6 ms·

A Hard MIT Class

49 points by onderkalaci 11y ago

fillskills 11y ago
Wow, this rings so many bells. I took my first swimming classes after I graduated from college. While others were lapping around the pool, I remember swimming backwards somehow while holding a floater. And yes, crossing the middle of the pool going towards the deep end was the scariest part. With the encouragement of my teachers and some students, I managed to do a few laps by the end of the class. In US, it seems like everyone knows how to swim. I am relieved that there are others like me who struggle with this as adults. Kudos to the OP for sticking through it!
zaroth 11y ago
Sounds like what the author needed was EMDR and then swimming lessons. Just bang your head against it until you break through isn't really a great learning method when there's something other than the material which is blocking the way. Personally this is pretty damning read on MIT Introductory Swim... And I have the sneaking suspicion they approach struggling students in academic classes similarly. Don't figure out the underlying cause of the block, just try harder, perhaps nearly drown, it'll all work out.
- foobarqux 11y ago
  > Sounds like what the author needed was EMDR Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing?
  - qntty 11y ago
    yep. It can be an effective way to desensitize people to things that cause anxiety. People learn best under low-anxiety conditions.
- nostrebored 11y ago
  Sometimes the block is just your level of comfort? Sometimes working at things makes you more comfortable? This doesn't seem damning at all. He did not almost drown -- he had both a swim coach and a lifeguard in the immediate vicinity. Do I believe that he thinks he almost drowned? Yes, but does that matter? If MIT does treat its students this way -- let them approach failure with a safety net waiting -- then they're certainly doing better than many other universities.
- thaumasiotes 11y ago
  Just because you feel like you've nearly drowned doesn't mean you actually came anywhere close to drowning. This is pointed out in the article. As I read the piece, it sounded like the swim coach was fantastic. Here's what stood out to me: > The instructor treated me like I was an Olympic swimmer. He smiled and nodded and gave me a thumbs up and said, “You’re getting it! You’re getting it! You just need a little practice in the water, and you’ll be more comfortable.” > Since I was nowhere near comfortable enough to do that, I had my own set of confidence-building exercises in a lone, separate corner of the pool. One of the lifeguards noticed what was going on and offered to help out. She offered me items like floaters—which the class normally did not use—and kept at me with different small exercises I could try. (Granted, this isn't entirely the coach. But it's the best situation this guy could have landed in.) > I realized I was in the middle of nowhere, and panicked. My legs suddenly seemed thrice heavier. I flopped into the water, kept trying to stand because I was tall enough to, but the fins kept slipping beneath me, and I kept striking the water, and trying to stand, and falling and trying to stand, and falling and trying to stand, again and again, drinking water, inhaling it, panicking. After a tortured fifteen seconds—I think, it felt longer—I was able to stand, and I made it, by walking not swimming, shivering and utterly terrified, to the end of the pool from which I had kicked off. “I almost drowned!” I screamed at the instructor, breathing heavily. He laughed and shook his head. “Not even close. No one drowns in my pool. Good job.” Good job…did he really mean that? He seemed to. > And at the end of it all, I got the swim credit. > The swim requirement became a thing far behind me, hazy in memory. But sometimes, I go to the Z-Center, and I step into the pool, and swim around. I've taught a few people to juggle (the standard three-ball pattern), another physical skill, and this struck me as quite similar. Nobody worries that if they mess up while learning