(rustling)
(drumming)
- Hi, my name's Garrett Parrish,
and I'm a senior at MIT studying
mechanical engineering and entertainment technology.
I'm also a musician, designer, an engineer,
and I spend my time combining
all 3 of those disciplines using technology.
(drumming)
I usually wake up at around 8 o'clock in the morning.
Start, you know, getting ready for the day,
have my Trader Joe's raspberry oatmeal every single day.
Then I usually leave the house about 9:30 or so.
I usually don't have class in the morning,
so I either work on some of my music or my homework,
or some of the other projects I'm working on.
Grab some lunch in Kendall Square or around campus.
Go to class, usually in the afternoon for a couple hours.
And then at night I usually have rehearsal
or some other, you know, meeting
with some of the various activities I do,
and then come back to the house for dinner,
hang out with friends, you know, do my work,
and then eventually get back to sleep.
(relaxed music)
- You mentioned that combining music,
technology, engineering.
Sort of broadly speaking, what does that look like?
What does that mean?
- So, I tried very, very consciously
not to pigeonhole myself into one discipline.
I think it's really important for everybody to do that.
Ever since I was really young
I've always done both music and engineering,
and that was, you know, my path throughout high school
and into college, because I'm equally passionate
about both and, you know, both are absolutely critical
to who I am as a human being.
And I think that when you can combine them effectively,
you can achieve far more than you could
with just one of them.
So, it was really MIT that showed me that that was possible,
and that I could not have to keep
those two parts of my life separate,
and just do 'em both at the same time.
- So, what is, what does your living situation look like?
- So, I live in a co-ed literary fraternity
of about 60 students called the Number Six Club.
We live on campus, even though it's privately owned,
and we eat together, socialize together,
work together, hang out together, go out together,
and it's a really, really wonderful community of people.
One of the most interesting parts about it
is that there's a high constituent
of international students.
So, I'm actually one of only about
3 or 4 Americans that live in the house,
and it's really interesting to be able
to be exposed to different cultures
from all around the world.
We have Greece, Sweden, Germany,
Columbia, Venezuela, all over the place.
I mean, it's really cool,
because everyone's kind of an outsider,
so it really brings everybody together in,
like a true family of students.
- Walk me around this room then.
Lot going on here. - Sure, so, this is,
I call this my castle, 'cause I really like castles,
and because I'm obsessed with Disney, obviously.
- That's thematic. - Yeah.
So, first and most important part is the ceiling.
This is a replica of the night sky
my, the girl who had the room before me
actually painted it, but then I installed all the lights.
And one of the great things about Number Six
is that they allow you to renovate your room,
and do what you want with it within reason,
and even reimburse you for parts of it.
So, I put in a floor, I painted, added the lights,
and really, you know, made it my own space
and a place that I feel comfortable coming home to.
So, it's not just a dorm room.
(relaxed music)
So, over here I kinda have my music space.
So, this is my electronic drum set,
which allows me to play drums at any time of the night,
and not bother anybody.
So, this is my desk where I do most of my work.
Right now, I'm working for an arrangement
for the jazz ensemble that I play in here.
It's debuting in about a month,
and behind my desk I have a lot of the drawings I do,
And I've always been fascinated with the Disney characters,
and I really was interested
in getting to know more about visual art,
and I actually took a drawing class here at MIT
which really opened my eyes about not being afraid
to just, you know, dive into something.
So, these are a lot of my first sketches
and color drawings of the different Disney characters,
and it's been a really good experience.
(relaxed music)
- [Interviewer] So, what's this building here?
- So, this is Kresge Auditorium.
It's the main concert and event space on campus,
and this is where most of the music concerts,
and recitals, and events happen.
- [Interviewer] Okay, and so what does
the music scene look like at MIT?
- So, there's a common misconception around MIT,
that it's all engineering and just science
and math. - [Interviewer] Numbers.
- And numbers all the time. - [Interviewer] Numbers.
- But that's totally not true.
There's a very vibrant art scene.
There's a very vibrant music scene.
I've mainly been involved in the music scene here.
There's a jazz ensemble. There's choruses.
There's orchestras, symphony orchestras,
1 ensemble, African drumming groups,
pretty much anything that you could imagine.
And the administration's really, really supportive
of students that wanna get involved in the arts
because, you know, everybody here
is studying some form of engineering or science,
so the art and music groups, you know,
have a really, really nice camaraderie,
because everyone is doing it purely because of passion.
