[Warning: This is a huge post, covering most of my academic journey at MIT] Earlier in my blog, you might have seen the post where I met famed MIT alumnus Woodie Flowers, who gave me some advice about MIT: "MIT can either be a steam roller or a candy shop." You can either immerse yourself in studies, trying your best to stand up to everybody else doing, as you might believe, better than you, and you can take every fucking hard class, bitch about how much work you have, and emerge feeling jaded and relieved that it's all finally over. Or you can realize that it's a place with immense resources and probably one of the most amazing collections of awesome people and things you will ever be so intensely involved with, and, pardon the cliche, loosen up and live a bit.
As a freshman, I took this at face value, and saw these as two discrete ways of life. Either I studied hard, or I had fun. I knew MIT was going to be the biggest academic challenge I'd ever faced, but I didn't know how hard it would be. I also had no idea how fun "college life" would be. I absorbed tales of the legendary fire hose effect, in the way that living at MIT was like "drinking from a firehose": it would sure as hell quench your thirst, but then some, and you might be swept away. Eventually, I found my balance, but not before some good ol' fashioned trial and error.
Maybe the biggest change in my day-to-day life here at the Institvte is the way I deal with schoolwork. First semester freshman year, I handled 3.091, intro to solid state chemistry, like a dream; I ended up nearly making an A in the course, which is surprising for a notoriously difficult to master GIR. But in 8.01, classical mechanics, on the other hand, I made a 60 on my first test; the class, which is taught in interactive TEAL style, saw me sitting quietly at the table with my peers as they discussed concepts over my head. while I nodded along. I dropped to 8.01L, which is taught more slowly via traditional lecture style, but didn't fare much better. My third class, 18.02, was multivariable calculus, which I placed into using credit from the AP BC exam; I mistakenly thought it was calculus 2, and was fairly unprepared for the material I encountered, since it had been a long time since my last calc class, and I never really learned how to deal with sequences and series (sshhhhh!). My fourth class was a Comparative Media Studies (CMS) graduate class with less than 15 people, taught by Junot Diaz. (This class was awesome, and I regret nothing about it, even though it didn't count towards my humanities requirement; I'm still in email contact with several members, and it was an excellent introduction to creative writing at MIT, plus Junot is a total baller.)
I thought I could do it like high school. I holed up in my room, alone, to work on every pset the night before it was due, often giving up halfway or at 5 AM, whichever came first. I studied the night before on for the tests by reading over my notes and psets, rarely picking up a pencil. I never went to office hours, and just went to one review session before any test. I scraped by in the classes I was not initially doing well in, and I was pretty bored with how hard MIT seemed, no matter how much I "studied". I had a minor freakout before the end of the semester, but after a nice talk with a super helpful, generally aloof Calc 2 (18.02) TA that lived on my hall, I got over my issues and ended up passing all my courses first semester. I'm pretty sure I failed the 8.01L exam, but my other grades pulled me through, except for that one week in IAP when I pulled my first all-nighter working on a Bad Ideas hack and missed all of my labs for that week. Pass/No Record let me slide through, relatively unscathed. So this is MIT, I thought. It's hard, and it moves pretty fast. But these are all GIRs, maybe it'll get better when I'm taking classes I care about that will be easier. (Protip: It doesn't get easier. You just get better at dealing with it [hint, this is what this blog post is about], and you forget, in the haze of classes and incoming freshmen, what you were like back then, bashing your head against your desk at 4 AM on top of a half-finished pset about multivariable integration, while trying to drown out the sex noises from your next door neighbor by blasting music that you can't do work to.)
Second semester, on the other hand, was a time full of poor decisions and great social life. I did learn to start working with other people on my psets, but I still never started until the day before, and still didn't go to office hours. So while my friends came up with the answers, I copied them down, telling myself I understood, and then blanked during the tests, when I remembered seeing "something like this on a problem set", but hadn't actually worked out myself. I hung onto 6.01 for as long as I could until drop date, convinced that I'd magically get better at EECS at some point, despite making below a 50 on the first, open-notes test. My class count at this point for the semester was now 3: 8.02, 18.03, and 21L.011. I'd been at a halfway point in 18.03, with the 5 AM psets (just not alone this time), and 8.02, while it was better than 8.01L, was still material I was entirely new to. At the end of the semester, I aced 21L.011, unsurprisingly (I really enjoy writing, and am now a creative writing minor). The weekend before my finals, with 8.02 on Tuesday and 18.03 on Monday, I made some questionable life choices that helped me visualize wave propagation in E&M intensely, but did nothing for helping me understand differential equations, and didn't really study. I no-recorded 18.03 and made an A on my 8.02 final. Class count: 2, GPA: 4.6/5. No big deal, right? My main goal was grad school, and I figured as long as I no recorded 18.03, I'd rather take it again than have the guaranteed C I would have made, had I passed. As long as my GPA was high, it would be alright.
