I knew a tiny bit about Austin Hess beforehand from listening up in class – mainly that he was editor-in-chief of the MIT Tech, and thus I presumed that he was an MIT senior, probably around 21.

When I sat down to Internet stalk Austin Hess, I first came across what I thought was his Twitter. The handle was @AustinHess, the photo was of a youngish male, and the location stated Boston, MA. Not bad huh? Everything checked out, so I scrolled down the tweets, excited that I was going to get a glimpse into his inner psyche.

Reading his tweets, this Austin Hess seemed something like a raging Tea Party affiliate with hashtags like #EmperorObama and um, #oldmanass. I began imagining Austin in my head, this 30-year-old, angry, married, but also an MIT student working at the Tech. I was kind of looking forward to interviewing someone who seemed like my direct opposite in every way.

A few more Google searches and I realized I was totally off base. The MIT Austin was someone else entirely. He unfortunately was not nearly as public with social media as Tea Party Austin but I was able to dredge up some old articles about his high school career. From what I could find of him in high school, he seemed like he was a really bright, accomplished person and really into science, specifically physics and space (the kind of kid that would get into MIT!)

Then in college, I dig some digging and found a short blog he wrote while interning at CERN when the Higgs Boson discovery was announced. I found all his articles that he wrote for the Tech, including some recent ones regarding the Walter Lewin case at MIT. …And that was it!

So it was on to the interview to get to know more about him. I went to the Tech offices on the 4th floor of the MIT student center at around 5PM on a Saturday. While the floor was basically empty, behind the locked doors of the Tech were over 20 people in various rooms talking and working. After finally locating Austin, we found an empty room and began talking.

Austin talked about being editor-in-chief of the Tech. He enjoyed controversial stories and hearing people’s back-and-forth on it. One of his bigger, controversial stories was on Walter Lewin, who he even had some back and forth with over email. “It was a really surreal experience. Some of the email conversations were very strange. And at the end he got very mad that he still wasn’t portrayed in a positive light.” Huge swaths of people got really angry at the Tech and wrote comments and emails on a story that he initially thought was quite straightforward.

One of the former editor-in-chiefs told Austin before his tenure, “This is going to be a crazy time but you’ll learn more than you will in any MIT class.” Though Austin doubted him at the time, he in the end found it a learning experience: learning how organizations work but also how complicated issues can get between what’s in the news and what actually happens. It also made him a little disappointed in the MIT community from time to time, because he was often on the receiving end of what he considered to be extreme voices.

Austin also talked about his time interning at CERN during the announcement of the discovery of the Higgs Boson, which was a unique and very exciting experience. He remembered all the practice announcements, arguments between scientists, and staying up all night in line waiting for the final big announcement.

While it was a definite high point, possibly one of the greatest high points for physics for many years to come, this also made him realize during this time that he wasn’t that interested in pursuing physics research further. He saw that many post-docs and graduate students working on the Higgs Boson, a truly tremendous project, were still leaving the field and leaving research altogether just several months later.

Finally, he told me about his plans for the future, including most likely (*maybe, maybe not) working at the New York Times as a software engineer, a job that would combine his interests in technical subjects and the news in a city where things are happening all the time! Looks like you have a really bright and exciting future ahead, Austin!