to juggle they'll suddenly die. But almost everyone comes into it with their own idea of what failure means, and it has to be stamped out. To a novice, you've failed if you drop the balls. As coach, I can demonstrate the proper throwing technique, describe exactly what's going on, model it in front of them in slow motion as they hold their hands in the correct position, and (almost) everyone still makes the same mistake when they try to throw two balls: they'll throw the first ball, and then quickly hand off the second ball from one hand to the other while the first ball is in the air. That feels right to them, because they don't drop the balls, but it's wrong. You have to throw the second ball upward just like the first one. And so I learned that the right teaching technique is to jump in with effusive praise as soon as they do anything other than quickly hand off the ball to the other hand. Handing off the ball is bad, even if you can keep it going indefinitely. Did you panic and drop the second ball? Excellent. Did you throw the second ball behind yourself? Great work. Did you throw the second ball into the first ball? That's exactly what I was hoping for. All of those things can be fixed, and with practice, they will be. Sometimes the best thing a coach can say is "great work, that's better than you've done before, keep trying".
- asdf333 11y ago
  There's a saying that is oft repeated (by students) at MIT about how they are treated like mushrooms: Put them in the dark, feed them shit and watch them grow.
  - bitL 11y ago
    Well, that's how most companies actually work. Substitute mushrooms for employees. And add: when they grow big, cut them off.
  - gsteinb88 11y ago
    I've never heard this in 7+ years at MIT. Is this from a different time period?
jcater 11y ago
As someone with a similar story (an older kid thought they'd teach me how to swim without my consent and dropped me in the deep end of a pool -- I don't remember being brought up), does anyone know of adult-focused swimming programs to get around those fears? I've taken lessons as an adult, either at the YMCA or as part of a college Continuing Education program, but they never seem to click. I feel like I've conquered anything else life has thrown at me, but I'll be damned if I've learned to do something as simple as swim.
- pakled_engineer 11y ago
  There's how to swim guides on youtube https://youtu.be/WreddX9aeGw https://youtu.be/WreddX9aeGw
- debacle 11y ago
  What are you trying to learn? To swim casually? To swim laps? Those two things are miles apart.
  - jcater 11y ago
    At a minimum, not die in the water. But I'd love to get to the point of doing laps.
    - debacle 11y ago
      The YMCA should be able to help a ton with that, then. When you take their beginner courses, do you just feel like you're in over your head (no pun intended), or are you not getting the attention you need?
    - SiVal 11y ago
      Swimming, by which I mean being able to be in the water without touching the bottom or holding onto anything and moving around comfortably, is not much of a skill. You can do it, dogs can do it, it's no big deal, BUT ONLY if you feel safe and secure. The most important part is to get yourself to the point where you feel mostly at ease in the water. You can train yourself by spending a lot of time in the pool. Start in the shallow end, sit on the stairs or just squat down, stick your face in the water, and blow some bubbles. Pull your head out, take a breath, and go back in. Do that for a while, then pull your head out when you start to need air but stick your face back in the water immediately without taking a breath. You can stand up anytime you like, so take a moment to notice that your need for air wasn't as urgent as it seemed. You can stay under a few more seconds before lifting your head out again, and when you come out, take a relaxed deep breath instead of gasping as if you were dying. Show yourself that you are in control and doing just fine. Keep playing games like these. Get a little deeper, go farther under