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.
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.
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.
Some would say that the connotation of the word hacker used here originated in the 60s at MIT.
For me, it's been awesome to see the best engineers doing their own companies instead of joining defense contractors or GS.
I've witnessed now multiple decades of change, and the interests of the student body vary according to the fashion of the day.
If I were to advise fellow alums about preparation, I'd advise: Prepare for change. As trite as that sounds, it's been the only consistent trait.
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.
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.
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.
When the Fed raises rates, then it will be back to the tech bust once again.
So make hay while the sun shines.
