[Glass-mit] Fall 2025 Beginner Glassblowing Lottery

[Cheo, Olivia]

WHO: Current MIT students, faculty, and staff
WHERE: 10-250
WHEN: 6:00 PM **sharp** on Monday, September 29, 2025
HOW: In person, no proxies allowed
-----
FYI: in the interest of efficiency (and our sanity), we will be purging old
lottery cards.  What's an old card?  Anything from before the pandemic
(i.e., Spring 2020 or earlier) is considered an old card.

The exception to the above?  If you've been to a lottery SINCE the pandemic
(Fall 2021 or later) and we've pulled your cards from lotteries where you
weren't selected.  (All of the cards that have been drawn from in lotteries
since Fall 2021 have been segregated from cards that were last used
pre-pandemic.)

Example:

   - You attended the spring 2020 lottery and weren't selected.
   - You attended the fall 2022 lottery and told us you had been to a
   previous lottery.  We pulled your spring 2020 card to add to the selection
   pile.  You weren't selected.  Your spring 2020 and fall 2022 lottery cards
   are now segregated from the cards of those who only attended pre-pandemic
   lotteries.

Reminder: once you get into a class, all of your cards up to that point are
removed.  Continuing with the above example:

   - You attend the spring 2023 lottery and we pull your two prior lottery
   cards.  You get into the class!  All 3 of your cards are extracted from the
   aggregate.
   - You attend the fall 2023 lottery.  There are now no cards to pull from
   prior lotteries, so you'd only have one card for fall 2023 in the mix.

Confusing/convoluted?  You betcha!  Thus the plan to ditch the old lottery
cards.

Why do we still do the lottery this (analog) way?  Reasons include (but are
not limited to) the following:

   - We schedule the classes and practice sessions immediately after names
   are drawn.  If we did the lottery electronically, we'd still want to
   get people into a room to do the scheduling (negotiating conflicts would
   take infinitely more time over email).
   - We want to emphasize the importance of physical presence for this
   activity.  If you're willing to show up in person for the lottery, there's
   a higher likelihood you will show up for class.
   - The in-person lottery helps us see if people can follow simple
   instructions.
   - It has worked for us for decades.
   - Have you heard about what happened with other groups' electronic
   registration a few years ago...?

-----

Hope to see you there,
--The MIT Glass Lab

P.S.  Don't forget to visit the ***25th*** edition of the Great Glass
Pumpkin Patch <https://glasslab.scripts.mit.edu/pumpkin/> this weekend...!
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.mit.edu/pipermail/glass-mit/attachments/20250922/7e73f39a/attachment.htm>