[294] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Re: Workload (was: Re: Affirmative action )
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Laura G Dean)
Sat Apr 28 16:22:18 2001
Message-Id: <200104282021.QAA15490@nerd-xing.mit.edu>
To: "Sourav K. Mandal" <Sourav.Mandal@ikaran.com>
cc: mit-talk@MIT.EDU
In-reply-to: Your message of "Sat, 28 Apr 2001 16:07:23 EDT."
<200104282007.QAA03538@dichotomy.dyn.dhs.org>
Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2001 16:21:20 -0400
From: Laura G Dean <lgdean@MIT.EDU>
On Sat, 28 Apr 2001 16:07:23 EDT, "Sourav K. Mandal" wrote:
> fact of life with physics at MIT. If you're smart, the work's easy
> and fast; if not, it'll be enormously difficult and time-consuming.
> Obviously, there is a sliding scale in between ...
I've never taken physics (other than 8.022) here. I could imagine a
person who says "6.041 is easy, but 6.002 is hard" and one who says
"6.002 is easy, but 6.041 is hard" in course 6. (For the non-VI:
6.002 is circuits, and 6.041 is probability.) For me, 6.041 was
super-easy, but a full understanding of 6.002 would have required more
time and effort than I spent on it. (Yes, sometimes I regret this.)
Where I was going with that: I don't think "smart" is just one
dimension. I can't tell whether you were suggesting so.
> That being said, I'm always annoyed by people who believe in the
> false choice between working hard and relaxing/sleeping/eating, when
> they are so obviously not seizing their potential. I don't think
> all MIT students have reached the point of maximal healthy effort;
> from my anecdotal observations, less than a third have.
Sometimes people over-commit; having done so, the choice is between
work and the health-sustaining factors listed above. What's the big
inefficiency in what the other 2/3 are doing, then?
> Once an overwhelming fraction of the student population maxes
> themselves out, _then_ it would be fair to talk about the difficulty
> and courseload.
Ok. How do you suggest we get there? (You seem to think it's a good
place to be, though I don't think you actually say so.)
Laura
