[295] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Re: Workload (was: Re: Affirmative action )
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Richard Tibbetts)
Sat Apr 28 16:39:00 2001
Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2001 16:32:27 -0400
From: Richard Tibbetts <tibbetts@MIT.EDU>
To: "Sourav K. Mandal" <Sourav.Mandal@ikaran.com>
Cc: mit-talk@MIT.EDU
Message-ID: <20010428163226.I29362@multics.mit.edu>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Disposition: inline
In-Reply-To: <200104282007.QAA03538@dichotomy.dyn.dhs.org>; from Sourav.Mandal@ikaran.com on Sat, Apr 28, 2001 at 04:07:23PM -0400
On Sat, Apr 28, 2001 at 04:07:23PM -0400, Sourav K. Mandal wrote:
> 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. Once an overwhelming
> fraction of the student population maxes themselves out, _then_ it
> would be fair to talk about the difficulty and courseload.
Many MIT students come in with poor study skills. Some of us get by
anyways (myself included) and leave with poor skills in time
management, etc. Other people find that they have to learn how to
learn in order to make it at MIT. This can be very bad.
I used to think that there were a lot of resources for students who
wanted to improve these skills. I have become more skeptical lately.
While MIT pays lip service to these topics, there isn't much there,
especially for people who don't start having trouble until after their
freshman year.
Improving these resources would have to be a major part of making MIT
harder/better. I would have been psyched for someone to tell me how to
study/manage my time/etc when I was a frosh. Granted, I don't think
that anyone has the answers for me (unless maybe its someone who wants
to tell me I have ADD and need to be medicated). But it would be cool
if someone did.
Dreaming of an ideal MIT,
tibbetts
