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12/18/2009 Lesson Learned and Embracing Scholarship: End of the First Semester at MIT
It is the end of my first semester at MIT. I have not seen any of the grades yet - hopefully I will do well enough to pass. The physics final was a perfect bell shaped curve around 50%.
MIT is the first time that I really had to seriously study for a class. As such, I did not do as well as I have historically done. But that is why MIT has pass/no record for the first semester. For 8.01/Physics: Mechanics, I studied 40 hours for the final, 10 for 3.091/Solid State Chemistry, and 35 for 18.01/Single Variable Calculus. If I had worked during the year, it would have been less. But that intensive end of year studying made me realize some things:
It is very important to figure out how you learn best. I went to a one day presentation by Edward Tufte last month. He did not like how an aircraft manufacture mandated that they move to a paper-less system with the design of their new aircraft. He thinks that people can understand something much better when they are looking at something on a piece of paper. Also the process should not get in the way of the result.
I agree, and I realized that I have been sometimes putting the process ahead of learning stuff. I have talked at great length about Tablet PCs. Last year, I did all my class work on a tablet PC, and I talked positively about the experience. This year, I used a tablet in 8.01 and 3.091. I used paper for 18.01. I found that I learned stuff better in 18.01. When I really need to concentrate, I need to write on paper. There are no distractions, I can focus on what I am doing. For studying, I sat down with a large pack of paper and worked through problems.
In a history class, a computer is still great to type notes, and look up stuff. If you have a professor's slides it is nice to write on top of them during the lecture. A tablet is great for making small drawings quickly and digitally. Most people can type much faster than they can write, and writing seems to go slower on a tablet. Apple has shown that a tablet can make a nice mobile interface, if software has been designed for it, but I realize now there is a reason tablets have gone mainstream.
I bought a Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500. It was expensive, but it is awesome! I can throw my entire notebook in it and it will quickly scan through. It has an ultrasonic overlap detector that is fairly good at detecting problems. Its scan quality of typed papers is excellent. It also OCRs typed text to make it searchable in Adobe Reader. Handwriting is still a challenge. When I started ThePlaz.com I would spend 10 hours putting notes online. By not labeling stuff and doing auto upload I could do it in 2 hours. Now it takes a minute or two.
You also have to pay attention in class. In high school, you could often not pay attention in class and look something up on the internet. At MIT, every minute matters. You also really need to be awake and paying attention in every class. Some mornings that is a challenge, but it will catch up to you.
When it comes time to study, it is so hard to get started. But when you get over the hump, and get started it is easier to stay focused. You also need to stay concentrating, one chat message tears you away and it takes a few minutes to get back into it. You also need to make sure you do not have anywhere to go. One of the biggest struggles in the semester was always having to be somewhere. You can make yourself very busy at MIT, but you need time to study. This was my mistake in this first semester. You need to clear your schedule for the next few hours and work.
For example, I would often go to review sessions or office hours simply because I felt like I should be doing something to study. The sessions, of course, would only be open for a certain length of time, so I would want to take advantage of it. But those session are generally helpful only when you come prepared with questions. Otherwise you just give the appearance of studying. Usually it is best to just lock yourself away in a quite area and study.
Having a clean desk is also important. One student on my floor has his desk in his room completely empty of stuff. He can focus on what he is working on. I always go out in the hall when I need to concentrate. Most recently, I found an old office in the Media Lab that has been vacant. I went in, spread my stuff out, and worked for 6 hours.
In the middle of the semester I felt like I did not learn much of anything; but after studying I felt that I mastered a lot of concepts at the end of the semester. Certainly not all of them (see physics exam final curve) I knew in the beginning of the year that classes were the part of MIT I least looked forward to. Now that I have proved to myself that I can do it, I feel like anything is possible. I knew that it was critical to learn these concepts because classes next semester will use them and will award letter grades. I may now decide to pursue an engineering major.
I can not decide what major to do. On one hand, Course 17/Political Science, is something I am interested and has the least requirements of any major, allowing me to explore more different things that MIT has to offer. The department has a single digit (<10) number of students per year. On the other hand, many people have urged me to take an engineering major. About a third of MIT students do Course 6/Computer Science, but I feel like I want a smaller, more individualized program. Course 3/Material Science would be something completely different. I now know that if I focus, I can do it, but will I be happy working on something like that? The analytical and problem solving skills that you learn there are applicable to anything. You feel that you can master anything.
Now don't get wrong, MIT is an awesome place. I have plenty that I would rather do than classes. As I talk about in the last update, I would rather be a grad student - free to work on projects.
The new Media Lab building, E14, is now open. Photos on Flickr. The building really really looks nice. The lab looks to have gained many more students - it hasn't - they are just more visible now. The grand opening is next year.
This January I will be in China with MIT, with the 6.A53 advising seminar. I am really happy to be going. As always, photos will be posted. For the last class, our advisor brought in Zach Anderson. Zach not only did the MBTA subway hack, but now works full time in a startup to make energy recovering shock absorbers. It is Popular Science's Invention of the Year. The project has caught the notice of military top brass as well as GM, since it can lower fuel costs by around 5-10%. Zach is an awesome role model.
Next semester, I pre-registered for 18.02/Multi-Variable Calculus, Phyiscs Electricity and Magnetism, 21F.403/German 3, and 21W.732/a writing class. I am also going to be a listener for STS.050/The History of MIT. I am also doing MAS.111/Introduction to Doing Research in Media Arts & Sciences which should not be much work.
I am doing German 3, because I got an internship at Deutsche Bahn this summer in the Touch&Travel department. Here is an article in English from 18 months ago http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleprint/3950/-1/1 It will be very challenging, due to the language, since I will be working with hardware, and programming for an enterprise. I knew German from my mom and can speak it at home fairly well. I lack, however, the business and technical vocab words. In addition, I've never really read or wrote German. I can read if I go very slowly and sound out the words. In addition, working with hardware is something that I've not done before. I've ordered an RFID kit and some books to start working with the stuff. I hope to replicate Zach's experiment and learn how to build a system which is Zach-proof. You can make stuff secure - if you really try hard. If you make some small mistakes, (like wireless WEP encryption) your stuff is, as Ars Technica puts it, crap-o. Mobile is also a very interesting space. I am excited to be working internationally, for a transit company, on mobile products after my freshman year.
One of the things I realized at MIT is how hard it is to do things when you start from scratch. At the Media Lab, we work with technology that is at least 3-4 years from the market. We don't know how something will actually work, we must make a good decision and hope that it will be good in 15 years. The Mifare system is a good example. When it was first designed in 1993, it was several years from its first implementation. Today, billions of rides have been granted using the cards, and there is no way to fix the broken system. I talk about this a lot on The Weekly Spin audio podcast.
--ThePlaz 21:53, 18 December 2009 (EST)
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