(relaxed music)
- [Interviewer] So, what do you major in at MIT?
- So, I'm majoring in mechanical engineering
with a flexible concentration that allows me
to focus on something else,
and that concentration is entertainment technology.
- Is that a flexible concentration that you built,
or was that sort of pre-existing?
- So, there are some pre-existing ones
like energy, transportation, robotics,
but I decided to create my own flexible,
custom concentration in the entertainment technology.
- [Interviewer] And what did that process look like,
building that concentration?
- So, it's surprisingly simple.
MIT does have a lot of support for, you know,
students kinda making their own versions of their majors
and Course 2, mechanical engineering,
has an option that you can submit a proposal
with a list of classes that are relevant,
and you, you know, write some essays
about why it's important to you,
why each class contributes to this,
and you just make the proposal,
and you talk to your advisor
and, hopefully, you can get approved.
- Great, great, what do you think makes
the MIT Engineering Department different or special
as compared to other schools, from your knowledge?
- So, I think there's been a big push
in the past couple decades, you know,
to increase STEM education, and engineering,
but the thing about MIT is that they've been
doing it long, long before
it was ever cool to be building things.
- That's not the concern,
the cool factor. - Right.
And the professors here, you know,
they're the people that invented the internet,
invented all of these technologies
that, you know, are so ubiquitous to us now.
So, just the amount of community knowledge
is just unfathomable, and you get to learn from these
true leaders in every single technological field.
So, you never have to worry that, you know,
you're learning the right thing,
or you're thinking about things correctly,
because they're just so good at what they do.
They're just like, "'Kay, this is what you gotta know.
"You're gonna be in this situation.
"You're gonna have to think about it this way.
"So, you need to learn this, and that, and et cetera."
So, it's just really, really helpful to be in class,
and to be able to just completely pay attention
and be like, "Okay, I know what I'm supposed to know."
And then just go do it.
- - [Interviewer] Yeah, yeah.
- And I think there's a huge focus
at MIT on practical learning,
and I think that that's something
that a lot of other schools and a lot of other communities
are trying to ramp up, but the idea of, you know,
learning through doing, and MIT's motto is "Mind and Hand."
So, you both, you know, study the theory,
but then you have really intense lab classes,
and MIT really actually gives you tangible skills
that you can use to build things, to make things,
to design things that, you know, are hard to get sometimes.
- Do you have a good example of a class where you had a cool
learning-by-doing experience? - Yeah.
So, the mechanical engineering capstone class
is called 2.009, it's the product engineering process,
and it's a class, truly, like no other.
So, there's 8 teams of students.
Each gets a budget of about $7,000,
and over the course of the semester,
the 20 people on your team have to
come up with a product, design it,
build it, and then pitch it by the end of the semester.
- - [Interviewer] Do you do every stage?
- Every single stage.
You're basically like a little startup,
and you go from, you know, a blank sheet of paper
to being on a stage in Kresge, you know,
pitching your product to the world.
And, you, know, you have space in lab to do it,
you have professors, you have technical instructors
to help you, communication instructors.
But just the experience of being given the opportunity
to be in a leadership position at such a young age
when you're just coming off of all of
your rigorous technical education, like,
you actually learn a lot of the other problems
that go into making anything,
because it's not just the equations and everything.
It's, you know, how do you deal with people?
How do you design for a human being?
How do you, you know, design something to be manufactured?
And having the opportunity in a safe,
you know, constructive learning environment,
to do that when the stakes aren't huge
is incredibly valuable.
(relaxed music)
- Before I let you go and do
all the work that you gotta do.
- Yeah. - Do you have any
parting wisdom for high school students,
any, like, mantras?
- Yeah, so I think something that I live by
is the idea that it's okay to be in the middle,
and to not, you know, live in the extreme world,
and not pigeonhole yourself in one discipline.
And it's okay to both like art and engineering,
or both wanna do music and do
something completely different,
and it's okay to have different interests,
and it's really important, you know,
to show that if you're applying to college,
or just life in general, generally,
'cause those parts of you that, you know,
you don't always service through your school major
or through your research, they're still parts of you.
So, they need to be celebrated.
(relaxed music)
So, if you like this video and wanna learn
more about colleges, don't forget to subscribe.
(relaxed music)
Alright, so if you like this video
and you wanna learn more-- (Interviewer laughs loudly)
- [Interviewer] Do you need to come back through?
- No, that's okay, I got my finger on the button.