[snikolov]

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.

[jiggy2011]

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.

[snikolov]

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.

[jiggy2011]

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.

[strawbucks]

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.

[rocha]

Sounds like there is an incredibly strong hacker culture there.

Some would say that the connotation of the word hacker used here originated in the 60s at MIT.