I often think back to why I came to MIT, especially when the semester gets tough. I remember I came to the admitted students weekend and toured one of the dorms. The walls were covered with murals and the floors with junk --- motors, robot parts, circuit boards. People had built their own lofts; someone had rigged their door to open automatically when it recognized them. Someone had hooked up a camera and a projector so that you could "draw" on one of the nearby buildings with a laser pointer.<p>So of course, I came to MIT. I remember discovering pg's essays around sophomore year and starting to consider starting my own company, but my transformation really began when I set foot here at MIT, where creative and curious people build mind-blowing things every day.<p>At first it's intimidating. These people all seem so smart! Who am I to build a roller coaster, paint a 20 foot mural, build a loft, hack a PS3, build a crazy device and start a company out of it? You hear about these things in the abstract and you're intimidated. But then you get home and see people building a roller coaster in your courtyard and you realize: Who am I <i>not</i> to do awesome things? Life is too short, damn it. It seems obvious to the entrepreneurially minded, but it's hard to describe the impact it had on me. I could've learned the same course material in many other places. But I cannot overstate how powerfully this cultural immersion changed my life.
From the time I arrived at MIT in '08 to the time I left in '11, I witnessed a pretty huge shift in the interests of MIT students towards startups. Many people who probably would have gone into finance or defense diverted themselves to the startup world. The 100K competition at MIT and things like StartLabs have gotten big. Dropbox being homegrown was a big thing.<p>For me, it's been awesome to see the best engineers doing their own companies instead of joining defense contractors or GS.
“Sleep, friends, p-sets — choose two,”<p>I have not had the opportunity to attend MIT, however I have worked with several people who did. One of the common attributes I've noticed between all of them is an ability/drive to work hard, and get things done. To almost ignore their physical self. To me, aside from the bit of genius each possesses it's this personality attribute that I suspect is the secret to MIT's notorious success rate.<p>As someone who has experienced a severe burnout, managing my time, and carefully monitoring my energy has become a major priority. What baffles me is how these people can accomplish this without experiencing the same burnout I did when I tried.
When I graduated in '09, everybody was worried about going into finance because of the '08 disaster. Now, all of a sudden, startups seemed like better ideas because finance was so crappy.<p>I, for one, am incredibly excited by the startup community at MIT. We were just there for the StartLabs career fair (hi asuth!) and it was really refreshing to see how many students showed up to it really interested in entrepreneurship and working on interesting projects with world-changing ambitions.<p>It's really great that we have a Dropbox to aspire to, being another MIT company. That really does mean a lot; just having someone to aspire to and hopefully beat is a big driver, at least for me.