he's one of two people that has access to both the contestants and the questions. And they're really nervous about the quiz show, Scandals of the 50s, so they don't really let you get that close. The one thing I thought was really cool about Alex Trebek was that he's into machine shops and do-it-yourself repairs. So I'm a mechanical engineer, and I really want to see what Alex Trebek's machine shop looks like because it sounds really nice. Tell me about the gameplay. Did you go in with any kind of strategy? Did you feel like you had an edge? Yeah, so I definitely studied a lot beforehand. I think this was the most I've ever studied for anything. As an MIT student. No, straight up, because you always do it like the night before, maybe two nights before if you're ambitious before a test, but here I had like a one-month lead time and there was $100,000 on the line. She said that to prep. She read Wikipedia articles. She dug up her stuff from high school quiz bowl. She actually researched which categories came up the most. State capitals, presidents, Shakespeare, top 40. Now, I don't know how much she was trying to sound extra humble. Playing down the insane amount of work it took to hoover up so much trivia. But it sure sounded like downplaying her smarts when she said. I think a lot of the game ends up coming down to buzzer strategy. So usually everybody already knows the answer by the time it's time to buzz in. So then what they do is that they have lights on the side of the big grid of screens that will turn on after some guy and some production staff thinks that Trebek has done finishing your question. But if you wait for that, then it's all down to reflexes. So the strat that people say online is that you have to judge right when Trebek finishes the question so that you'll buzz in like, sub-reaction time. Still, she's going to tell me, oh, everyone knows the answers, you just have to buzz in best. So I pressed her and she got a little more candid. I feel a little bit guilty because I don't really have any close ties with the TV show. And there are some people here who are like, oh, I watched a TV show like all the time, and this is like my dream of going up. But then they didn't really prepare for it, which is something that struck me as weird. But preparation, this is where you start to see how MIT students are on another plane. Lily's major has a class in probability and statistics, and it showed. So like one thing is that since the quarter-final amount, right, you either win your game or you are one of the four next highest people, right? So you don't know what the cutoff is, but you can look at historical cutoffs. And she went even deeper with the math. And the data is already there, like someone already compiled it and says like, oh, the average amount you need to go to move on is $12,000. So I was like, okay, I'll put my bar at like 15,000 of what I'm shooting for. And some of the other contestants just didn't even have a number that they were shooting for. Now tell me the story of the final, final jeopardy. Oh, goodness. So it's a two-day final. And so it's basically how many points that you rack up over both days. So when it came time to the last final jeopardy, I did the math and I realized that there was no way that the second place person, Gary from the Navy, could bet any amount and he would still not be able to catch up to me. So before the tournament started, I was kind of thinking to myself, like, oh, what joke answers would be good to put down? So I knew I wanted to put dank memes or spicy memes, memes that have overstayed their welcome. It turned out to be a who is question. A astronomer who began his epitaph, I used to measure the heavens. Now I shall measure the shadows of earth. Ah, it's a funny answer. I can get Travec to say whatever I want. We come to Lily Chin. She had 20,400 going into final today. And her response, who is the spiciest meme Lord? All right, let's see what your wager was. Nothing. So 20,400 today, 20,400 yesterday. Gives you a total of 40,800. We bumped that up to 100,000. You're the champion. And then it just hit me right then. And I was like, what did I do? Like, I, oops, like, I guess, like, if you spend time on the internet, you will know it. But if you don't, then you have no idea what's going on. So this was something I would have said to my friends. And I didn't think too much about it. But when it finally aired on the episode, like, the internet freaked out about it. OK, so she just won 100,000 with an answer she knows is going to blow up online. But she can't breathe a word of it to anybody. You're back in Cambridge. You're in your dorm. What's it like before the first show airs? I knew that I already couldn't tell anyone. Like, I couldn't tell my family. I couldn't tell my boyfriend. Because otherwise, like, then I'd start telling everyone. But like, there's always these little things that you want to bring up, like, you know, the song Panda will come up. And I'll be like, oh, I want to tell people that this was a question. And that, like, I only got it because I studied. Or, you know, just, or like, I can't believe all the other people playing missed an overwatch question, which is, like, also very relevant to me. But, yeah, there were some people in my hall, like, every day this kid would come up to me and say, like, so did you win? Did you win at all? And, like, it was a lot. I was definitely waiting for the episodes to finally air so I could get something off my chest. But even your boyfriend, you didn't tell your boyfriend. No, it's not. And there wasn't, like, but I'm your boyfriend. We don't keep any secrets. No, no, no. My parents were a little salty, though, especially because my aunts were there at the screening, but my parents weren't. So my aunts kind of went, like, neater, neater, you don't know what happened. And then what did your, you know, doormate's friend's family think as you kept winning? Oh, they were ecstatic. It