(groovy music)
- I'm Sam Clark with Crimson Education.
We're here at MIT to ask some big questions.
What is the best thing about MIT?
- I'd probably say the people,
thing is, people at MIT are very spontaneous
and they're all about like just doing it,
if I have an idea and let's go do something crazy,
build a frickin' roller coaster on East campus,
we're gonna build a friggin' roller coaster,
we're gonna do it.
- Are you building a roller coaster?
- No but like that happened last year.
- You built a roller coaster?
- I helped build a roller coaster.
- That's awesome.
- The people for sure.
Lots of diversity, lots of great people here.
- I would agree, they're also very nice,
he didn't mention that, nice people, diverse people.
- You get to know a lot of people who seem very normal
but they're actually super brilliant
and you don't know that initially
but after you hang out with them
you realize that people are super smart
and super cool and these people are my friends.
- Also I would say the people,
it's all very down to earth people
are the people that I am with.
You wouldn't necessarily expect them to be
the most smart people in the world
but then when you start doing stuff with them
you're like, oh my goodness, they're a genius, so.
- I think it's just like acceptance
of having a passion for something nerdy.
- Just not even something that grandiose,
like just really little nerdy things, silly things
that we share that like connects us
and then the support they give me
and then I give them back,
I think that's what I like about MIT the most.
- What's the worst thing about MIT?
- The work is very challenging,
but I think that also is a great thing as well,
I don't think there really is a bad thing
about this place.
- For me I think it's between
either some of the really intense academic pressure,
like the culture here is very much like,
if you're not sleeping you're doing it right,
or if you're not taking as many classes
or as many units as you can, you're not doing it right,
and it's not always the best environment
for people's mental health,
for people who maybe don't have the same academic background
coming into MIT,
and I think that kind of culture of like
if you're not suffering you're not doing it right
and like you should be able to enjoy MIT
and take things you love and not be drowning.
- I'd say the worst thing is the homework.
- The homework?
- The homework.
- Here in particular,
you have to know what you're getting into,
like it's hard work, and you gotta be prepared
to do it, basically.
- Lack of free time.
- Research universities in general,
a lot of the professors are incentivized
to focus on their research
and do what may not necessarily
be in the best interest of the student
but what will get them tenure
and what will get them more funding for their research.
- What does a typical Saturday night look like
for you guys?
- What happened last night?
- Party scene's pretty big,
people love to go out and party on the weekends.
- I don't remember what happened.
- So is that a good night then?
Yeah we'll call that a good night, okay, perfect.
- Weekends night, usually hang out with friends.
- Great.
- There's no such thing as typical,
I might go out partying, I might be working,
I might be building a friggin' roller coaster.
- As you do.
- Yeah so there's nothing, like what did I do last night,
what was last night, Saturday?
Friday night I was at a concert,
Saturday night I was chilling and watching a movie
with my cousin who came up for the weekend,
yeah so there's certainly craziness if you want craziness
but there's also quietness if you want quietness, so.
- There's a lot to do on Saturday nights.
A good portion of fraternities are having social events
most Saturdays, Fridays and Saturdays.
- Pizza parties.
- Pizza party.
- Just kidding.
- What is a pizza party?
- We eat pizza and chill.
- Pizza and chill, great, great, love that, love that.
If you remember, what did you write
your college application essay about?
- So MIT is a bit different
because they don't do the Common App,
so MIT is like five or six shorts, one paragraph essays,
so I did one about,
in my hometown jumping off the local bridge
into the river below,
that's something that everyone does,
I did something about that.
- They asked kind of what do you do with free time,
what do you do to kind of release
and I said play guitar,
and just kind of went in on what music means to me,
and I don't know, how I just kind of like to
spend my free time, how I like to relax.
- I'm working in a HIV vaccine lab,
and I wrote something in the line of that.
I got interested in a HIV problem
while I was senior at college
and I related to that, and it worked.
- I wrote about woodworking,
which is something I was really involved in in high school
and like playing piano I think.
- I think I honestly just wrote about singing,
I was in an a acapella group here,
and I just have always since I was little sung,
and it was just cool to me to be able to be like,
okay, they just wanna hear
about something I genuinely love.
- So, for me, the one that I remember the most
is they wanted us to talk about
a leadership opportunity that we've had,
and for me I wrote about the time
when my family and I we went on a mission trip
to Juarez, Mexico,
and I talked about how kind of like
interacting with that culture
and having a leadership opportunity,
of kind of being in charge of the construction,
we built a house for a family down there,
and being able to use Spanish
to mingle the cultures together,
I just talked about that
and how that kind of influenced my leadership approach.
- I wrote about my commitment to martial arts,
I've been teaching in Cambridge,
martial arts for a few years
and I've been practicing for like 10 or 11,
oh 13 years now,
and so that's just like a big part of my life
and I'm just giving back to communities
something I love doing.
- Amazing, amazing, what martial art?
- It's called Soo Bahk Do it's a derivative of Taekwondo.
- Oh very cool.
- So apparently when you walk around MIT,
sometimes you walk past this.
(groovy music)
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