Yes, this is a top research university
It's surprisingly easy to forget that MIT is much more a research place than a teaching place. I tend to get all caught up in all the classes I have to take with "Intro" in the title. To be fair, even those classes include a significant workload. But it's far too easy to lose sight of all the crazy awesome research going on here, as well.
I'm trying to go to more talks now. They're not hard to find out about; it just requires a willingness to occasionally pause in the hallway and actually read some of the flyers, and if something catches my eye, write it down. Also, subscribing to *-announce mailing lists tends to help :-D
Synthetic biology seminars! Neurocog talks! Shiny things going on! Non-introductory material! Material presented at a level that I almost can't keep up with at all! Research! Squee!
Another thing is to walk along the hallways of buildings that aren't in the main group, on floors other than the first -- that's where lab spaces are, and where they tend to hang their posters. Maybe next semester I'll get a different UROP this way. (Working in the psycholx lab I'm in right now, while interesting in its own right, is not the field I actually want to go into.)
In other news, I'm being seduced by (a) the synthetic biology community and (b) biological computing, whether using molecules or neurons or what have you. So much shiny!
I'm trying to go to more talks now. They're not hard to find out about; it just requires a willingness to occasionally pause in the hallway and actually read some of the flyers, and if something catches my eye, write it down. Also, subscribing to *-announce mailing lists tends to help :-D
Synthetic biology seminars! Neurocog talks! Shiny things going on! Non-introductory material! Material presented at a level that I almost can't keep up with at all! Research! Squee!
Another thing is to walk along the hallways of buildings that aren't in the main group, on floors other than the first -- that's where lab spaces are, and where they tend to hang their posters. Maybe next semester I'll get a different UROP this way. (Working in the psycholx lab I'm in right now, while interesting in its own right, is not the field I actually want to go into.)
In other news, I'm being seduced by (a) the synthetic biology community and (b) biological computing, whether using molecules or neurons or what have you. So much shiny!