was really funny because, so the first round, it was Bible, Books of the Bible. And my hall was fairly secular. So when that showed up, they were like, oh, who knows this and everything? And then they saw, like, immediately, I had written down the answer very fast and one of my friends was like, she either really knows it or she has no idea what she's doing. So there was just a ton of hype about everyone, just like, because you couldn't believe what was going on. I think because I won so handily in the first game, I think administrators also started taking notice, too. I was very surprised to see an email from Reif in my inbox, from President Reif, and he was like, congratulations, you know, if there's one thing to describe MIT spirit right now, it's nerd pride. And I was like, wow, like President Reif going out to email me, yeah. And then as it just kept going, like the support kind of grew. Alums from the 1970s were emailing me and it just kind of ballooned until like finally, yeah, the final game. And then describe the scene of, you know, if it's a watch party or whatever, when you won. Oh, so I was very insistent not to host a watch party until the final game because I was like, I don't wanna organize this because I knew I was gonna have to organize the last one. And so that was fun. I bought some snacks and then also some people brought their own and we got out one of the classrooms and building four and just kind of all clustered together. And during the commercial breaks, I would kind of, we'd mute the volume and then I would sort of like do a little Q and A. So then in the last commercial break, the one before Final Jeopardy, people were saying like, you have a lockout game. And I was like, yeah, I did. And then just that moment when everyone just started cheering for me, that was really good. And then like the next turnaround when like the Final Jeopardy answers were revealed and it's spiciest meme Lord. Like, oh my gosh, it was, it was insane. My, I was getting like a hundred notifications every time I checked Facebook because you know, even people from high school are being like, you're an absolute mad woman. Like what are you doing? Oh, geez. Yeah, it's been crazy. I pulled folks around the office about they wanted to know from Lily. About half of them replied, what happens with the money? One even asked, it's cash, right? A suitcase of cash? So it's funny, they hold your money hostage until your episode airs. So you need to keep, to make sure you stay quiet. But I got the check and I've cashed it in and yeah, feels good. Yeah, some large numbers in my bank account for once. Here's what things start to get less comfortable for her. And where it seems like her media studies work may have added a layer of armor the average contestant might not have. All right, so the final episode airs. After that, what changes for you? Um, I mean, I think the changes have been going on like the entire time, like because there's, you know, people are messaging me, whether it's like people I know, like MIT alums or not, or random people on Facebook because I essentially doxed myself like all of my personal information of my full name, where I go to school, where my hometown is, that's all put up by Jeopardy. So it's very easy to find me online. So yeah, people are Facebook messaging me. I'm ignoring most of them because like, it seems very weird. It never occurred to me that you can sort of reach out and talk to people through the TV. And that the fact that people like feel like it's okay to do that, it's strange. I also have been looking like after each episode airs, I'm looking at Twitter, I'm looking at Facebook, I'm looking at Reddit, just to see sort of the commentary because it's very weird being suddenly this national figure, right? People around the country are messaging. That's the one thing I was not expecting is that what it means for a national TV show, they'll refer you to Beyond One and also one that is like as culturally a touchstone as Jeopardy, right? So I held an AMA on Reddit because people were excited about that. What's an AMA? Oh, it's Ask Me Anything. So famous people will say like, Ask Me Anything and you just respond to questions on Reddit. And just the diversity of responses were interesting. One of them was, their wife was a combination video games studies and psychologist. So using video games and treatment for psychology. So he was interested in like asking on behalf of her like, oh, what research are you doing? You're gonna be at PAX East to talk about this. Another person was, you know, the Sean Collier Memorial? Sure. You might not be familiar with the MIT campus, but the Collier Memorial is this extraordinary five-pointed structure of vaulted granite erected at the spot where MIT police officer Sean Collier was gunned down by the Boston Marathon bombers. He worked at the company that cut out the stones for it. So he actually had never been to MIT. So he was curious like, oh, where's the Sean Collier Memorial located? Like it doesn't get a lot of traffic. And then he said like, oh, because you like lays and stuff, like here's a picture of our whole manufacturing setup. And it was very impressive. The one message I responded to from a random person was this person telling me how her daughters were in middle school and really interested in chemical engineering. And just seeing me on TV as this figure and like, you know, both at a technical school, but also like clearly having fun saying Spiciest Memelord was really inspiring. Likewise, another person on Reddit was saying that they were in the hospital for a family emergency. And so they were watching Jeopardy because like an elderly, one of their elderly relatives was sick. And then when the Spiciest Memelord comment came on, they were just like, it was such like an unexpected moment of levity in that situation. So like it's very weird, right? Like people are coming to me with these stories. I'm a part of people's