I often think back to why I came to MIT, especially when the semester gets tough. I remember I came to the admitted students weekend and toured one of the dorms. The walls were covered with murals and the floors with junk --- motors, robot parts, circuit boards. People had built their own lofts; someone had rigged their door to open automatically when it recognized them. Someone had hooked up a camera and a projector so that you could "draw" on one of the nearby buildings with a laser pointer.
So of course, I came to MIT. I remember discovering pg's essays around sophomore year and starting to consider starting my own company, but my transformation really began when I set foot here at MIT, where creative and curious people build mind-blowing things every day.
At first it's intimidating. These people all seem so smart! Who am I to build a roller coaster, paint a 20 foot mural, build a loft, hack a PS3, build a crazy device and start a company out of it? You hear about these things in the abstract and you're intimidated. But then you get home and see people building a roller coaster in your courtyard and you realize: Who am I not to do awesome things? Life is too short, damn it. It seems obvious to the entrepreneurially minded, but it's hard to describe the impact it had on me. I could've learned the same course material in many other places. But I cannot overstate how powerfully this cultural immersion changed my life.
Sounds like there is an incredibly strong hacker culture there.
Is working on personal projects outside class considered the norm?
It certainly wasn't when I was at uni, not with CS students anyway. After studying most CS students spent their time playing video games, watching movies, smoking pot or doing other activities.
Making a door with face detection or similar would be very unusual.
In reality, everybody's very busy, but enough people find time to hack on things that it's very frequently an inspiration to hear/see what people are doing.
Most people seem to be just surviving. But there a decent amount of people who hack on things frequently, and a small, but still sizable number of very prolific hackers. There are some people that comfortably take 8 or more classes a semester. Certainly some of those types of people choose to take a normal course load and have a lot of time to hack. But it seems like the more common situtation is that you end up neglecting your schoolwork and getting poor grades.
Yes, I found when I was at university that it was very difficult to take on a personal project and still be motivated to do my school work.
I would start hacking on something and not notice the time going by, so I would end up having to do assignments the day before. This was easy to begin with since the course starts easy but after a while becomes impossible.
The only way I can see it being possible would either be to have super high intelligence and productivity or military level discipline.
That's why I am amazed to hear of people who start whole companies whilst still getting top grades.
The culture varies across campus regarding those kinds of in-house projects. It is very common for people to have either an internship or research position outside of class, though.
From the time I arrived at MIT in '08 to the time I left in '11, I witnessed a pretty huge shift in the interests of MIT students towards startups. Many people who probably would have gone into finance or defense diverted themselves to the startup world. The 100K competition at MIT and things like StartLabs have gotten big. Dropbox being homegrown was a big thing.
For me, it's been awesome to see the best engineers doing their own companies instead of joining defense contractors or GS.
I have not had the opportunity to attend MIT, however I have worked with several people who did. One of the common attributes I've noticed between all of them is an ability/drive to work hard, and get things done. To almost ignore their physical self. To me, aside from the bit of genius each possesses it's this personality attribute that I suspect is the secret to MIT's notorious success rate.
As someone who has experienced a severe burnout, managing my time, and carefully monitoring my energy has become a major priority. What baffles me is how these people can accomplish this without experiencing the same burnout I did when I tried.
Burnout and subsequent energy management are only the superficial components, I think. I've found that the curriculum really cuts to the core of how people think as they work. To me, the major lesson I've learned throughout my 3.5 years at MIT so far is how to deal with futility.
I feel like people (I'm probably thinking mostly of my parents and friends outside) often refer to "trying until you succeed". But sometimes you just won't. Often you won't. You're not smart enough, don't have the resources, those things that keep you up at night. If you tie everything to big success and ground-breaking progress, you'll burnout because there's nothing for you to chew on. You feel like you're spinning your wheels.
So the lesson I've only just started to really take in is that to avoid burnout you do things for the sake of doing them and celebrate the smallest, stupidest things you can. That's of course from someone who has yet to even graduate, let alone really start accomplishing anything of significant worth. So take that shit with a grain of salt.
When I graduated in '09, everybody was worried about going into finance because of the '08 disaster. Now, all of a sudden, startups seemed like better ideas because finance was so crappy.
I, for one, am incredibly excited by the startup community at MIT. We were just there for the StartLabs career fair (hi asuth!) and it was really refreshing to see how many students showed up to it really interested in entrepreneurship and working on interesting projects with world-changing ambitions.
It's really great that we have a Dropbox to aspire to, being another MIT company. That really does mean a lot; just having someone to aspire to and hopefully beat is a big driver, at least for me.
So of course, I came to MIT. I remember discovering pg's essays around sophomore year and starting to consider starting my own company, but my transformation really began when I set foot here at MIT, where creative and curious people build mind-blowing things every day.
At first it's intimidating. These people all seem so smart! Who am I to build a roller coaster, paint a 20 foot mural, build a loft, hack a PS3, build a crazy device and start a company out of it? You hear about these things in the abstract and you're intimidated. But then you get home and see people building a roller coaster in your courtyard and you realize: Who am I not to do awesome things? Life is too short, damn it. It seems obvious to the entrepreneurially minded, but it's hard to describe the impact it had on me. I could've learned the same course material in many other places. But I cannot overstate how powerfully this cultural immersion changed my life.