For most engineering students, MIT is ‘IT’, the university they’ve always dreamed of attending. TU Delft student Wouter Monkhorst is living that dream right now, completing his graduation project at MIT’s Mechanical Engineering faculty.
Is the university grass really greener on the MIT side?
In post-9-11 America, where daily red-yellow-green Homeland Security terrorism alerts flash across the national landscape like defective traffic lights, keeping the country’s collective sphincter tight from FEAR, Dutchman Wouter Monkhorst needn’t worry: He’s safe in his “bunker”, as he calls the dark, windowless office deep in the bowels of MIT’s Mechanical Engineering building. And it would certainly take more than one of Saddam’s mythical WMD bombs to get the attention of the seven socially inept, computer-fixated students who share Monkhorst’s subterranean office.
Welcome to Bush’s America and business-only MIT, where socializing among students begins and ends with a grunted ‘good morning’, and breakfast, lunch and dinner are gobbled up alone in front of ones computer. “The gezellig coffee-breaks and normal friendly socializing of TU Delft don’t exist here,” Monkhorst says. “The average MIT student is what I’d call a ‘social terrorist’, incapable of making pleasant small-talk. Coffee break together? At MIT, they’re like, ‘What? Am I dating you? Get lost! Coffee drinking is an irrelevant, non-productive activity that doesn’t move the project forward!”
All-consuming ambition and joyless competitiveness give MIT a hard edge. “MIT students all want to be that Mr. Know-It-All and they have a hard time admitting you understand something they don’t. It’s like when a fun game turns competitive, the atmosphere changes, and ‘having fun’ suddenly falls off the priority list,” Monkhorst surmises.
This is an especially interesting time for Monkhorst and other foreign students to be in the USA. Because some of the Arab 9-11 hijackers had studied in the West, “terrorist = foreign student” is now part of the global terrorism equation. The joke going round MIT is that every Arab foreign student has his own personal FBI agent following him, disguised as a bush. And if all foreign students are ‘suspect’, then MIT certainly keeps the FBI busy. Monkhorst: “When I first arrived at MIT I was so astounded by the number of foreign, mostly Asian, students that I thought I’d gotten on the wrong plane in Amsterdam!”
Although the obvious academic superiority of foreign students might’ve caused on-campus tensions, Monkhorst says foreign and American students integrate very well: “In fact, lots of American nerd guys want to have Asian girlfriends, because Asian women don’t have that “I’m the pretty princess” attitude American women have. Although… I’ve yet to see a pretty American princess walking around with a Chinaman!”
Logo
After four months in the States, Monkhorst’s “I-can’t-believe-I’m-at-MIT” feeling has passed and he now coolly appraises the university. Academics aside, he’s perhaps most impressed by MIT’s campus: “I thought MIT would be this high-tech compound, but it’s not. The campus has a wonderfully classical look; it looks like the Romans left some of their great architecture behind.” It’s architecture that motivates people to attend university, he imagines. “MIT’s buildings are shabby on the inside, old wooden floors, dusty looking research labs, but then, inthe midst of this, you suddenly come across a very high-tech lab run by some professor who’s obviously involved in a thriving business.” Monkhorst says this generally old-fashioned look extends to MIT staff, too: “Some professors look like they’re stuck in the Miami Vice era, you know, blow-dried hair, very creative blazer colors, wearing New Balance sneakers.”
Unlike TU Delft, the MIT ethos is that ‘proper’ research can’t possibly be done in a mere eight-hour working day, and the inherent self-importance of the place demands a certain harried, “Who has time to eat, much less sleep!”, posturing.
“Here long hours are equated with success,” Monkhorst says. “The thinking is: if you want to excel, you’ve got to spend every hour on the job. 2 a.m., 6 a.m…it doesn’t matter, sleeping at your desk for a few hours in the afternoon is seen as a sign that you’re working hard, pushing it to the limits, which is of course ridiculous. You need rest to be able to concentrate and work productively.”
With MIT people coming and going 24/7, Monkhorst isn’t surprised by MIT’s asocial atmosphere. “I actually think we’re doing a hell of a good job in Holland with our kroket lunches and werkbespreking (project reviews) and 9-to-5 research!” he exclaims.
Living in America, the global headquarters of shameless hype and incessant self-promotion, Monkhorst is both repelled and intrigued by it all. He laughingly describes the typical MIT students who, being so proud of MIT!, wear the university’s logo on their shirts, socks, underwear… and whose parents have bumper-stickers on their cars reading, ‘My Son Goes To MIT!’ Ridiculous, yes, but Monkhorst does wish that the Dutch and TU Delft were less modest about their achievements.
“Admittedly, it’s a fine line between self-confidence and arrogance,” he says, “but TU Delft’s an excellent university and should boast more. We’re doing the same things at TU Delft as they’re doing at MIT, and oftentimes we do them even better.”
On the strength of his current work, Monkhorst was asked to do a PhD at MIT; however, he misses the “little community feeling” at TU Delft, where colleagues are genuinely interested in each other’s work, and has decided to return home this summer.
“To do or not to do a Phd at MIT remains a tough question,” Monkhorst says, “But thinking back to when I first arrived, a guy had said to me that he wanted to move to Holland. I asked why? He said most Americans confuse quality of life with wealth and career success. Now, after living here for four months, I can say he’s right.”
http://groups.msn.com/FoxxAnoekenWoody/wood.msnw?albumlist=2
For most engineering students, MIT is ‘IT’, the university they’ve always dreamed of attending. TU Delft student Wouter Monkhorst is living that dream right now, completing his graduation project at MIT’s Mechanical Engineering faculty. Is the university grass really greener on the MIT side?
