Near the end of winter break, I was sitting in an uncomfortable pleather chair in my dentist's office waiting for a cleaning while reading the latest issue of Blender magazine (Bright Eyes and Rilo Kiley in the top 25 albums of 2007?! Come on, Blender.), when it occurred to me that it would be a really good idea to write a post. My dentist doesn't actually have anything to do with MIT, although I do constantly feel like the two are out to get me. You'll never get my wisdom teeth! Neither of you!
Wait, what was I saying?
Ah. Yes. Right. I was about to embark on a discussion that may sound all too familiar to regular readers of the blogs, since Laura just wrote a version of it a couple of weeks ago: sometimes, you will hate this place. And when you do, you'll really hate it. Trying to get through MIT is hard, and you'll often wonder whether or not the struggle is worth it.
This is how I felt during the entirety of November and December. Finals week ("I hate everything and everyone, including you") was just the point when I reached a less-than-uplifting epiphany: I'd spent an entire semester working harder than I had ever thought possible, and my GPA was actually going down.
Behold, the ultimate demotivator.
I choose to live a full life outside of academics, albeit one filled with too many extracurriculars. Ask anyone; being on the executive board for MedLinks, producing the IAP show for the Musical Theatre Guild, doing a UROP full-time, having a show at WMBR (you can listen to streams of everyone's shows! Do it!), picking up photography on the side, blogging here (albeit sucking at it sometimes), and planning to run for president of Senior House is definitely too much stuff at a time. Some people are able to do all of this and still have amazing grades - I'm pretty sure Mollie survived off the energy from magical unicorns or something (narwhals? Other mythical horned animals?) while she was here. (Hi, Mollie.) I am not one of these people (as Jake '10 just said ten minutes ago, "Oh! You do stuff! No wonder your grades suck!"), but that's something I can and do accept. If you're wondering why I haven't been blogging, this is why. It isn't that I don't have anything to blog about, just a lack of time in which I can do so. (I am placing a statement in parentheses here because there's one in or after every other sentence in this paragraph.^_^) As I stated above, I occasionally wonder if doing all of this is really worth it.
Here's the important thing, though: I'm happy this way. There are a ton of opportunities to take advantage of here; if I didn't do so, I'd go absolutely insane. Granted, I still complain about my grades at the end of every term and tell acquaintances from high school lies of omission about how school is going, since saying "I have a 4.0 at MIT!" and not explaining the 5.0 scale is far easier than listening to people who barely know me prattle on about how I "used to be so smart!" Perhaps I haven't completely adjusted. Or maybe I just have no patience.
College is the one time in your life where you'll be relatively independent and your primary responsibility will be to learn things, and not just the material in your classes. Why would you ever want to squander that chance? There are tons of people who do so and regret it afterwards. I don't plan on becoming one of them. If that means that my grades are less than stellar, then so be it.
And hey, the upside to it all is that it gives me no shortage of things to blog about over IAP.
Comments (Closed after 30 days to reduce spam)
Posted by: Edgar on January 13, 2008
Posted by: Karen on January 13, 2008
Posted by: Julie on January 13, 2008
Posted by: Laura on January 13, 2008
Posted by: Julie on January 13, 2008
Oh well.
Posted by: Piper on January 13, 2008
I fixed the link to your last.fm. ^_^
Anyway, my favorite album from 2007 by far is Friend and Foe by Menomena. I saw them in November, and it was the best show I've ever seen. It even beats the Mars Volta last night, and their shows are notoriously fantastic. Alive 2007 by Daft Punk is a close second, because come on, it's DAFT PUNK MASHUPS OF DAFT PUNK SONGS. Nothing on the face of the earth could possibly be better, except maybe pie.
I still haven't come up with a definite top 10, since I really enjoyed most of the new stuff I heard last year. Here are a few of those:
Battles - Mirrored
Enon - Grass Geysers...Carbon Clouds
The Octopus Project - Hello, Avalanche
M.I.A. - Kala
Justice - Cross
O'Death - Head Home
Devendra Banhart - Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon
Of Montreal - Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? (I almost forgot about this, since it came out in January)
CocoRosie - The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn
Apparat - Walls
(Okay, there are far more albums here than I intended to list. What can I say? There was a lot of good music this year.)
Posted by: Keri on January 13, 2008
Well, not really. But Around The World/Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger is still a work of beauty.
