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The MIT Guide to Avoiding Burnout
- aaronblohowiak 17y agoThe real secret sauce: sleep, variety.
- inmygarage 17y agoCampus wisdom states: At MIT, you can have enough sleep, good grades, or a social life. Pick two. The monthly three-day weekends are nice though.
- storborg 17y agoWorth noting to outsiders that the monthly three-day weekends are colloquially referred to as "suicide-prevention days".
- alexgartrell 17y agoWe used to have a joke like that at CMU as well http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/djj/architectsLeap.html http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/djj/architectsLeap.html Stopped being funny when someone committed suicide there
- baguasquirrel 17y agoI've always wondered what goes on in people's heads when they jump down something like that. Do they ever muse about the irony of what they just committed?
- nfnaaron 17y agoI've read (from memory, sorry) that almost all survivors of suicide leaps regret it and want to take it back the instant they commit to gravity. I don't recall irony being reported.
- toadstone 17y agoI went through cmu miserable. It's fine, suffering brings out the best in me. But I like that poem, and the thought that someone actually jumped does not ruin it for me. To jump is to escape, and that poem is a sweet reminder that you have that right.
- GFischer 17y agoI guess it happens everywhere.. at the engineering college of the local Universidad de la República (Uruguay), there is a first-year course on advanced calculus which serves as a filter (1500 go in... maybe 50 graduate), because as it is a "free" (as in, you don't have to pay) university and resources are scarce, they need to weed out people somehow. The result is that poor students from inland, whose parents make financial sacrifices to support them (living in the capital is very expensive for them, and the classes are structured so you can't have a side job) have committed suicide (2 in the years I was there) from being unable to pass that course (I never passed it either, so I switched what you would call "majors" in the US)
- chrischen 17y agoHey that's what this harvard alum told me too.
- SandB0x 17y agoIn a similar vein, there's a Facebook group "Oxford University: Where Your Best Isn't Good Enough, Since 1117".
- yosho 17y agoThat's also Cornell's Facebook group "Cornell University, where your best hasn't been good enough since 1868"
- roundsquare 17y agoAnd Also: "Cornell: Where If Your Best Hasn't Been Good Enough Since 1868 Then You Should Probably Leave"
- dkasper 17y agoHypothesis: if you find that you have a balanced life you'll eventually get burned out on that too and shift the balance.
- shrikant 17y agoEspecially if you have a 'balanced life' and nobody in your family or social circle does. (I speak from personal experience)
- DenisM 17y agoWe need to blackhole every single one of the 55 users who upvoted this submissions. This is precisely the kind of stuff that will turn HN into digg. What's next - lolcats? Seriously?
- rywang 17y agoWho all on HN is at MIT right now? Despite MIT's reputation for entrepreneurship, it's been difficult to find collaborators actually willing to take the start-up plunge--perhaps especially in grad school.
- inmygarage 17y agohow long of a response do you want on this? i've got lots of theories. i suppose you can make this argument for any top engineering school, but anyway: 1. the economy is starting to pick up - the activity on the eecs jobs list is crazy. hundreds of emails a week for any possible hott tech job you could imagine. 2. there's a pretty palpable division between the business school and the rest of campus. another topic entirely, and one that's likely been debated ad nauseam on HN. 3. people at mit are not short on opinions, and some would-be entrepreneurs have trouble handling it when someone (especially a professor they respect, for example) tells them their idea won't work. see #1, rinse, repeat. 4. there's also the whole east coast/west coast theories on startups + entrepreneurship that's relevant here as well. i wouldn't say acceptance of failure is "alive and well" on the east coast. 5. the e-center at MIT has undergone almost a complete makeover (both ideologically and physically) in the past 6 months with the new managing director, and hopefully there's more to come in the next few years.
- jgavris 17y agoinmygarage and i know a couple of entrepreneurial types... :P
- epi0Bauqu 17y agoYou have to know where to hang out. Try 2w on EC.
- varenc 17y agozacka, RJ...are there others? I'm an '09 5w alum now bootstrapping a startup and living in the area! Maybe I should visit 2w a bit...