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6.S058, 6.3100, 18.650, 18.619, 5.111, 24.111, 24.118, 24.137, 21T.221.
111 units. 111 hours a week in classes and labs, doing problem sets, or taking exams. Thankfully there’s 168 hours in a week!
On top of all of these, I was working as an undergraduate researcher, and our paper ended up getting published in NeurIPS.
Why?
I wanted to push beyond the limits of what I think I can do.
If I just took 5 classes and call it a day, I’ll never know how much I can truly do. Turns out, my limit was 9 (with research on the side) for a healthy mind.
Moreover, one of the reasons why I love MIT is that I love learning. During this semester, I genuinely learned so much interesting concepts:
- In philosophy of quantum mechanics, I learned about Everett’s interpretation for the measurement problem.
- In control design, I learned how to build and tune controllers for a physical robotics system.
- In lighting design, I learned how to control stage lights and controlled the lights for a section of a concert.
- In principles of chemical science, I learned all about thermodynamics and acid-base equilibriums.
- More and more.
How?
Sadly, I was doing the bare minimum to learn all the content and just get an A in each class. If I had to do it again, I wish I could have spent more time thinking on my own about the content in each class.
I was skipping as many classes as I could in order to learn all classes’ content on my own time, taking makeup-exams because classes conflict, spending weekends in lab, etc.
I also made friends along the way and learned how to keep a healthy balance (research was very fun to me and did not feel like work).
The one thing that I felt missing from this period of time though, was introspection. I was always going to classes, hanging out with friends, doing more work, and that let me having little time to hang by myself and really reflect.
Overall, it was a good experience and if I had to take 9 classes again, I’d probably take a lot more CS/Math classes that I’m especially interested in now.
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