lives even though I didn't expect to be. I'm getting a lot of press, like I guess this counts for one. And like, you know, there's a Shass Research Convention for high schoolers. I'm apparently on par with the Nobel Prize laureate to go talk to it. Same thing for my old robotics regional back in Georgia. They want me to come talk to it. It's very strange. I'm taking full advantage of it because I know this is not going to come again but it's very weird. She says, and remember how I mentioned her use of the word funny? It wasn't exactly positive. Have you felt respected through the whole process? It's actually funny. So like, I guess respect in a sense of like congratulated and that people are really like excited that I'm doing very well. And I do appreciate that. But at the same time, there's this process of claiming that's going on which I think is really interesting. I'm still not sure how someone can sound so media studies like analytical about something so personal. So here we get into what MIT and we in comparative media studies prepared her for, we hope. But at the same time, our role is kind of ambiguous. As she points out, even we are claiming her. The CMS department for one, like, you know, would you like to do this interview and be claimed as one of us? Or even someone in my dorm who I didn't know, I met her in the hallway and then she was like, oh, you're the spiciest meme Lord. Oh, I'm going to claim you and like, you know, oh, I totally hang out with her all the time in my dorm and stuff. And that's very weird because it's a sense of like ownership and property, right? And, you know, so it's like all of these different communities I've been a part of whether it's my high school, whether it's my robotics team, all of them now want to like kind of join in and say like, oh, like, I know Lily Chin and like, let me, let me ride this wave. I don't know if that counts as respect or not. It feels very weird, I guess, right? When I was in high school, I was in a, I did very well in a research competition, the Intel science talent search. But again, that also had a very fancy component at the end. There was like a gala. Everyone, I dressed up fancier for this than for prom, basically. And a lot of high achieving like DC of people came, you know, like a senior VP of Qualcomm, a, you know, Department of Energy came, you know, a couple, like probably House of Representatives, congressmen came. But what was really funny was that for me, this was like the culmination of my scientific achievement. I had worked really hard on this research project and now I thought I was going to get honored on this stage. But talking to some of the other, like the invitees there, I guess. It was more of an excuse for them to sort of rub shoulders with one another. And it felt very weird as like I am an entertainment object for, you know, like I'm the backdrop for this fancy dinner. That's not being held for me, but sort of for them. What was the moment that you knew people out there weren't seeing you the way you saw yourself? Well, I would say that would actually between the, between the waiting time, between like waiting for my episodes to air and after I had shot them. Because I found a, I found some articles that were starting to look more into Jeopardy. And one of them was from a past contestant who talked about her experiences with harassment. So she had actually, she had also done a very funny joke answer relating to the Saturday Night Live skits about celebrity Jeopardy. So now that's one of the clips that is like constantly brought up as like funniest final Jeopardy answers just like I know I'm gonna be memorialized like that. But the thing that really struck her is that she found one of those clips and then looked at the comments of them and they were all about her physical appearance, you know. And she was really kind of put off by this. And so she did a little bit more digging and sure enough she found a whole bunch of other like women who had had the same harassment stories of just like appearing on national television. I think it's also really funny that in the, so like there's a informal network of past Jeopardy contestants. And part of the things they show you is the Zoe Quinn's guide. It's really quick. What's like the two sentence synopsis of Gamergate. Zoe Quinn was a developer. Some reviewers said that she was sleeping with other people for positive reviews. This like kind of snowballed into attacks on women and gaming, attacks on indie developers, attacks on game researchers. Yeah. So if you're being linked to like Zoe Quinn's guide to cyber bullying, right? This is kind of severe. Yeah, that's a big deal. I don't think it was ever going to be that bad. Like in some sense, my appearance was fairly androgynous which is sort of funny because a lot of people on like Reddit were also very confused which was really funny to me that like, you know, how do you care so much? But like there was literally a debate in the comments like, oh, she seemed, this person seems masculine with a feminine voice. Oh really? Like to me, they seem feminine was a masculine voice. Hmm. And I thought that was really funny. Funny again. Strangers debating someone's masculinity or femininity online in a place they know Lily will see it. Again, she's so leveled about something that's pretty upsetting. But this ability to be aware of how she comes across even the 140 character objectified version people create seems to keep her sane. That's true even here. As she points out how TV producers could and should step up their own awareness how they can make it a point to prep contestants for what comes after they're on TV. I think, but I think also that saved me from some of the harassment that like other female contestants probably got which is also sort of funny, right? Like is that you'd have to reduce your femininity to remove harassment, but whatever. I think it's also funny that they don't tell you this. Like this