In post-9-11 America, where daily red-yellow-green Homeland Security terrorism alerts flash across the national landscape like defective traffic lights, keeping the country’s collective sphincter tight from FEAR, Dutchman Wouter Monkhorst needn’t worry: He’s safe in his “bunker”, as he calls the dark, windowless office deep in the bowels of MIT’s Mechanical Engineering building. And it would certainly take more than one of Saddam’s mythical WMD bombs to get the attention of the seven socially inept, computer-fixated students who share Monkhorst’s subterranean office.
Welcome to Bush’s America and business-only MIT, where socializing among students begins and ends with a grunted ‘good morning’, and breakfast, lunch and dinner are gobbled up alone in front of ones computer. “The gezellig coffee-breaks and normal friendly socializing of TU Delft don’t exist here,” Monkhorst says. “The average MIT student is what I’d call a ‘social terrorist’, incapable of making pleasant small-talk. Coffee break together? At MIT, they’re like, ‘What? Am I dating you? Get lost! Coffee drinking is an irrelevant, non-productive activity that doesn’t move the project forward!”
All-consuming ambition and joyless competitiveness give MIT a hard edge. “MIT students all want to be that Mr. Know-It-All and they have a hard time admitting you understand something they don’t. It’s like when a fun game turns competitive, the atmosphere changes, and ‘having fun’ suddenly falls off the priority list,” Monkhorst surmises.
This is an especially interesting time for Monkhorst and other foreign students to be in the USA. Because some of the Arab 9-11 hijackers had studied in the West, “terrorist = foreign student” is now part of the global terrorism equation. The joke going round MIT is that every Arab foreign student has his own personal FBI agent following him, disguised as a bush. And if all foreign students are ‘suspect’, then MIT certainly keeps the FBI busy. Monkhorst: “When I first arrived at MIT I was so astounded by the number of foreign, mostly Asian, students that I thought I’d gotten on the wrong plane in Amsterdam!”
Although the obvious academic superiority of foreign students might’ve caused on-campus tensions, Monkhorst says foreign and American students integrate very well: “In fact, lots of American nerd guys want to have Asian girlfriends, because Asian women don’t have that “I’m the pretty princess” attitude American women have. Although… I’ve yet to see a pretty American princess walking around with a Chinaman!”
Logo
After four months in the States, Monkhorst’s “I-can’t-believe-I’m-at-MIT” feeling has passed and he now coolly appraises the university. Academics aside, he’s perhaps most impressed by MIT’s campus: “I thought MIT would be this high-tech compound, but it’s not. The campus has a wonderfully classical look; it looks like the Romans left some of their great architecture behind.” It’s architecture that motivates people to attend university, he imagines. “MIT’s buildings are shabby on the inside, old wooden floors, dusty looking research labs, but then, inthe midst of this, you suddenly come across a very high-tech lab run by some professor who’s obviously involved in a thriving business.” Monkhorst says this generally old-fashioned look extends to MIT staff, too: “Some professors look like they’re stuck in the Miami Vice era, you know, blow-dried hair, very creative blazer colors, wearing New Balance sneakers.”
Unlike TU Delft, the MIT ethos is that ‘proper’ research can’t possibly be done in a mere eight-hour working day, and the inherent self-importance of the place demands a certain harried, “Who has time to eat, much less sleep!”, posturing.
“Here long hours are equated with success,” Monkhorst says. “The thinking is: if you want to excel, you’ve got to spend every hour on the job. 2 a.m., 6 a.m…it doesn’t matter, sleeping at your desk for a few hours in the afternoon is seen as a sign that you’re working hard, pushing it to the limits, which is of course ridiculous. You need rest to be able to concentrate and work productively.”
With MIT people coming and going 24/7, Monkhorst isn’t surprised by MIT’s asocial atmosphere. “I actually think we’re doing a hell of a good job in Holland with our kroket lunches and werkbespreking (project reviews) and 9-to-5 research!” he exclaims.
Living in America, the global headquarters of shameless hype and incessant self-promotion, Monkhorst is both repelled and intrigued by it all. He laughingly describes the typical MIT students who, being so proud of MIT!, wear the university’s logo on their shirts, socks, underwear… and whose parents have bumper-stickers on their cars reading, ‘My Son Goes To MIT!’ Ridiculous, yes, but Monkhorst does wish that the Dutch and TU Delft were less modest about their achievements.
“Admittedly, it’s a fine line between self-confidence and arrogance,” he says, “but TU Delft’s an excellent university and should boast more. We’re doing the same things at TU Delft as they’re doing at MIT, and oftentimes we do them even better.”
On the strength of his current work, Monkhorst was asked to do a PhD at MIT; however, he misses the “little community feeling” at TU Delft, where colleagues are genuinely interested in each other’s work, and has decided to return home this summer.
“To do or not to do a Phd at MIT remains a tough question,” Monkhorst says, “But thinking back to when I first arrived, a guy had said to me that he wanted to move to Holland. I asked why? He said most Americans confuse quality of life with wealth and career success. Now, after living here for four months, I can say he’s right.”
http://groups.msn.com/FoxxAnoekenWoody/wood.msnw?albumlist=2
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