water, do little flips under water, and so on. When your face is pointing up, the air sometimes comes out of your nose and cold water rushes in and hits your sinuses--nobody likes the feeling, but after a few times, it won't be anything more than an annoyance, so just spend a lot of time getting used to all of these feelings. That's what kids do. Kids get their heads pushed under water by bigger kids, and before long they realize that it never kills them. Take as long as you need to play around in the water (weeks?, months?, no rush) and get used to all the new feelings. And then take another swimming class and learn the skills without all the anxiety. (And assume you'll have to keep going back for your own underwater therapy refresher courses occasionally for the rest of your life to maintain your comfort level.) Hope this helps.
zallarak 11y ago
This is great because it builds confidence; you have to do something hard, and are encouraged nonchalantly, as if putting in enough effort without getting intimidated will solve the problem. Which it almost always does. The MIT students I have had the pleasure of working with all exhibit this attitude of not giving up and solving tough problems with a calm, perseverent attitude.
- Squarel 11y ago
  But why should swimming be necessary for attending university? A calm attitude of perseverance can be obtained many ways, without forcing people to take swimming classes.
  - soperj 11y ago
    At Harvard it's necessary because back in the day a guy(who was an only child) drowned right after getting his degree. When his mother passed, she willed a bunch of money to Harvard on the sole promise that everyone who gets into Harvard has to learn to swim, because it's a waste of everyone's time & money to get a degree from Harvard when you can die that easily.
    - 2510c39011c5 11y ago
      that seems to be a folklore on the swimming requirement... And they actually did some historical research on it, http://asklib.hcl.harvard.edu/a.php?qid=31265 http://asklib.hcl.harvard.edu/a.php?qid=31265
      - soperj 11y ago
        neat. Thanks for finding that.
mrdrozdov 11y ago
Practice and preparation would make swimming and completing difficult assignments much easier. Rather than spend 10 hours banging your head against your desk, you could spend that time completing easier problems with increasing difficulty or re-reading the text. Sure, some skill development benefits from jumping straight into the deep end, but a more deliberate approach is probably more effect in the long run. "Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe."
2510c39011c5 11y ago
As for the puzzle on the page, has anyone found out the pattern of the number sequence? [3, 6, 9, 21, 22, 47, 78, 89, 134, 225, 368]
- Chinjut 11y ago
  Click the "read more" link after those numbers and all is explained.
  - 2510c39011c5 11y ago
    ...I just spent 1 hour or so on the sequence...and the following clue is the farthest I've got, the first parameter is the cumulative sum of the sequence, >>> log(1002, 10) 3.0008677215312267 >>> log(634, 9) 2.936454025222717 >>> log(409, 8) 2.89198567764725 >>> log(275, 7) 2.8864493565611764 >>> log(186, 6) 2.9165447502641713 >>> log(108, 5) 2.9091716996047423 >>> log(61, 4) 2.9653686687814433 >>> log(39, 3) 3.3347175194727923 >>> log(18, 2) 4.169925001442312 EDIT: yes, I saw that "read more" at first...I did not want to spoil the puzzle so I tried to solve it on my own for a while but then realized I might have to spend more than 1 hour on this thing -- and at this point I totally forgot there is a spoiler there...
    - thaumasiotes 11y ago
      Why not just fit a 10th-degree polynomial?
      - 2510c39011c5 11y ago
        that would be a good universal solution -- it's just that would be too fast and too assuring to get the most fun out of the puzzle...
- mhartl 11y ago
  I looked at the sequence and said, "I call B.S.—there is no pattern." Then I saw that the solution is at the end of the bio, not in the article (click on "read more"). Spoiler alert: There is no pattern.