came from the community of contestants that didn't come from Jeopardy. I think that's also partly because the show is so old and it's not like, you know, in the 90s you would expect like, oh yeah, so and so from that place like I can totally just find them on Facebook and message them. There's no expectation that you can break this boundary between television and viewer. When I had always watched Jeopardy I never thought about the people on it. Like it was just, oh, this person's answering more questions or this person's getting more money. But to me, Jeopardy was always a vehicle of just getting trivia in, you know, I didn't really care about the people there. And I think there's a reason why, aside from like Ken Jennings or Arthur Chu or Julia Collins, the only major celebrity of Jeopardy is Trebek, right? He's the giver of the trivia. Yeah, I'm with you. I, you know, I might follow in all the sense that I've watched Jeopardy I might follow someone who's on a hot streak but it never occurred to me to be involved in their lives somehow or even talk about them outside of my own house. What, why do you think people do that? I think people probably did this already. Like I think it's just depends on what you pay attention to, right? Like if there's only like one female contestant you might be like, oh, I'm gonna cheer this person on. Definitely for college things that's definitely like, oh, Navy, go Navy, beat army, you know? And I think now it's just become a lot more public with it. Like Twitter was by far the most like, like racy, I guess. And I think it's because like you have your own little Twitter stream and it is like, you can only put so much information in it, right? So all you can do is just put like very short sentences, you know? Or even just like thoughts and you know, if it's the first thought that comes to your mind is that like, oh, like so-and-so is bad or like so-and-so is attractive. That's what you're gonna put down. Which I thought about that a lot because the earlier article I talked about about the harassment that women got after being on Jeopardy, that sort of scared me quite a bit, to be honest. I don't know. And I think the worst part about it was that it wasn't just like random tweets this time, it was direct Facebook messages. Not only are you like wanting to close the gap between spectator and like media object, but you're also wanting to like send this sort of hate directly with your name attached. So what, if anything, at MIT prepared you to be this kind of media object? I'm not sure prepared. Like in terms of- Well, I'll describe it this way. You seem able to remove yourself from the experience and kind of analyze it in a dispassionate way, in a way other people might not be able to. Is there something about your education here that helped you deal with that? I think part of it is that I've spent a lot of time on the internet and also in like the not so nice parts of the internet. So I'm used to like this posing and, you know, I don't know, just like very raunchy behavior. And so I felt more nervous about like actually the people around me getting attacked, right? So one thing funny is that one of my friends, do you know Moot, the creator of 4chan? No. So this was back several years ago, but essentially one of my friends got confused. Somehow 4chan was trying to find the identity of who created 4chan. And just say real quick, what is, give people background on what 4chan is, if that's possible. 4chan is an image board, which means that it's just a bunch of like, you post an image and a quick comment by it, which seems innocuous, except one, people can post anonymously and like two, it's very rapid fire and the turnover is a lot. And somehow it kind of turned into like a cesspool of like whatever. So yeah, that's probably where the most like offensive stuff, if you're looking for it, you'll find it on 4chan. So yeah, so the creator of 4chan was actually anonymous for a while. He went by Moot. And one of my friends was mistaken for Moot because they didn't like the IP address searches and like tried to find like, oh, he's a roughly like a teenager living in this area of the US. And they somehow found my friend's house. So like his, he was a 4chan user, so he knew it was going on, but his parents didn't. So they would just be like getting like these random packages or like these random phone calls. And it's not even for like that person, it was for some internet alias that is not even correct. So I think that's what I was most scared about, I think, is that people like going around the family. But the one thing I was really surprised about is that like once I started getting my first bits of hate, I was just like laughing because it was very petty and just like seeing people who like clearly are just forming an impression on like 20 minutes of footage. I think the thing that's really making me like be able to take an analytical look at this is my comparative media studies training. So I were, this is what's allowing me to like look at the different forms of media of like, how is the response on Twitter versus say Facebook and what parts of the media or medium are possibly causing this to happen. And then I remember, I brought this up with my professor right now for color and film, Eugenie Brinkama. And just talking about like, yeah, there's these really weird things about like, I think because I'm androgynous, I'm getting less harassment. There's these weird things about becoming a media object and seeing the means of production. And she sent me like a whole list of papers and everything to read and saying that, you know, when I find, when I'm confused about a situation, theorizing about it really helps. And I think that's actually been really true, right? Like the more I'm reading about it, like one of the things that she linked to was Monica Lewinsky had a Vanity Fair article talking about like what's it like to, you know, be so prominently in the spotlight