In which our "secret" project is revealed to the world

It's January.  I assume you knew that.  Admit letters for regular decision won't be mailed until March.  I assume you've gathered that also.  So technically, we don't need a live, fully functioning admitted student website until March.  (Sorry, ED admits -- no website for you.  At least we sent you an HMC car decal!  That's good, right?)  And, in the interest of honesty, for the past few years, we haven't even started updating the website until the letters are en route to the post office.  And between the adrenaline rush and about sixteen cans of fully caffeinated Coca-Cola, it's always been magically completed, more or less, on time.

But this year, we (and, as always, "we" means "Raissa") had ambitions.  We needed a new website!  A better one!  One that would truly say, with flashing lights and oodles of confetti, "Welcome to Mudd!"

Problem is, none of us knows how to design a website from scratch.  None of us has time to design a website from scratch.  But we do have one thing going for us: we're not above begging.

Which is why the Office of Communications has graciously agreed to design a bright, splashy admitted students website, possibly complete with whistles and free polar bears.  There's just one condition: that we turn in all our final text and photo requests by, oh, today.  You know, the today that occurs in January.

There've been a few moments when this has seemed like a completely crazy idea.  And if it hadn't been the extremely sane, extraordinarily practical Raissa suggesting such a thing, I might've argued that it couldn't be done.  But it happened.  Somehow.  In January.  So now it's official.  By late March, this not-so-snazzy template will be defunct . . .

. . . and replaced by something new and shiny.  What will the revised site look like?  Well, that'll be a surprise, even to the admission office.  I'm sure it will be pretty.  Even without whistles and free polar bears.