Hi all,

I'm currently working at an affiliated research center and was recently advising a 1st year STEM PhD colleague about expanding his horizons in grad school. He comes from a country where students are tracked into STEM and humanities tracks beginning in high school, and as he thinks about his life direction now that he's successfully come here (his words, a bit facetiously) he's gotten very interested in taking a humanities class in the next few semesters. He came to me for recommendations since I did my undergrad in the US and had taken a humanities core, so I might have some better context to recommend good choices for him.

Is there anything like a humanities core class open to grad students? He's coming from East Asia without really any coursework in Western literature, so I think broad surveys of idea(s) across time might be better contextually than deep diving into specific period.

Shopping around, Harvard Hum 10 is only open to first year undergrads.

My thoughts include suggesting something like Harvard Gov 10 for big ideas in thinking about society, some Western Canon type literary survey course, and maybe some history/ intro anthropology course as well for more social sciences. I don't know what I don't know here, and my suggestions are of course biased to my interests, so really appreciate everyone's creativity in helping him out. Any suggestions?

although i don't have classes on weekends, i feel like i get a lot less done compared to weekdays. i eat my meals, do laundry, catch up a bit with friends, go to a club meeting, take a nap, go to the gym, call my family - and my entire day is gone with 3-4 hours of actual studying done.

is this just me, or is there a better way to optimize my time? any advice would be appreciated as a freshie <3

Everyone says if you're a course 15-1, you're going to be unemployed. What jobs can you get with just an undergrad degree in 15-1 (management)?

Hello! I left my Mac book charger - black cable and white block in the middle of stud five last night. If anyone picked it up can you please let me know!!

As stated in title. Not good/invested enough to be in club badminton, but still want to play singles or doubles outside of intermural season during open rec hours. Used to play in high school competitve-ishly. If you're also looking for badminton partner(s) or have a lead on casual badminton groups at mit, please hmu/dm 🥺 info: last year undergrad

Looking for new career opportunities and came across the MIT Lincoln Lab. My main question is: are MIT Lincoln Lab employees affected by government shutdowns? If I get offered a job and a shutdown happens, will I be furloughed? Any other pros/cons?

Hi, I'm signed up for the program, and there's a class that supposedly has spots, but isn't available in the section I guess was selected. I tried to figure out what it meant by section, but I couldn't find any answer on the website, and I tried applying for it in other class blocks with the same response. I get the class blocks, but I don't know what it meant by sections.

Also, if anyone minds answering, if you don't have classes all day, are you free to leave/get picked up? I have something else on Saturday, and I don't have a ton of classes for the program, so I was wondering if I am free to leave if I don't have any classes or if I'm mandated to stay on campus or wherever the the program is being held.

The Students on Strike coalition(20 student groups, over 750+ students committed to action in case of a strike tinyurl.com/studentsonstrike ) has organized to support the MIT Graduate Student Union & Service Employees International Union on campus and help push MIT to meet their demands to give the ~4000 total workers they represent a fair contract! So, we put together a UA Referendum to show that the undergraduate student body fully stands with the workers who make our campus run!

Vote YES if you stand with workers and the issues they're fighting for to benefit our community:

• Wage increases proportional to local cost of living & inflation increases

• Affordable healthcare and the right to not have healthcare plans gutted(including SHIP, which *many* undergrads are also covered by)

• Enshrined protections and support structures for immigrant workers & international students

• & more!

Help us get MIT to actually do something for its immigrant & international community, leave our healthcare alone, and give our essential workers what they need to live a dignified life! This fight is our fight too, and a strike will be too. Vote YES & tell everyone you know to do the same so our SOS resolution passes!!!

Anyone have any recommendations to finish up my HASS credits over IAP. I'm a senior.

Hi Im trying to submit some files but it just reloads the page was wondering if anybody else has this issue

I’m 10 years out but I loved my time in MacGregor. I usually give a few hundred bucks to the MacGregor fund every year but I’ve been wondering what it’s like there and if it’s still worth it. You guys still getting study break money? Is it still fun there? Is F Entry still wild? What do current students like/hate about it?

Current MIT student interested in taking some philosophy classes, esp on logic, paradox of infinity, probability, as well as some classics!

Anyone familiar with these classes? How are the profs, and are they more chill grading wise or more grindy HASSes?

Does anyone know how they clean the Simmons Ball Pit? It just seems, for lack of a better word, icky. Is it some sort of spray disinfectant? Do they remove the balls and wash them?

How often does it get cleaned?

