"MIT Nerds" Are Nothing Special
Posted by Nicole Sharp on 20 May 2005 at 20:14This month's Discover magazine--most people who know me know that I am a complete Discover addict--ran a major story on MIT nerds (no subscription currently required). Now, as a student at the lesser-known but equally rigorous Case Western Reserve University, I found parts of this article somewhat offensive. It seems to me that the author sets up these students as being unique to MIT before describing activities--among them doing calculus, instant messaging with friends (a primary form of communication at Case), and playing Boggle (one of my suitemate Jessica's favorite pastimes)--as some of the common expenditures of time. The motto she records--"Work, friends, sleep. Pick two."--sounds perfectly applicable to Case life, though it seems like many Case students manage all three.
One of my favorite parts is where the writer identifies the students on the East side of campus--traditionally those who pursue "hard tech, math, and engineering"--as those who drink Mountain Dew over the Starbucks Frappuccino of the soft tech students. I have lived the past two years with several computer science majors and wondered repeatedly if they don't survive some periods of the semester on Mountain Dew Code Red.
"Here there are lots of different levels of nerddom," one MIT student tells the writer. "There are nerd jocks here, the übernerds who study, nerds who actually have lives." I fail to see how such a statement is any more applicable to MIT than to other rigorous universities. Case students seem to me just as likely to give an outsider such a breakdown of student groups as this MIT student is.
Throughout the article, the only definite differences in student populations that I can pick out seem to be the result of the administration of the university. MIT has, for example, a traditional Mystery Hunt in which students decipher "some 150 complex puzzles" to find instructions to the location of a hidden object. The residency system at MIT is different than Case, resulting in certain dorms being traditionally homes of different types of students. And, of course, there is MIT's independent activities period in January, but those don't seem like characteristics that would recruit or alter a student body significantly from students at other universities.
From the "grueling and unremitting" work load to the commonly used, though overly emphasized acronym EECS or the student body's enjoyment of Trogdor the Burninator, MIT's nerds are not all that different from Case's and presumably from those at any other high-quality institution. Why give MIT's nerds special attention then?
Trackbacks
Comments
- 1
- 2
Nicole Sharp said
On 22 May 2005 at 21:02My friend Jessica saw that prank as a visiting pre-frosh, but I must admit that I've never seen it done. I do rather like the April Fools' joke where they screwed all of the seats in Rockefeller 301 backwards.
- 3
Mark said
On 22 May 2005 at 23:33MIT has a few things that guarantee that they get Discover articles: a brand name (with no fat surfer dudes), an inflated reputation, selectivity, and phenomenal ratings. It's basically all the same reasons that Harvard makes news when they start work on a SAGES-like program. (I'll bet that MIT's undergraduate body is probably a bit more willing to cooperate with such publicity than people here would be, too.)
You might try writing a pleasant letter to the editors of the magazine letting them know that other schools do have similar groups of students.
...Second try: You have my e-mail! You don't need it again! Sheesh! :-P
- 4
Frank said
On 26 May 2005 at 14:32What about all the self-taught nerds and such?
Versus MIT:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.04/robot.html
MIT's ego:
http://bnrg.cs.berkeley.edu/~hodes/audio-know-it-alls
Greg said
On 22 May 2005 at 12:57Case doesn't have a giant dome that we can prank (see hacks.mit.edu). We just have a fountain that resembles a male organ. What happened to people rolling giant snowballs up to its base during winter anyway?