Wrong. Turns out, if you earn less than 36 credits in a term as a full time student at MIT, you get put on "academic warning", where you have a credit cap of 4 classes, and you have to pass all four of these classes, with reasonable grades. If you don't, you get put on Academic probation, which is where a committee decides whether you should take an academic leave of absence (take time off from MIT for at least a semester). On the website for the Committee on Academic Performance, they refer to academic warning, which only appears on your internal transcript, as a "wake up call", and that's exactly how it worked for me. I knew I kind of screwed up by not picking up another class after dropping 6.01, and it was kind of just a flaw in the way I was using the system, that caused me to only have 2 classes completed. But there was also something seriously wrong with the way I was using my working time; I felt like I didn't do much less than most people, yet I seemed to be struggling intensely just to keep up.
I'm not a person with low self-esteem. I'm a staunch believer in the admissions philosophy that if I was admitted, it was because a group of people, who have sent more people successfully through MIT than I will ever meet, knew I would be able to make it. So I wasn't about to believe some bullshit reason in my own head about not being "smart enough." Sure, there's a gradient; some people can do breakthrough research in cancer research that makes my head spin while juggling 6 classes and TAing a grad class (I actually know a dude like this, we're really good friends and he's an awesome guy), and some people spend all of their time working on four classes, stopping to eat and sleep (on the rare occasion). But I can't make myself believe in anyone here being inherently incompetent. I didn't think I was stupider than the kid who built a suspended loft in his room, became a boss at spinning tech poi, and aced all his classes. So I was convinced that I was doing MIT wrong.
Initially, I panicked upon receiving my warning. In retrospect, that was a good thing; it made me get my act together and reevaluate the way I was working on my classes. But at the time, I only remember that being a summer of freakouts before the new semester. I would be retaking 18.03, and taking two classes in my mechanical engineering major for the first time: 2.001 (static mechanics 1) and 2.003 (dynamics 1), along with a class on short story writing for my minor. Having experienced the shitshow that was my classical mechanics class, I was prepared to be utterly lost in anything relating to mechanics, and I was really worried about being a failure as a mechanical engineer. And I had an insurmountable fear of being kicked out of MIT.
(Let's be clear on one thing: There is nothing wrong with taking time off from MIT. When I expressed my fears, a lot of my upperclassmen friends began letting me know stories of people who left and came back, and I realized that a significant number of the people I knew had all taken time off, whether for academic or personal reasons. It's not something I knew before this all happened, because it isn't such a big deal. Yes, MIT is awesome, but rather than thinking of leave as a "you fucked up, go to time out", it's a chance to regain your bearings, to refresh your perspective on how you're handling your life.)
So when sophomore first semester rolled around, I pulled out all the stops. If I tried everything (and I mean EVERYTHING), then I could eliminate all doubt as to whether my issues were with method or with intellect. I read the textbook before the lectures. I went to recitation with questions, having started the pset the day it was released. I went to EVERY SINGLE OFFICE HOURS FOREVER, as long as they didn't conflict with other things. I joined a second dance team. I know this sounds counter-productive, but I see it as a mandatory exercise that actually helps me clear my mind during practice, and also forces me to manage my time more effectively around rehearsal slots. For 18.03, I found the lectures unhelpful, so I gathered a contingent of friends, and we watched the corresponding OCW lectures on a projection screen in an empty classroom during each lecture slot.
2.001 and 2.003 were struggles. I had a hard time learning the methods to using steps to create equations from constitutive relations and then backsolving. My shaky background in classical mechanics did me no favors. I made a 30 on the second of two 2.001 exams, and when I emailed the professor in concern, he curtly suggested I drop the class. In my righteous fury and indignation, I studied harder for 2.001 than I had for anything in my life but the SAT; I worked entire practice exams from years past, worked through every pset that semester again, picked questions from the textbook at random and worked completely through them, went to review sessions like they were free food events. I ended up making an A on the final, one standard deviation above the average score, and finished with a B in the course. But the biggest surprise came with 18.03, where I actually understood the material fairly well this time around. I was helping my friends on their psets, and I ended up making an A in the course. In the end, I didn't regret having to take it again; it turns out, differential equations are actually pretty important in engineering, and having a solid base to work on really made some of my other classes easier.
With academic warning safely behind me (but not forgotten! oh hell naw) I took IAP to do UPOP and get some work done on my cosplay. And then I looked at my lineup for the next semester: 2.004 (Dynamics 2), 2.007 (Design and manufacturing 1), 2.678 (Electronic systems for meches), a Soviet history course, and a literature course on cyberpunk.
2.007 and 2.678 are both very different breeds of lab classes. 2.678 has structured lab sections every week, where they give you a booklet and you do the procedure within. You usually end up with some neat electronic device that you've built yourself, and it introduced me to oscilloscopes and function generators, which are used over and over again in later course 2 classes. 2.007, on the other hand...I was accepted into the special electric vehicles section, where we worked with a partner to make our own electric go kart from scratch. I had seen my sophomore friends from last year, consumed with 2.007 lab, coming back for food breaks at 10 pm before going back to work, so I was completely prepared for 2.00go-kart to eat my life. So I treated it as an ongoing project, with a binge week during spring break. To be fair, it did eat my spring break like a voracious, beastly time-sink with metal shavings for teeth, drooling cutting oil over everything I ever loved.
