6 ms·

> I think compared to Boston, Pasadena or Stanford, Blacksburg is far more conducive to mental and physical health. And I agree. Blacksburg was certainly bett

by lisper 5y ago

> I think compared to Boston, Pasadena or Stanford, Blacksburg is far more conducive to mental and physical health. And I agree. Blacksburg was certainly better for my mental health than Boston. But again, this all turns on what you want out of life. Mental and physical health are not the only things a person could possibly desire. If what you really want is to be on the bleeding edge of something like science and technology, and you're willing to endure some stress and physical discomfort in order to achieve that, then Boston is probably a better place to be. This is why figuring out what you really want is really important and really hard. Case in point for me: what I really want out of life is freedom: not being beholden to anyone, being able to do whatever I want whenever I want to. I've more or less achieved that, but it comes at a cost: I have no children because if you have children then you are beholden to them (or at least you should be). I have absolutely no regrets about this, but obviously many people want children more than they want freedom, and that's probably a good thing or we'd go extinct. Different strokes for different folks. That plus a free market is what makes technological civilization work.

Maursault 5y ago
> If what you really want is to be on the bleeding edge of something Sure, but I don't think undergraduates are really bleeding edge participants, more like a necessary evil for bleeding edge participants.
- lisper 5y ago
  If your goal is to be on the bleeding edge, the best way to get there is to forge relationships with people who are already there. There are many more opportunities to do that at MIT or Stanford than Virginia Tech. The actual education you get is very much a secondary consideration.
  - Maursault 5y ago
    I just disagree fundamentally with what you are floating. Undergraduate educations (meaning where the degree is awarded) could not matter less if continuing to graduate level education, and yet what is learned during undergraduate studies is pretty important. If you don't learn Calculus, and get decent grades doing so, you're not going to be able to get a Masters in Math or CS because you won't get accepted into the program. Though I know of seniors planning on graduate education becoming more active in a department, maybe getting an internship to make photo copies and coffee, I've never really heard of undergraduates "forging relationships" with faculty, at least not beyond a particular semester course. Take two students, all things being equal, but one goes to MIT and learns a lot and ingratiates themselves to faculty, but gets B grades, while the other goes to NC State, ignores faculty, parties for 4 years, but gets straight A's... guess which will be accepted into an MIT graduate program? Grad schools are not political. Graduate acceptance is based on merit, not popularity. Unfortunately, academic merit is based on grades, which are evil, and not based on whether you graduated from Yale or Mountain Springs Community College.
    - jjav 5y ago
      > Graduate acceptance is based on merit, not popularity. For common people, yes. I know first-hand people who are very politically connected who went into and graduated from MIT, who are dumb as a rock. With enough money and connections, nothing else matters.
      - Throwawayaerlei 5y ago
        > I know first-hand people who are very politically connected who went into and graduated from MIT, who are dumb as a rock. With enough money and connections, nothing else matters. I've watched how MIT "processes" undergraduate students all the way through graduation, and this would require corrupting the Registrar's office to create a fake transcript and adding names to the list of graduates after the departments and that office submit their perfected lists to the people who handle the details of graduation. It's theoretically possible, but strikes me as unlikely unless those rocks can do and apply the calculus; are you really sure that's beyond them?
    - lisper 5y ago
      > If you don't learn Calculus, and get decent grades doing so, you're not going to be able to get a Masters in Math or CS because you won't get accepted into the program. > Grad schools are not political. Graduate acceptance is based on merit, not popularity. I'm sorry, but this is hopelessly naive. I entered Virginia Tech with enough AP credit to enter as a sophomore, and within one quarter I was a Junior. I finished my B.S.E.E. in 8 quarters with a 3.9+ GPA (I don't remember exactly what it was, but my diploma says Summa Cum Laude.) It took three calendar years because I did two six-month co-op stints at IBM during that time (this was back in the early 80s when IBM was still a cool place to be.) All that was not enough to get me in to MIT or Stanford as a grad student despite the fact that both had accepted me as an undergrad. Then, when I was a masters student (at Virginia Tech) I served as the student representative on the admissions committee. I went on to a 13-year-long research career at JPL in what was essentially an academic position without teaching responsibilities. I made my living publishing papers, and by the numbers I was very good at it. At one point I was the most referenced CS researcher in all of NASA, and I held that title for many years after I stopped publishing. I've seen first-hand how the sausage is made. So I can tell you from first hand experience it is intensely political. That is one of the reasons that I quit. I realized that I was getting a lot more leverage out of playing politics than I was out of actually doing good technical work. I got very, very good at gaming the system, and I hated it, so I quit. I got very, very good grades in all my math classes. In my entire career I have never once had to do an integral or solve a differential equation. By way of very stark contrast, I use my social skills every single day. Those were a lot harder to develop because there wasn't a class I could take. But they have proven vastly more useful in day to day life than math. The biggest mistake I have ever made in my life is taking much too long to realize that the aphorism that "who you know is more important than what you know" is actually true.

