<p>^ I also love to get wrapped up in things I find interesting. I don’t really know if you have a fun personality or not. Being intelligent and/or being passionate about learning new things does not correlate with a fun personality ( as far as I know). I was just wondering how you see yourself.</p>
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<p>Thanks for the interesting post, which I mostly agree with. I think selective college admissions should largely be about “g” and the applicants’ demonstrated ability to use their brains to achieve academically.</p>
<p>I have continually criticized the use of non-academic admissions measures that have not been validated. I am sympathetic to the idea of MIT using AIME scores as a factor in admissions, but if AIME scores do not predict colllege grades after controlling for high school grades and SAT/ACT scores (maybe they do – your anecdote just shows that the correlation is imperfect), I’d like to see evidence that AIME scores do predict something important before advocating their use in admissions.</p>
<p>Oh come on, QM. Your “experience in other fields” is limited? You have eyes, though, right, and you participate in the world? You don’t think that the entrepreneur who starts a restaurant chain works very, very hard? Or the lawyer who is preparing a complicated case for a client? Or the businessperson who is on the road most of the time figuring out strategies to sell whatever to his clients? Far as I can see - successful people of any stripe work very, very hard. I don’t see what’s so special about scientists in this regard.</p>
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<p>MIT would say their process <em>is</em> largely about intelligence / academic achievement. But there are other institutional desires / needs. Just because you don’t value those things doesn’t mean that MIT needs to agree with you, and obviously they don’t.</p>
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<p>I have pulled all-nighters, so I am guilty as charged. But the broader point is - do you think MIT wants a university full of people who, when nighttime comes, just pull out their cots and continue working? They want a vibrant community and campus life – full of students who WILL put down the books and become active in political organizations, plays, sports, and so forth. (My D just attended a MIT symphony orchestra performance recently and reported it had a huge turnout.) These are the things that make life RICHER. Not the textureless stay-in-the-lab-til-I-smell type of life.</p>
<p>“I don’t know anyone who is actually successful in ANY field who doesn’t work very, very hard.”</p>
<p>Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration. Thomas Edison.</p>
<p><a href=“https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Edison[/url]”>https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Edison</a></p>
<p>I talked some of my professors about how many hours they put in when I first came to this country. I was a bit shocked to hear numbers like 75-90 hours per week. I probably spent about 30 hours in total per week during my 4 years of undergrad!</p>
<p>D1 works 16 hours a day on average. I used to do that when I was that age. Neither one of us is an engineer.</p>
<p>This whole discussion of “who works hard” - and the apparent cluelessness that yes, Virginia, non-scientists / non-engineers work hard too – reminds me of when teachers complain that they have to bring work home. Uh, practically every single working professional brings work home in the evenings and on weekends; it’s just not notable in the least. It may be that scientists have to do so in a lab as opposed to ensconced in their living rooms with laptops, but working long hours just isn’t all that remarkable or impressive, I don’t think. That’s simply what successful people do to get ahead.</p>
<p>Pizza, I don’t think teachers " complain" about bringing work home. I think they inform people that they work past 3 o’clock. They are often compared to people that punch a clock.</p>
<p>Well, I think medical residents take the prize for long working hours – although they’d really rather not get that honor! My friends in residency literally had 120-hour workweeks, including 36-hour shifts, and sometimes fell asleep while walking the floor! I understand that there are accreditation standards that limit them to 80-hour weeks, with no shift to be more than 24 hours, but I don’t think that there’s been legislation on this, so I don’t know how well-enforced the standards are.</p>
<p>Let’s back up for a sec. In the December thread (whenever it was that we started the recent arguing about MIT,) the complaint was lack of transparency in the admit process. Now we’ve got a group with some claiming to know enough to critique.</p>
