It’s Sunday morning, and I’m trying to figure out what I want to do. I have a math problem set (pset), a physics problem set, a neuro problem set, a physics test to study for, and two leftover research hours that I didn’t finish during the week. Psets are supposed to take between 6-8 hours per week, but I’ve pretty much finished the math one, and I’ll save physics for tomorrow morning. Neuro it is then—it isn’t due until Thursday at midnight, but one never knows.
The neuro pset has three parts, all focused on translating concepts we’ve learned about in class into MATLAB code—a typical structure for my 9.40 Neural Encoding class at MIT. The questions are all mostly open-ended, describing a matrix that they’ve provided us, and then letting us figure out the programming on our own. This is a new class, so the problem sets are mostly new, kinks still in place for us gerbil students. I enjoy them anyway—I love what I know of data analysis, and coding.
My usual five hours later, I’m sitting in front of a computer screen in which the first half of Part 1 works, and I have scrawled in red across Part 2 “disaster zone! HIST isn’t binning data properly—don’t know why.” Part 3 has alternatively “WHAT? This works? % MONICA check this” and “this graph plotted but is very wrong.” It’s not my usual situation—by hour 5, I normally have most of the code working, and just have some lingering conceptual questions. However, the most important lesson of coding in college is to ask someone else rather than spend hours on minutiae. So I pack my code away and start working on the physics.
It’s Monday evening, and I’ve finished everything except studying for this physics test and neuro. I’ve got all of my resources pulled up on my laptop—two websites specifically, one of which is Piazza. MIT is excellent at online forums, and this is a class website in which students post questions, and they are answered by other classmates and TAs (graduate students) alike. At the bottom of each post is a message: “this post was resolved in ____ minutes.” It often reads about 56.
My other resource was more surprising: I must say that my use of Facebook has been transformed. I was about two weeks into the course before Kara said to me: “Are you on the 9.40 Facebook thread?” Well, no, I wasn’t; I was a Wellesley student who no one knew existed before two weeks ago. But she added me, and a very good portion of the class was slowly filtered in. MIT takes care of its own. That is something I have experienced again and again from the Brain and Cognitive science majors at MIT—they take care of their own.
Now when I open Facebook, I don’t do my usual swift scroll through my feed—instead I have one online discussion up, titled “9.40” and now thousands of instant messages long. It’s filled with questions, responses, times to meet up, how people are doing, thanks, complaints, advice. There are probably about 20 of us in this group, continually increasing as Kara and others meet other members of the class in office hours, work a problem with them and collect names. This group of MIT neuro-major sophomores was pretty established already, but it keeps growing.
Caitlin’s online when I start asking questions, and I get a hint about the Poisson distribution we’re generating and promise her and Eduardo I’ll explain Part 3 tomorrow. I spend a few hours on the Poisson before bed, in a good place for office hours Tuesday night, even if I’m not where I imagined I’d be.
On Tuesday mornings I have my neuro class, and everyone’s asking each other about the pset. The worry fades a bit once we realize no one’s finished—everyone’s at various stages, and some groups have one question working while others have tried different sections—but on the whole everyone’s a little lost and confused. “I’ll see you in office hours tonight,” we tell each other, smiling ruefully. Office hours are on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday night, and those who can’t go bemoan their fate and warn/beg us that they’ll be online.
After class Caitlin and I sit down for an abbreviated lunch, pulling out the laptops almost as soon as she inhales her dumplings. “What’s up with the Poisson?” I begin, and she walks me through Part 1, until my attempted code matches hers. Caitlin is a wonderful friend and mentor to me and the class, and she continues to offer willing and patient advice without any reciprocation. In this case though I finally had something to show her, and was so pleased to explain what I’d figured out about Part 3. As time goes on, people’s code starts matching each other’s, converging to answers heard at office hours, shared in person, discussed online. I’ve noticed my approach to Part 3 has been replicated in many of my friends’ code, just as my Poisson code was once Caitlin’s, and was then Kara’s. So many little successes spreading from sources, shared.
