<< THE JOY OF LEARNING EVERY DAY

In my most secret of secret thoughts, I wish I were in industry. Why? Because it has got to be better than academia. Higher salaries, normal working hours, a clear chain of command—all the likely facets of a better life. Or so I think until I talk to my industry colleagues. This phrase, "The grass is always greener on the other side" ... ah, the wisdom of our elders.Every year, you see students with the same faces and same problems appear on campus. They all want to move forward. They all move in different ways. They express their frustration as either inaction, or over-action. One would think that the latter is not a good idea. Economy of action is critical as your energy slowly dissipates over time. But then again, I am wrong as I have learned recently. I spoke to a few freshmen last week at an MIT event. I explained to another student how they might want to focus on major X just because major Y was not getting the necessary funding. Surely major X is the future. I then asserted that freshman year was the toughest, but life became easier as you moved up in the years. Perhaps because apathy can sometime set in for the majority of upperclassmen. It was then that one of the freshman spouted, "Nonsense! You do something because you love to do it. And if by your junior year you find that something, and you are loving it, you are going to be extremely tired because you are doing what you really love." Wisdom clearly has no starting age requirement. A lesson learned for free. Such is the joy of being a professor at a great institution—you have the opportunity to learn such important things from great students. And you get a salary for it instead of paying tuition. What a bargain (or "bah-gan" as they say in New England)