MIT:part 2

Dear Sir,

Having made an introduction to MIT in my last email, let me continue from where I left off.

MIT is located in Cambridge, which is just across the Charles river from Boston.Harvard is a further 3 miles up the river. I find this pretty amazing...the 2 biggest and most prestigious universities in the world located at walking distance from one another!! Harvard is old school in all respects. The culture, the architecture, the general atmosphere is all reminiscent of the 18th century. That said, Harvard's two biggest departments, Harvard Medical School and Harvard Business School are located pretty far away from Harvard square, infact Med School is in downtown Boston and is the station from where I board the subway to MIT every day.

Its generally expected that with 2 such big universities located at such close proximity to each other, they will be a tremendous amount of rivalry and one oneupmanship. But surprisingly there is none. In fact the level of flexibility given to students is amazing. Do you know that a student registered at MIT can undertake courses and classes at Harvard! For some one like me, that is just unbelievable. But that is what many students too, and I have had the opportunity to attend some lectures at Harvard, which were tremendous experiences.

In my last mail, I had attached a few pictures of a building called Stata Centre. The architecture is pretty amazing and was designed by a very eccentric yet genius architect,Frank Gehry. It cost around $350 million to finish it, but I would say its worth every cent. Bill Gates was also one of the sponserers for the building. It houses the Computer Science and Mathematics departments of MIT. My wing mate at IIT is doing an internship here, so every evening after our work finishes, I go across to his office and play pool and foosball and gorge on chocolates and colas which are available for free here. :)

You might have heard about Tim Berner Lee, the guy who invented the World Wide Web. His office is next door to my friend's. Last week I got the opportunity to talk to him. I was expecting him to behave like a celebrity, and was initially very apprehensive. But he was very nice and humble and we had cookies and hot chocolate in his office. Now that doesn't happen everyday, does it!! We got a couple of Nobel Laureates too in my research center but I haven't been able to meet them yet. Must take some time out and talk to them

The 2008 graduating batch of MIT had its commencement ceremony last Friday. My professor's younger daughter is graduating from the Brain Research Center this year and so we had all gone for the celebrations. Mohammad Yunus was the guest lecturer and it was great to see a person from a Third world country get so much respect and admiration from the MIT fraternity. It was really a grand affair, and it was nice to see so many happy and beaming faces that day.

There is one research center here that garners the most attention and focus from all the academia and the industry here. That is the Media lab here. This is the place where fiction is turned to reality. The 100$ laptop, the electric car, smart city planning, etc etc were all born here. This is the one place where you can see the might of MIT technical prowess. The lab is open 24 hours and you will always find students and scientists working on problems and creating solutions for industries. Its always open to the public so anyone can access it, which is a good thing. MIT doesn't believe in closed door research and in fact there is a corner where you can give feedbacks and suggestions for any product you might want to see in the future. It doesn't matter who you are and what your qualifications are, if you have a good idea it will be implemented.

I still continue to be thrilled and astonished everyday here. Its literally like being Alice in Super wonderland. I do really want to come back some day and study here. Probably an MBA from MIT Sloan would be my best bet, but that is looking too far into the future. For the next one month, I shall continue to have the time of my life and make the most of a once in a life opportunity.