49 points by onderkalaci 11y ago

Wow, this rings so many bells. I took my first swimming classes after I graduated from college. While others were lapping around the pool, I remember swimming backwards somehow while holding a floater. And yes, crossing the middle of the pool going towards the deep end was the scariest part. With the encouragement of my teachers and some students, I managed to do a few laps by the end of the class. In US, it seems like everyone knows how to swim. I am relieved that there are others like me who struggle with this as adults. Kudos to the OP for sticking through it!

zaroth 11y ago

Sounds like what the author needed was EMDR and then swimming lessons. Just bang your head against it until you break through isn't really a great learning method when there's something other than the material which is blocking the way. Personally this is pretty damning read on MIT Introductory Swim... And I have the sneaking suspicion they approach struggling students in academic classes similarly. Don't figure out the underlying cause of the block, just try harder, perhaps nearly drown, it'll all work out.

foobarqux 11y ago
> Sounds like what the author needed was EMDR Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing?
- qntty 11y ago
  yep. It can be an effective way to desensitize people to things that cause anxiety. People learn best under low-anxiety conditions.
nostrebored 11y ago
Sometimes the block is just your level of comfort? Sometimes working at things makes you more comfortable? This doesn't seem damning at all. He did not almost drown -- he had both a swim coach and a lifeguard in the immediate vicinity. Do I believe that he thinks he almost drowned? Yes, but does that matter? If MIT does treat its students this way -- let them approach failure with a safety net waiting -- then they're certainly doing better than many other universities.
thaumasiotes 11y ago
Just because you feel like you've nearly drowned doesn't mean you actually came anywhere close to drowning. This is pointed out in the article. As I read the piece, it sounded like the swim coach was fantastic. Here's what stood out to me: > The instructor treated me like I was an Olympic swimmer. He smiled and nodded and gave me a thumbs up and said, “You’re getting it! You’re getting it! You just need a little practice in the water, and you’ll be more comfortable.” > Since I was nowhere near comfortable enough to do that, I had my own set of confidence-building exercises in a lone, separate corner of the pool. One of the lifeguards noticed what was going on and offered to help out. She offered me items like floaters—which the class normally did not use—and kept at me with different small exercises I could try. (Granted, this isn't entirely the coach. But it's the best situation this guy could have landed in.) > I realized I was in the middle of nowhere, and panicked. My legs suddenly seemed thrice heavier. I flopped into the water, kept trying to stand because I was tall enough to, but the fins kept slipping beneath me, and I kept striking the water, and trying to stand, and falling and trying to stand, and falling and trying to stand, again and again, drinking water, inhaling it, panicking. After a tortured fifteen seconds—I think, it felt longer—I was able to stand, and I made it, by walking not swimming, shivering and utterly terrified, to the end of the pool from which I had kicked off. “I almost drowned!” I screamed at the instructor, breathing heavily. He laughed and shook his head. “Not even close. No one drowns in my pool. Good job.” Good job…did he really mean that? He seemed to. > And at the end of it all, I got the swim credit. > The swim requirement became a thing far behind me, hazy in memory. But sometimes, I go to the Z-Center, and I step into the pool, and swim around. I've taught a few people to juggle (the standard three-ball pattern), another physical skill, and this struck me as quite similar. Nobody worries that if they mess up while learning to juggle they'll suddenly die. But almost everyone comes into it with their own idea of what failure means, and it has to be stamped out. To a novice, you've failed if you drop the balls. As coach, I can demonstrate the proper throwing technique, describe exactly what's going on, model it in front of them in slow motion as they hold their hands in the correct position, and (almost) everyone still makes the same mistake when they try to throw two balls: they'll throw the first ball, and then quickly hand off the second ball from one hand to the other while the first ball is in the air. That feels right to them, because they don't drop the balls, but it's wrong. You have to throw the second ball upward just like the first one. And so I learned that the right teaching technique is to jump in with effusive praise as soon as they do anything other than quickly hand off the ball to the other hand. Handing off the ball is bad, even if you can keep it going indefinitely. Did you panic and drop the second ball? Excellent. Did you throw the second ball behind yourself? Great work. Did you throw the second ball into the first ball? That's exactly what I was hoping for. All of those things can be fixed, and with practice, they will be. Sometimes the best thing a coach can say is "great work, that's better than you've done before, keep trying".
asdf333 11y ago
There's a saying that is oft repeated (by students) at MIT about how they are treated like mushrooms: Put them in the dark, feed them shit and watch them grow.
- bitL 11y ago
  Well, that's how most companies actually work. Substitute mushrooms for employees. And add: when they grow big, cut them off.
- gsteinb88 11y ago
  I've never heard this in 7+ years at MIT. Is this from a different time period?

jcater 11y ago

As someone with a similar story (an older kid thought they'd teach me how to swim without my consent and dropped me in the deep end of a pool -- I don't remember being brought up), does anyone know of adult-focused swimming programs to get around those fears? I've taken lessons as an adult, either at the YMCA or as part of a college Continuing Education program, but they never seem to click. I feel like I've conquered anything else life has thrown at me, but I'll be damned if I've learned to do something as simple as swim.