by lisper 5y ago

Maursault 5y ago

> If what you really want is to be on the bleeding edge of something Sure, but I don't think undergraduates are really bleeding edge participants, more like a necessary evil for bleeding edge participants.

lisper 5y ago
If your goal is to be on the bleeding edge, the best way to get there is to forge relationships with people who are already there. There are many more opportunities to do that at MIT or Stanford than Virginia Tech. The actual education you get is very much a secondary consideration.
- Maursault 5y ago
  I just disagree fundamentally with what you are floating. Undergraduate educations (meaning where the degree is awarded) could not matter less if continuing to graduate level education, and yet what is learned during undergraduate studies is pretty important. If you don't learn Calculus, and get decent grades doing so, you're not going to be able to get a Masters in Math or CS because you won't get accepted into the program. Though I know of seniors planning on graduate education becoming more active in a department, maybe getting an internship to make photo copies and coffee, I've never really heard of undergraduates "forging relationships" with faculty, at least not beyond a particular semester course. Take two students, all things being equal, but one goes to MIT and learns a lot and ingratiates themselves to faculty, but gets B grades, while the other goes to NC State, ignores faculty, parties for 4 years, but gets straight A's... guess which will be accepted into an MIT graduate program? Grad schools are not political. Graduate acceptance is based on merit, not popularity. Unfortunately, academic merit is based on grades, which are evil, and not based on whether you graduated from Yale or Mountain Springs Community College.
  - jjav 5y ago
    > Graduate acceptance is based on merit, not popularity. For common people, yes. I know first-hand people who are very politically connected who went into and graduated from MIT, who are dumb as a rock. With enough money and connections, nothing else matters.
    - Throwawayaerlei 5y ago
      > I know first-hand people who are very politically connected who went into and graduated from MIT, who are dumb as a rock. With enough money and connections, nothing else matters. I've watched how MIT "processes" undergraduate students all the way through graduation, and this would require corrupting the Registrar's office to create a fake transcript and adding names to the list of graduates after the departments and that office submit their perfected lists to the people who handle the details of graduation. It's theoretically possible, but strikes me as unlikely unless those rocks can do and apply the calculus; are you really sure that's beyond them?
  - lisper 5y ago
    > If you don't learn Calculus, and get decent grades doing so, you're not going to be able to get a Masters in Math or CS because you won't get accepted into the program. > Grad schools are not political. Graduate acceptance is based on merit, not popularity. I'm sorry, but this is hopelessly naive. I entered Virginia Tech with enough AP credit to enter as a sophomore, and within one quarter I was a Junior. I finished my B.S.E.E. in 8 quarters with a 3.9+ GPA (I don't remember exactly what it was, but my diploma says Summa Cum Laude.) It took three calendar years because I did two six-month co-op stints at IBM during that time (this was back in the early 80s when IBM was still a cool place to be.) All that was not enough to get me in to MIT or Stanford as a grad student despite the fact that both had accepted me as an undergrad. Then, when I was a masters student (at Virginia Tech) I served as the student representative on the admissions committee. I went on to a 13-year-long research career at JPL in what was essentially an academic position without teaching responsibilities. I made my living publishing papers, and by the numbers I was very good at it. At one point I was the most referenced CS researcher in all of NASA, and I held that title for many years after I stopped publishing. I've seen first-hand how the sausage is made. So I can tell you from first hand experience it is intensely political. That is one of the reasons that I quit. I realized that I was getting a lot more leverage out of playing politics than I was out of actually doing good technical work. I got very, very good at gaming the system, and I hated it, so I quit. I got very, very good grades in all my math classes. In my entire career I have never once had to do an integral or solve a differential equation. By way of very stark contrast, I use my social skills every single day. Those were a lot harder to develop because there wasn't a class I could take. But they have proven vastly more useful in day to day life than math. The biggest mistake I have ever made in my life is taking much too long to realize that the aphorism that "who you know is more important than what you know" is actually true.