Student Spotlight: Blake Shepard

PHANTOM SPOTLIGHT INTERVIEW

Blake Shepherd ‘19 · M.I.T. Class of ‘23

Blake Shepherd left an indelible mark while at Cathedral High School. While at Cathedral he was a member of the Math & Science Academy, and the track team. Blake was a lead in our theater productions and served as student body president. Additionally, he was a well-respected classmate and valedictorian. During his senior year, Blake had accepted his offer to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T). For our Phantom Spotlight, we caught up with Blake and talked about his firstyear experience at M.I.T.

Tell us about your freshmen year experience?

Freshman year was great! Even though second semester was uprooted, I met a lot of great people and had my eyes opened to a world of possibilities. It’s hard going from a school where everyone feels like family to a school on the other side of the country where you don’t know anyone but getting past that initial awkwardness is incredibly rewarding. I joined a lot of extracurriculars with varying degrees of seriousness such as MIT Rocket Team, research groups, and a fraternity. As far as academics go there was A LOT of coffee and late nights.

How do you feel Cathedral prepared you for your first year?

Cathedral prepared me in multiple ways. Most practically I was able to pass out of my first math class because of high school courses I took. However, more impactfully Cathedral prepared me to really step outside of my comfort zone and try new things. College has the classic 31 Flavors problem: there’s so many things to do (flavors to get) that it’s easy to freeze and settle with something not really desirable. In high school I did a bit of everything: track, math and science academy, morning news, theatre, and student government. By the time I got to MIT, I was prepared to find the flavors that best interests me.

Do you keep in touch with your Cathedral classmates?

For the past month, I’ve talked with Cathedral friends literally every day. I can’t imagine that connection dying anytime in the future.

What was the best piece of advice you received from a Cathedral Faculty member?

The best piece of advice I’ve received is not being afraid of failure isn’t enough, you have to embrace failure. Life is full of ups and downs, but the objective is to maximize the highs and limit the lows. When those lows happen, use them to grow the highs.

While at Cathedral you were very involved, did you find ways to be involved at MIT?

Definitely! I joined MIT Rocket Team for the first semester which builds sounding rockets and launches them in southern California. I did research with the former head of the AeroAstro Department on control surfaces, and then later with a group working on CubeSats (very small satellites). I joined both a fraternity and a cultural living group. I plan on expanding on these activities next year.

Have you declared a major?

I’ve officially declared Aerospace Engineering and I plan on double-majoring in Astrophysics. MIT refers to its majors by numbers. Mechanical Engineering is Course 3, Physics is Course 8, and so on. In MITlingo, I’m a 16-ENG Space Exploration and 8-FLEX Astrophysics double major.

How much time did you spend studying per week?

I study for about 3 hours a day on weekdays so about 15ish hours a week. That however doesn’t include actually doing homework or studying when finals come up.

What do you do on the weekends?

I try my hardest to try something new with friends like go see a new movie, hang out at the Boston Commons (basically a gigantic park outside the State House), see a musical, or something like that. I dedicate Saturdays to socializing with friends mostly to keep my own sanity.

What things are there to do in Cambridge?

Cambridge is a beautiful little town with amazing places to eat and things to see. The cool thing about where MIT is located is Harvard is also in Cambridge literally a 30 minute walk down the same road ( a walk which I’ve done plenty of times), Boston University is about a 20 minute walk in the other direction across the Harvard Bridge, Northeastern University is a bit further way at about a 45 minute walk, Emerson is about a 45 minute walk, Tufts is about a 30 minute train ride away, Berklee College of Music is about a 30 minute walk, and a lot of other schools that I didn’t mention are very close. Basically, there are A LOT of college students VERY close to each other, so it often makes for an event heavy town.

Is there a lot of school spirit?

MIT school spirit is strange. Everyone loves the community that they’ve found there but MIT students aren’t the type to wear MIT gear offcampus very often. A clear exception to that is the Brass Rat which is the MIT class ring which changes from year to year and which holds an enormous amount of sentimental value. That being said, MIT students bond together because they’ve all endured one of the toughest undergraduate experiences out there. Our mascot is the Beaver because its nature’s engineer, but to a bigger point it gets all of its work done late at night.

What’s your favorite place on campus?

Favorite place on campus is a small room called “The Banana Lounge.” Please google it it’s amazing. It’s a study space with free bananas, hot chocolate, and coffee. It also has a napping section! A close second is Hayden Library; it’s great place to study while overlooking the Charles River.

How did the COVID-19 shutdown impact you and your classmates?

College is hard. College from home is almost impossible. Most people say that the best thing about college is everything BUT the classes, but now that’s all we have in a tangible way. The distractions from family is high, and the memory retention from learning through a screen is significantly lower than before. It’s hard but it also helped me and my classmates really appreciate the small things about our campus that we once took for granted.