Last Day of Classes

I just finished with all my classes at MIT. I can't believe it's been four years already. I have 2 finals to go but that's it. I'm done with my undergraduate education.

My last class of the day was 1.041, the class where we came up with the Portugal HSR system. The professor recognized all the seniors in the class. A lot of people showed up to classes. More than I expected actually. After we filled out the evaluations, he mentioned two pillars of MIT: (1) the Institute never sleeps and (2) MIT is a meritocracy. He said that one year (he's been here since the '60s), the Institute was facing a financial crisis and proposed the solution as (1) no raises across the board and (2) the school will shut down between Christmas and New Years. He said that this policy, while it is a financial solution, effectively wiped out those two pillars of MIT.

I guess these two "pillars" have indeed been very central to my life these past four years. The professor asked the class for opinions about what people think the ideals of MIT is. And Mahalia said that going to Cambridge made her realize that MIT really is a meritocracy, much more so than at other places. And it's really true. I think this is probably the aspect of undergraduate life that I will miss the most. People care about your performance and what you can produce. And that's about it. If you can't produce, it doesn't matter what kind of effort you put into it. And as far as the never sleeping part, yeah, we're all workaholics.

I wonder how different it will be at Stanford. And graduate school will be different. Everyone will be coming in with different undergraduate experiences. I think, unlike high school, most people will know themselves better. We'll all be less "mouldable" by the ideals of the graduate school.

I can't believe it's all ending.