and like trying to hide or remove it or pretend it never happened and like coming to terms with it. And one of the things that was in the article was that it's this desire to take back the narrative that's been created. And I think that's really true and probably something that I'm feeling very strongly, right? It kind of goes back with the idea of, you know, different areas are claiming you for their own purposes and you're not really making any decision. Yeah, I definitely don't think I would be able to make these connections without comparative media studies. Yeah. So you're a comparative media studies minor. Yes. But you're at an Institute of Technology. Yeah, it's also kind of funny how I got into a CMS minor, actually. Yeah, how was that? Because when I first came to MIT, I was very into like math and science and I was like, ah, you know, like, great. I'm gonna do all the math and science and it's kind of annoying that I have to take so many humanities requirements. But then during my intro to algorithms class, I was sitting behind someone and then I was looking over their shoulder and it looked like an academic paper, except there were screenshots of Mario just like interlaced in there. And I was like, what is this? This sounds amazing. So I just keep on like peeping over his shoulder until like I found the name of the class and it was CMS 300 Intro to Video Game Theory. And literally like during that class, I kind of planned out my course road of, oh, like I wanted to take the film experience already and that counts for CMS. That's great. Like, oh, I can take all these cool classes. So I got, I decided on a CMS concentration very early on, but then it never occurred to me that I could do some substitutions to make it a CMS minor until later on. And then I feel, I actually feel really happy that like I've been invited to do this interview because like I've always wanted to be like accepted into the CMS department because it is sort of funny, right? Most people feel like if you do, if you're humanities focused at MIT, it means you couldn't cut it, you weren't cut out for it in science, which is blatantly not true, right? I think all of the people that I know who are into humanities here have realized that it's actually like a valuable part. It's not just to be so technically minded but actually being aware of other things. And I really feel like it enriched my time here at MIT. Do you think you would have studied something like compared to media studies if you went to a different school? I don't think this exists in a different school to be quite honest, right? Like the classes here I've taken are insane. I've taken interactive narrative with Nick Montfort. I've taken games and culture with T.L. Taylor. I've really enjoyed Eugenia Brinkamo's class, whether it's film experience or color in film. She's like single-handedly the reason why me and several of my friends are actually pursuing humanities degrees at this point because just her sheer force of like, man, I don't know if you've ever had a conversation with her but she's just so intense and it just really gets you excited about the subject material. And all of these people are like very well known in their field, right? Like Montfort wrote a book about interactive fiction. Like T.L. Taylor sort of set the stage for massively multiplayer online games and sort of how does that fit socially in a sociological perspective. Now, in my job, I tell a lot more stories about faculty and graduate students than I get to tell about undergrads. This was a good chance then to ask Lily about the undergrad experience at MIT. You can't help but see how incredible it is, but it's so, so tough. MIT has this drinking from a fire hose metaphor about its education. Today that hose's PSI has been turned down a bit. You see and hear a lot of people You see and hear a lot more about the value of taking care of yourself, how to do it, what the support resources are. But as I've learned, the pressure on students comes not so much from educational demands because they are, it's from their peers. Observing one another as they find ways to make the most of four short years in Cambridge. The insidious thing about pressure at MIT I think is that it's all you put it on yourself. She says just after telling me she's coming off an all nighter. I don't think the school has a cut-throat environment. I don't think your peers are cut-throat, but I think you start comparing yourself to your peers. You want to be hardcore, but it's taken a long time for me to realize this, but now it's like, oh, I should prioritize my health and not just like my schoolwork. Students listening, take that to heart. Despite how she finishes this interview when I asked her this, looking back on your deputy experience, was there anything that you think you'd do differently? I don't know, study more. But this is in the context of health and well-being because what she means is even fun things like games can be hard work. My department, which Lilly joined after catching someone studying games in the middle of another class, has an aversion to gamification, that if you just slap a game on top of something hard, it's magically not hard. But to your brain, to your life, what's to gain by doing only what's easy? If you're at home for leisure, watching Jeopardy! or playing Grand Theft Auto or Cards Against Humanity, let it be as easy as you care to make it. But if you're gonna go on TV, national TV, and be as chill as Lilly was with knowing what comes after, eyes wide open, you're golden. Because like her in Final Jeopardy!, you know how important it is being prepared with the right response. This episode was produced by me, with engineering by Matt Russell, editorial help from Chris Couch and music by Joe Tipasquale. It's all a presentation of MIT Comparative Media Studies and Writing, and everything about us, our degree offerings, our research, and yep, our podcast, is online at cmsw.mit.edu.