Posted by: Sam on January 13, 2008
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA FUNNY YOU SHOULD MENTION THAT. I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT. BECAUSE THAT DIDN'T HAPPEN IN EVERY SINGLE ONE OF MY FIVE SEMESTERS HERE.
Ahem. I guess my point was, you're not alone.
"I am placing a statement in parentheses here because there's one in or after every other sentence in this paragraph."
Oh, Keri. You are so precious. <3
I'm so glad you posted! And that also you thumbed your nose in the face of anyone who might have anything mean to say about your grades. Dude, you've got nothing to be ashamed of. You're as amazing as ever.
Posted by: Nina on January 13, 2008
Posted by: Nina on January 13, 2008
Posted by: Keri on January 13, 2008
(Actually, the secret is to pick up a course 16 significant other, thus ensuring that you will peer-pressured into doing homework in order to spend time with said significant other.)
Posted by: Mollie on January 13, 2008
Posted by: Paul on January 13, 2008
Posted by: Keri on January 13, 2008
It's awesome that you're doing stuff. A perfect GPA is totally overrated. (Ha. This is actually subliminal messaging to my future self in college. I could completely see myself as someone who becomes far too obsessed with grades.)
(Additionally, I am also a fan of parentheses.)
Posted by: Taylor on January 13, 2008
@Sam: Before going blind and listen Alive 2007 for ever, you should have go to a Daft Punk concert, and decide after that =P.
Posted by: PS on January 13, 2008
(It had to be said.)
Posted by: Paul on January 13, 2008
Posted by: Mollie on January 13, 2008
What I'm getting at is this: everyone says MIT is unbelievably difficult. So, how do students cope with the stress? By that I mean not doing other activities like UROP and student govt, but mentally. How do students mentally cope with the fact that they're constantly studying and cooped up in their dorms?
Thanks!
Posted by: liberty on January 13, 2008
And the main thing is that you enjoy your time than letting yourself cut on things and feel terrible afterwards.
Posted by: Akshay on January 14, 2008
Bleeping amazing, seriously, I am still blown away.
Posted by: milena '11 on January 14, 2008
Out of curiosity, why aren’t you counting doing other activities as a way of coping with stress? Some of the things I do – the radio show, running around taking pictures of everything – are precisely how I handle the environment at MIT. The activities students take up outside of their course loads (not counting UROPs, since those are often taken for credit and can really be considered extra classes) are how they deal with stress here; said activities are often time-consuming, but they’re also ways to keep your priorities in check and to unwind by getting involved in something for the sake of enjoyment.
Theoretically, you’ll be "cooped up in your dorm studying" (or cooped up somewhere else; I almost never study in Senior House, since it’s hard for me to treat my living space like my working space) at any college you go to, since the decision to go to college comes with an acceptance of the fact that you're going to have to spend a good amount of your time studying. Even so, I know very few people who are studying all of the time. That’s not to say people don’t work extremely hard here. I’ll use my friends and me as examples: when we all have a lot of work to do, we’ll go out somewhere where we can eat and hang out before or while getting stuff done. (Trident on Newbury Street, which has free Wi-Fi, is a popular choice.) We’ll sometimes spend hours sitting at tables in the corner studying for a final or completing a problem set, but so will students at many other colleges. The difficulty of the coursework here really only causes a lot of pressure if you let it; whether or not academics take over your life is up to you. It’s a matter of finding a balance that works well for you. (I’m sorry if I sound like I’m repeating myself. This really is the case, though.)
As for the perceived high suicide rate at MIT, I’ll refer you to an entry Mollie made a couple of years ago. I looked up old articles on the subject, and most of them come to the same conclusion as this post did.
I feel like this may not completely answer your question. If it doesn’t, feel free to tell me so or to email me at keri-lee (at) mit (dot) edu.
Posted by: Keri on January 14, 2008
Now back to work ...
~Donald
Posted by: donaldGuy '12 on January 15, 2008
Posted by: Corey McDonald on January 16, 2008
But hear, hear--your post had a message as well as admonishments of dental professionals. College is so much more than classes, and the worst way to spend a college career is by ignoring what's going on outside of the classroom. For example, I was considering joining the Corps of Cadets at V Tech, but after hearing some crazy stories about how they get up at 5AM, march through the drill grounds while everyone else has fun, dorm together, spend their sumemrs training together, etc., etc., I just thought, not even a college education is worth that. No thanks--life is enough of an assignment at the moment!
And, DonaldGuy, I agree: senioritis is a bear.
Posted by: E. Rosser on January 16, 2008
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