screaming godhead
Welcome to Jamrock
MIT. At once exactly like and utterly different from the generic brand. It is an enigma, likened from the outside with images of hermit brilliance; that preoccupied demographic completely immiscible with the lay-populace, confined and working toward some ill-defined yet bracing good. Cut-throat to dream laureates and the fashionable academic alike. The passerby feels palpable awe at its gates, chased by the thought that wide eyes might belie the curious just inside its corridors. And yet a noble institute, decked in the history of progress, tracing the pinnacle of modern man…
There exists a curiosity, I expect, that I have quenched at long last and yet neglected to relieve in others. It took some time to navigate such a place of legend with any semblance of regularity or belonging; to call it home. But I have seen it through the heavy lidded eyes of routine, the autopilot that makes a thing real simply by the lack of will to overlay fantasies, or give due reverence. And finally, I believe myself in a position to comment on the Institute.
It is, as I said, an academic institute and merely that. With great disappointment I must admit that even MIT suffers from the common pathology of the university, though normally to a lesser extent. There are irritating bits of bureaucracy, dickhead classmates, assignments of busy work, and bad professors. I say this not to complain or belittle an incredible place; my myriad praises are to come. But it’s easy to form outlandish expectations here. In one fit of frustration I condemned the whole institute after an encounter with an uncooperative copy machine. It appears that 10,000 world class engineers and the cash flow of flourishing nation-state can’t prevent shit from breaking. Pity.
Even so, the institute is about as user friendly as could be expected. There’s an honest and wholly unfamiliar tendency here to minimize the bullshit tasks of the student. The idea is to allow students to focus on what they came here to learn, and it’s done well. On the other hand, the work load is unbelievable. Any nightmare estimate I had about how much work this semester would be was a lower bound at best. I work from 9am to 10 or 11pm six days a week at least. Strangely, I’ve been very accepting of the lifestyle so far. All of the time is spent doing homework sets for my core classes. There are 3 homeworks per week, normally 3 problems each. If you can finish two problems in a day, you’re making good time. The expectations in the problems are pretty ridiculous. They’re never straightforward. For those familiar with engineering problems, our assignments are normally like those examples that require some random mathematical trick that makes you wonder how anyone ever dreamed up such an approach. I’m beginning to learn how to dream like that.
Most of my classmates are truly brilliant. I wouldn’t say that MIT competition is a myth, but certainly a misconception. The work is incredibly cooperative. In fact, no one could solve these problems in time by themselves. But legitimate arguments arise in group solutions. Most of them involve me, and I’m wrong more than I’m right. But the points are always relevant and I’m generally considered to ask good questions. In the same vain, I’ve developed a reputation as a threat to certain professors in lecture.
Three of my professors are mediocre, one is excellent with caveats, and the last is the epitome of clarity. He wrote the text we use, which is the best I’ve ever read, and he teaches from it, as one classmate noted, with the conviction one might expect from a high priest reciting the Word. And as far as completeness, I believe that the average man commits more oversights while mowing the lawn. It is in his lecture, more than any other aspect of the Institute, that I feel the benefits of my prestigious environment.
The net result of all of this is that I learn at a rate I never thought possible. We learn those underlying principles that are so universally applicable that its often difficult to distinguish one class from the next. We learn that knowing nothing about something in the morning doesn’t prevent you from knowing a great deal about it that night, and on a typical Friday I enjoy a genuine chuckle about all the shit I thought I knew on Monday. Some days I think I might vomit if I have one more abstract thought. But when I really consider my choice, I can’t think of a single worthwhile thing I’d be doing if I wasn’t doing this.
There exists a curiosity, I expect, that I have quenched at long last and yet neglected to relieve in others. It took some time to navigate such a place of legend with any semblance of regularity or belonging; to call it home. But I have seen it through the heavy lidded eyes of routine, the autopilot that makes a thing real simply by the lack of will to overlay fantasies, or give due reverence. And finally, I believe myself in a position to comment on the Institute.
It is, as I said, an academic institute and merely that. With great disappointment I must admit that even MIT suffers from the common pathology of the university, though normally to a lesser extent. There are irritating bits of bureaucracy, dickhead classmates, assignments of busy work, and bad professors. I say this not to complain or belittle an incredible place; my myriad praises are to come. But it’s easy to form outlandish expectations here. In one fit of frustration I condemned the whole institute after an encounter with an uncooperative copy machine. It appears that 10,000 world class engineers and the cash flow of flourishing nation-state can’t prevent shit from breaking. Pity.
Even so, the institute is about as user friendly as could be expected. There’s an honest and wholly unfamiliar tendency here to minimize the bullshit tasks of the student. The idea is to allow students to focus on what they came here to learn, and it’s done well. On the other hand, the work load is unbelievable. Any nightmare estimate I had about how much work this semester would be was a lower bound at best. I work from 9am to 10 or 11pm six days a week at least. Strangely, I’ve been very accepting of the lifestyle so far. All of the time is spent doing homework sets for my core classes. There are 3 homeworks per week, normally 3 problems each. If you can finish two problems in a day, you’re making good time. The expectations in the problems are pretty ridiculous. They’re never straightforward. For those familiar with engineering problems, our assignments are normally like those examples that require some random mathematical trick that makes you wonder how anyone ever dreamed up such an approach. I’m beginning to learn how to dream like that.
Most of my classmates are truly brilliant. I wouldn’t say that MIT competition is a myth, but certainly a misconception. The work is incredibly cooperative. In fact, no one could solve these problems in time by themselves. But legitimate arguments arise in group solutions. Most of them involve me, and I’m wrong more than I’m right. But the points are always relevant and I’m generally considered to ask good questions. In the same vain, I’ve developed a reputation as a threat to certain professors in lecture.
Three of my professors are mediocre, one is excellent with caveats, and the last is the epitome of clarity. He wrote the text we use, which is the best I’ve ever read, and he teaches from it, as one classmate noted, with the conviction one might expect from a high priest reciting the Word. And as far as completeness, I believe that the average man commits more oversights while mowing the lawn. It is in his lecture, more than any other aspect of the Institute, that I feel the benefits of my prestigious environment.
The net result of all of this is that I learn at a rate I never thought possible. We learn those underlying principles that are so universally applicable that its often difficult to distinguish one class from the next. We learn that knowing nothing about something in the morning doesn’t prevent you from knowing a great deal about it that night, and on a typical Friday I enjoy a genuine chuckle about all the shit I thought I knew on Monday. Some days I think I might vomit if I have one more abstract thought. But when I really consider my choice, I can’t think of a single worthwhile thing I’d be doing if I wasn’t doing this.
posted by J.K.Scott at 11:18 PM
2 comments