That evening, maybe 10 of us crowded into office hours, hosted by one of our graduate-student TAs, Emily. She helped me nail down my little issues in Part 3, and then I explained Part 3 to Caitlin and Eduardo. Caitlin helped me with Part 2, and Eduardo helped a neighbor with Part 1. David came over and sat with us, we called Emily over for a bit, and we all came out of the hour not finished, but closer to being done.
A thread was started up on Facebook. “How do you guys feel about me sending an email to the professor telling him that this pset is too long? How many hours have you guys spent on this?” It was met with hearty agreement—this was by far the longest pset yet, and the fact that it was the week before spring break (when many tests/events occur) was a problem. “I’m sending it,” Rin said. Then that discussion was left behind in a myriad of other posted questions— just one more productive instance in an unending post determined to pull everyone who asked to succeed.
Piazza was updated with a correction to one of the pset questions. People talked and met up with each other—you can track it all through that Facebook thread. I was at Wellesley, doing research and tutoring—Wednesday is my Wellesley day, and after tutoring, eating dinner with friends, hanging out for a bit, working out—I was studying for my physics test, which I’d neglected.
Thursday—the pset was due at midnight! Over lunch I helped Ariella through Part 3, and met a new member of the class (though I failed to catch her name :(). We sat in the Brain and Cognitive Sciences building at a white table in full sunlight—me eating from a bag lunch that I made before the Wellesley dining halls closed, them forgoing lunch entirely to program.
At 6pm I was sitting in an empty room in the physics building, with my code completed but the conceptual questions unanswered. I was worrying because I couldn’t go to office hours—my physics test was from 7:30-9:30pm that night. On the facebook thread Kara was online and had asked about Part 3. I posted my question about Part 1, she answered it, and we agreed to meet up in a half an hour. Kara explained Part 1 to me, David showed up, and I described to outline of Part 3 to them both. Then I rushed off and took my physics test. It went fine.
That evening I’d resigned myself to coding alone in my room, as spring break had started on Wednesday for Wellesley, meaning most of the campus was gone. But to my surprise, Suman came by while I was in the shower. “Hey Monica! Is that you?” she called through the door. “I just got back and wanted to check in!” and then Tiffany called when I had started finishing the pset—“So we were thinking of leaving on Friday night, but I wanted to call you before we made any plans.”
“Wait, we’re leaving?” I asked, trying to figure out the speakerphone.
“Yeah, to New Hampshire—I thought I told you we were going skiing!”
So now I’m having dinner at Tiff’s tonight, and going to New Hampshire with Ika through the weekend. And Suman came to tell me she conquered some of her fear over snakes, and I got that pset done at 12:15am, with a red stamp that says “Late.” But I have four late passes per semester, and even if I didn’t, it wouldn’t matter, wouldn’t matter at all.
It’s been a busy week for me, but not a hell week or anything else that it might be labeled. If I’m to struggle through anything I’d rather struggle through code, and I was never frustrated to the point where I was upset. I know I have a remarkable group of people at MIT, and I’m so thankful and amazed at how much they help each other, how they work, what they make their atmosphere. I want to get better at giving back to them, instead of thinking of my own pset problems first.
And there too are all the other caring, loving people in my life. I received a research award during the course of this week, and I’ve had three professors helping me work out the details. My father and mother both called me to hear about it. My friends have been excited for me, and I can’t believe they came by yesterday, like they knew that I was calling them in my mind. I was helped immensely with my physics pset, and helped substantially with my math pset, and when I mentioned I had a physics test, both Kara and David pulled up their course notes and immediately sent them to me by email. How amazing it is to know such people. When there’s so much going on I forget—my mind is keeping track of all I need to do, and not appreciating so much beauty.
So this is the completion of a neuro pset. They don’t often take that long, but I can’t say I regret this one. Just seeing how people dealt with it, the lack of panic, the reaching out—it has made what easily could have been a disaster into something that I so incredibly admire. And the structures that were put in place to deal with the pset weren’t done overnight. These are processes, ways of thinking, that permanently exist.
If I had to express what I loved most about taking classes at MIT, it would be expressed in the completion of a really long neuro pset.
Wishing you the best,
Monica