The recent thread on Sloan made me laugh because course 15 deserves it. But coupled with a few recent interactions with y’all on campus, I think it’s time to post something on general culture and behavior because it’s gone downhill since I last remember - I, a returning grad student (and regretting it this time of the semester for obvious reasons)

I notice through on-campus & event interactions that an increasing number peers here have become rude, exclusive, dismissive and seemingly incapable of even feigning niceness in a social interaction. Especially the younger ones. It’s like everyone’s developed a nasty little backscreen behind the typical tech dorkiness. And this in the span of the last 8 years. I notice it in events especially but seeing it on the sub shows me something’s definitely changed

We were never the most social or charismatic, but I sure liked the dorky goofiness much better than weird, dorky elitism and snakery. It’s uncharacteristic. And it’s weird because from my understanding certain hazing elements of our culture have gone away so the culture has actually softened but people are meaner

Maybe it can be blamed on COVID hurting social skill development, or on social making people want to “mog”, but regardless it’s uncharacteristic, obnoxious and makes Tech look bad. I sense the type of pretentiousness that we use to clown certain other schools for

I recently received an offer from MIT Lincoln Lab. I'm pretty excited about the opportunity, but wanted to get some insight into the lab and Boston in general before making a decision.

A few things I'm curious about:

• Life at the labs: Are there a decent number of younger engineers/recent grads? I can be a little awkward when first meeting people, and I've generally had an easier time making friends through work and branching out from there. Then also job security and growth at the labs? I know the general consesus around national labs is either people are there for their entire career or just purely segments at a time? Does that hold true for Lincoln Labs?

• Living in Cambridge: I'm looking at apartments around Cambridge. What's a reasonable price for a 1-bedroom, and how's the overall quality of life?

• General vibes: What's the social scene like in Boston and at the lab? I spent this past summer in Austin, and while I enjoyed parts of it, I felt like the social scene was pretty cliquey and everyone was on peptides lol. It was surprisingly hard to make friends even when I made an effort to go to events and meet people.

I'd be moving up there knowing pretty much nobody, so I guess my biggest concern is finding a good community and making friends outside of just work.

Would love to hear anyone's experiences, especially people who moved to Boston after college or work at Lincoln Lab. Thanks!

Does anyone have a more recent syllabus, lecture notes, or class materials for this course? The MIT OCW version is from Fall 2004, and I'm wondering if there are updated resources available. Thanks!

At some schools (like Yale with SOM), the b-school gets looked down on a bit or feels totally disconnected from the rest of campus.
Curious what the real, unfiltered vibe around Sloan / Course 15 is here at MIT.
Do undergrads and engineering/science PhDs actually cross paths with Sloanies (startups, delta v, classes), or does Sloan just feel like an isolated bubble of suits on the east side of campus?
Thoughts?

Edit 1: I forgot to mention I’m a Sloanie myself. I really respect all the STEM folks doesn matter if you are an undergrad, PhD or M.E, I’ve trying to find more opportunities to meet with people across the campus. And I do agree that Sloan is a bit siloed, just curious how people view Sloan.

My experience as a CS major is something like:

-20% of classes (the core math/theory classes for me): full mastery of the material well beyond what was needed for the class; if you teleported me to the 1800s I could rederive all the theory by heart and convince the world I'm right
-50% of classes: did fine in- did the work, learned the material well enough for a comfortable A but wouldn't say I've mastered the content
-30% of classes: had major holes in my understanding or just ended up trying to survive (most of the time I still ended up getting an A by cramming specifically for the tests; but for these classes I have very little retention of the material)

Curious about the rest of your experiences / how you'd break down your own performance in your classes (since at this point I don't think grades actually mean that much).

Everyone says 2A is less employable than 2. Where are you all working if you graduated and how long did it take to find a job? Coming from someone who wants to double major with 2A and 15 or do regular 2 with 15 minor.

i'm a freshman who is considering mit health's mental health counseling, and i've never done counseling before. i've been struggling with taking care of myself, losing my motivation to study, and dealing with guilt and loneliness with the people close to me. i don’t really have anyone close enough to talk to, and i don’t want to worry my family. any experience or advice would be appreciated <3

i recently had a round of midterms where i did not do very well (C-average). the problem is, i feel like i'm putting in a lot of time and effort towards studying. people around me who don't study end up doing better than me. i feel like i really do understand the material and can explain it to someone else, but i just can't seem to answer the questions when it comes to the actual exam because i feel like i don't know what they're asking me for.

last semester, i was really lazy and half-assed everything, so i had a couple of Bs each semester. at the start of the school year, i resolved to actually put time and effort in things, which i thought i was doing good with. i know now that's not the case, and i'm trying to figure out how to improve (if anyone has advice).

i feel like my options in the future is becoming more desolate. doing so poorly is really disheartening. i want to go to grad school and it just depresses me because it makes me feel like maybe i'm just not cut out for this kind of stuff. i know people say grades don't matter for industry, but i don't feel like that's what i want to do. does anyone have advice on how to deal with this, and maybe recommendations on how to just be a better student? am i being unrealistic about what grad schools would want, or what i want?