random thoughts about choices by CJ Q. '23
why mit? why not mit?
- one concern i hear from a lot of people on-the-fence is of mit’s “grind culture” or “questionable mental health”. mit is hard. some people say mit is only as hard as you want it to be. that is a lie, but so is everything else that can be said about it.
- the fact that i chose mit says less about mit than it does about me. for the same reason, there’s only so much you can learn about mit, before any new info about mit doesn’t help making the decision.
- it’s likely you have all the info you already need, and you’re weighing the differences among things. the question you want to ask isn’t what matters, but what matters to me?
- if you haven’t made the decision yet, well, i was once in your shoes. i didn’t commit until the last moments. don’t worry that you’re overthinking this decision. some might say that you can’t make a bad choice here, and that may be true, but that doesn’t mean you have to make a hasty one.
- then again, there’s only so much thinking you can make about the decision. the perfect choice doesn’t exist, and you will have to decide eventually.
- the things i thought mattered to me turned out not to matter as much. there are things that matter to me i never would’ve expected.
- in particular, what matters to you won’t always line up with what matters to others. if none of your reasons for choosing mit are your reasons, it might be better not to choose mit at all.
- the things that matter to me have changed a lot since being in mit. despite that, i’m still happy i chose mit.
- the other day i overheard someone ask “what is your direction right now? or are you in a phase of deciding, ‘where am i going?'” if ‘where am i going’ is a phase, almost everyone i know is in it. you don’t have to figure out where you’re going; you only need to know enough to decide.