pakled_engineer 11y ago
There's how to swim guides on youtube https://youtu.be/WreddX9aeGw https://youtu.be/WreddX9aeGw
debacle 11y ago
What are you trying to learn? To swim casually? To swim laps? Those two things are miles apart.
- jcater 11y ago
  At a minimum, not die in the water. But I'd love to get to the point of doing laps.
  - debacle 11y ago
    The YMCA should be able to help a ton with that, then. When you take their beginner courses, do you just feel like you're in over your head (no pun intended), or are you not getting the attention you need?
  - SiVal 11y ago
    Swimming, by which I mean being able to be in the water without touching the bottom or holding onto anything and moving around comfortably, is not much of a skill. You can do it, dogs can do it, it's no big deal, BUT ONLY if you feel safe and secure. The most important part is to get yourself to the point where you feel mostly at ease in the water. You can train yourself by spending a lot of time in the pool. Start in the shallow end, sit on the stairs or just squat down, stick your face in the water, and blow some bubbles. Pull your head out, take a breath, and go back in. Do that for a while, then pull your head out when you start to need air but stick your face back in the water immediately without taking a breath. You can stand up anytime you like, so take a moment to notice that your need for air wasn't as urgent as it seemed. You can stay under a few more seconds before lifting your head out again, and when you come out, take a relaxed deep breath instead of gasping as if you were dying. Show yourself that you are in control and doing just fine. Keep playing games like these. Get a little deeper, go farther under water, do little flips under water, and so on. When your face is pointing up, the air sometimes comes out of your nose and cold water rushes in and hits your sinuses--nobody likes the feeling, but after a few times, it won't be anything more than an annoyance, so just spend a lot of time getting used to all of these feelings. That's what kids do. Kids get their heads pushed under water by bigger kids, and before long they realize that it never kills them. Take as long as you need to play around in the water (weeks?, months?, no rush) and get used to all the new feelings. And then take another swimming class and learn the skills without all the anxiety. (And assume you'll have to keep going back for your own underwater therapy refresher courses occasionally for the rest of your life to maintain your comfort level.) Hope this helps.

zallarak 11y ago

This is great because it builds confidence; you have to do something hard, and are encouraged nonchalantly, as if putting in enough effort without getting intimidated will solve the problem. Which it almost always does. The MIT students I have had the pleasure of working with all exhibit this attitude of not giving up and solving tough problems with a calm, perseverent attitude.

Squarel 11y ago
But why should swimming be necessary for attending university? A calm attitude of perseverance can be obtained many ways, without forcing people to take swimming classes.
- soperj 11y ago
  At Harvard it's necessary because back in the day a guy(who was an only child) drowned right after getting his degree. When his mother passed, she willed a bunch of money to Harvard on the sole promise that everyone who gets into Harvard has to learn to swim, because it's a waste of everyone's time & money to get a degree from Harvard when you can die that easily.
  - 2510c39011c5 11y ago
    that seems to be a folklore on the swimming requirement... And they actually did some historical research on it, http://asklib.hcl.harvard.edu/a.php?qid=31265 http://asklib.hcl.harvard.edu/a.php?qid=31265
    - soperj 11y ago
      neat. Thanks for finding that.

mrdrozdov 11y ago

Practice and preparation would make swimming and completing difficult assignments much easier. Rather than spend 10 hours banging your head against your desk, you could spend that time completing easier problems with increasing difficulty or re-reading the text. Sure, some skill development benefits from jumping straight into the deep end, but a more deliberate approach is probably more effect in the long run. "Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe."

2510c39011c5 11y ago

As for the puzzle on the page, has anyone found out the pattern of the number sequence? [3, 6, 9, 21, 22, 47, 78, 89, 134, 225, 368]

Chinjut 11y ago
Click the "read more" link after those numbers and all is explained.
- 2510c39011c5 11y ago
  ...I just spent 1 hour or so on the sequence...and the following clue is the farthest I've got, the first parameter is the cumulative sum of the sequence, >>> log(1002, 10) 3.0008677215312267 >>> log(634, 9) 2.936454025222717 >>> log(409, 8) 2.89198567764725 >>> log(275, 7) 2.8864493565611764 >>> log(186, 6) 2.9165447502641713 >>> log(108, 5) 2.9091716996047423 >>> log(61, 4) 2.9653686687814433 >>> log(39, 3) 3.3347175194727923 >>> log(18, 2) 4.169925001442312 EDIT: yes, I saw that "read more" at first...I did not want to spoil the puzzle so I tried to solve it on my own for a while but then realized I might have to spend more than 1 hour on this thing -- and at this point I totally forgot there is a spoiler there...
  - thaumasiotes 11y ago
    Why not just fit a 10th-degree polynomial?
    - 2510c39011c5 11y ago
      that would be a good universal solution -- it's just that would be too fast and too assuring to get the most fun out of the puzzle...
mhartl 11y ago
I looked at the sequence and said, "I call B.S.—there is no pattern." Then I saw that the solution is at the end of the bio, not in the article (click on "read more"). Spoiler alert: There is no pattern.