<p>Imo, everyone on this thread has smarts. Different sorts and different experiences, but each seems to be able to look at these broad issues with some critical perspective. The problem, for me, starts when the “claims” swing so far and wide that it’s like chasing a butterfly. One builds a stand based on conjecture or very limited observation, tests the waters with a wild post; someone else- for whatever reason- accepts either the claim or the supposed insider knowledge of the claimer, and we get into a swirl that’s, at times, impenetrable.</p>
<p>Some here are then left to try to tackle the inaccuracies or false suppositions, gnat by gnat. And then, it starts all over again. </p>
<p>More to say on all that, but am thinking it through.</p>
<p>I don’t think med students work those long shifts anymore. But I agree, most of us can point to times when we put everythng we had into our work. </p>
<p>I think some of CAlum’s legit questions have gotten lost in the waters here. Hope we can get back to some of that.</p>
<p>And, did not mean to suggest MIT kids aren’t fun- that was a specific response to the notion there is a “fun” sort, mistakenly chosen by MIT over more qualified kids.</p>
<p>Agree with Lima re teachers taking home work.</p>
<p>My DH is one of those government “slackers.” He only works 14 hours a day (unless there is a crisis and then it can be 24 hours a day/7 days a week for weeks on end.)</p>
<p>I’m convinced the whole admissions process is one big crap shoot. No sense in trying to make sense of it. Just enjoy where you do get in, as it was meant to be.</p>
<p>^^ Thank you, Pizzagirl!</p>
<p>limabeans01: To provide a direct answer to your question, I think of myself as “fun.” (Hardly anyone seems to agree.)</p>
<p>I realize that people in other professions work quite hard. I think that many of the people who work with Hillary Clinton in the Department of State outwork me, based on Anne-Marie Slaughter’s recent column in the Atlantic (not to mention the fact that I even have time to read the Atlantic). I read a statement by an aide to Lyndon Johnson who mentioned what an advantage it was to be able to function well on 4 hours of sleep a night.</p>
<p>So I wouldn’t claim that science is exclusive in that regard (did I? I didn’t intend to; apologies if I did). However, I do think that one needs to be willing to work very hard. If a person is not wrapped up in the work and deriving considerable joy from it, it is hard to work the 75-90 hours a week that texaspg mentioned–or more, in some cases.</p>
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Can’t agree with that one. Not all time-consuming job demands provide joy. In this day and age there are many jobs where the person has to be available 24/7. It is hopeful that we can get a certain amount of joy from what we do, but when the demands become excessive and pull away from personal time or time with friends, family, hobbies, etc it can take its toll.</p>
<p>QM- Do you have hobbies and interests outside of work? Do you have family? Do you socialize with friends? What do you consider “fun”, and what do you consider about yourself to be “fun”?</p>
<p>I think migrant workers likely work harder and have much longer days than 99.9% of people posting on this message board. I also don’t think they consider their jobs to be much fun, either.</p>
<p>^Making the important point that there are different types of hard work.</p>
<p>Well, of course financial circumstances can necessitate working long hours at awful jobs. One of my grandfathers quit school in 9th grade, after an argument with an English teacher. He worked as a tobacco stripper for a while after that. He was lucky enough to be able to leave that line of work. I don’t mean to be insensitive to people who must work long hours in agricultural or service jobs, or to people who have to hold down two or three jobs to make ends meet. I wasn’t arguing that scientists and engineers are alone in working long hours–just that it seems to go with the territory.</p>
<p>jym626 (#2376), I just had to come back to remark that I am a total laugh-riot!</p>
<p>I don’t exactly derive fun from my work–on the other hand, when I have discovered something new (a few times), it has made me completely ecstatic. It is a blessing to have work like that.</p>
<p>I think QM is a laugh riot. And I mean intentionally funny 
I consider my real life friends really good company and about the wittiest folks in the universe. I have decided that 99.9% of those reading this thread would consider them deadly dull. Lucky for me - I get to keep them all to myself. 
I wrote upthread it usually takes me days to get QM’s jokes. This happens mostly in my real life, too, although sometimes friends just dumb it down for me so the conversation can keep moving.</p>
<p>I am used to associating with people who love their “work” and don’t necessarily have other hobbies or other interests. When your work is your fun, you are very lucky - imho.</p>
<p>How you balance family time is another discussion entirely - again imho.</p>