But during most of the semester, 2.678 was a good reasonable half-unit class, and my two humanities courses handled themselves fairly well (I read really quickly, and this, compounded with an inherent enjoyment of writing, make most of these classes a simple but interesting journey for me). The only remaining thing was 2.004, and it was with this class that I truly realized the hidden power in office hours. Yes, it made me look at the pset beforehand, and yes, it was a great resource, both for answering questions and for letting the instructors know that you cared about the class and put in effort. But most of all, it made me focus. No matter what work I did on my pset, I was always more productive at office hours, where I was forcing myself to sit down with my pset and notes in front of me for two hours, with no laptop, thinking only about the problems and working with no distractions save for other people asking similar, relevant questions that contributed to my understanding even as I solved problems.
The tragic events of the Boston marathon and the shooting on MIT campus and subsequent Boston/Cambridge shutdown threw me for an emotional loop. I was also seesawing between two romantic commitments of different flavors at the time, plus some additional drama with hallmates. But the nice thing about project classes and humanities courses is that there are no finals. After the first two weeks of May, with a flurry of two dance performance production weeks back to back, essays and revisions, and the final 2.00go-kart test and 2.678 project, I had two weeks to prepare for my only final, in 2.004. I went to review sessions, worked a bunch of practice problems, explained concepts to my friends, the whole shebang.
Much to my shock, I made an A in 2.004. Before this, I had an overwhelming fear of any technical courses. I knew I could handle the project classes; I love tinkering, and hands on work, and I'm also into cars (electric or otherwise) and motorcycles; working on fixing things and designing things is why I decided to major in course 2 to begin with. But in 2.004, I felt as if I had actually learned useful things, because my understanding of the concepts was so solid that I could actually apply them to designing real world things. And with that triumphant grade, I was able to look back and tell Freshman Helena, curled up around another failed test in 8.01L, that yes, it does get better. It wasn't me; it was what I was or wasn't doing.
I'm now in my junior year, in my busiest semester yet: 4 pset classes, one of which has an overarching project for the semester and 3 hour labs every week, and one science fiction class that has a 3-5 page paper due every week. Almost all of my assignments are due on or before Wednesday each week, and I have four hours of dance rehearsal on Saturdays, meaning that I can't relax on weekends. My secret for getting my shit done, and still having a social life, time to read books, time to get to know our awesome new freshmen, date my amazing boyfriend, and make baller cosplays?
I'm always busy. But never too busy. When there's downtime during my day, when I know nobody can hang out with me, I start on my work. I work when I'm bored in recitation. I nibble away at my work in between dance practices, and I plan at least two days ahead to finish any assignment at least 24 hours before it's due. I'm a little lucky because 7.012 (biology) is fairly easy for me; I learned a lot in high school and retained it fairly well, since I'm a visual learner and the use of diagrams really helps me, and I usually finish those psets at least 2 days before it's due. But as for the other ones, I start before office hours, and then I work REALLY FUCKING HARD at office hours, and work back through to make sure I understand when I get home.
Two more general tips: When studying in groups, come prepared with a lecture. Sure, you can come with your own questions. But the true test of understanding is whether you can answer somebody else's questions. Volunteer to work through test problems on the board with your peers; you'll get to see their reasoning, and also offer yours. This segues into the second tip, which may or may not apply to you: write that shit down. Working things out on boards is fucking borderline magical; things always seem to unwravel themselves for scrutiny when they're written in chalk or dry erase marker on a surface in front of your face on the wall. Also, I have horrible handwriting, so when I do any pset, I "do" my pset in messy scratch work on the pset or on scrap paper, and then I take printer paper, stolen from the Athena clusters around campus, and actually rewrite my entire pset in nicer form, complete with annotated diagrams and step-by-step calculations. The stuff I do at office hours or on my scratch paper is just the basic concepts, the directions on how to get the answer that I write down once I figure it out. But when I rewrite my psets, I retrace my steps and break them down, making sure that every line makes sense as a progression towards the solution. This helps me immensely, and also makes sure that the graders will actually mark what is wrong. (yes this is a double edged sword, but while fudging answers might make pset grades a tiny bit better, your understanding can't be fudged on a test at MIT. If you're not a person like me, at least.)
I do struggle with the firehose at MIT. Sometimes, I look around at the people finishing their exams half an hour in, or the dude from before as he's grading papers in my room, having finished his psets for the next two weeks already. But then I turn back to my own work, block out everything else, and focus on getting this shit done. As it turns out, everybody is different, and the nice thing about college is that it provides an environment that simultaneously allows you to branch out and explore, and also introspect and discover things about the way you tick. It will be one of the last times where all you are expected to do is learn, both in class, and about those around you. It will also be one of the last times where there is a finite ending and expected result of most tasks; you won't have to swim around, trying to figure out what exactly you're supposed to be getting at the end of it all, and this guidance really simplifies a lot of things in life. All things considered, it's always pretty chill, and you have a surprising amount of control over many things in your life. Be responsible, and remember that if you're thirsty, taking small sips vs. sticking your entire head into the flow will both get water into your system.
Drink, and be merry. There is time and place for both within these four years.
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