The East Coast is Getting to Me
Oct 17, 08:53 AM by Eric Allen
The East Coast culture is really starting to get to me, and it’s a good thing! I grew up in a unique environment. In Silicon Valley, the highest achievement is to start a successful company, sell it for millions, and become an angel investor or maverick CEO. That isn’t even remotely normal! Because of that mindset, though, I held an exaggerated disdain for higher education. I was going to college because sometimes people required a college degree on your resume, not because I wanted an “education.” My real education is working at companies like Allocade and Wesabe, where I was an active participant in early-stage startups.
Come to think of it, I have never learned about the field I enjoy from teachers until I got here. All through middle school and high school I was teaching myself programming and computer hardware with very little adult help. Dad got me started, but I taught myself most of it. I discovered other people would pay me for this knowledge, and I hadn’t even been taught it! So then what’s the point of going to school and learning from teachers?
I came to RPI with that mindset, and I resolved to engage in worthwhile things outside of school while not working too hard at academics. Even though I came in a semester ahead thanks to AP credit, I figured I’d just have a few easy semesters and do more work outside of school. I chuckled to myself at the kids who thought they could get their Master’s degree in four or five years. “Ha,” I though, “they’re going to come out with a piece of paper and that’s all. I started at this place making more money than they will when they graduate.” There was no way I was going to graduate school. Who needs it? Maybe down the road, but higher education is worthless, remember?
And then it hit me. Instead of blowing off school and focusing on doing cool things outside the university, I could blow off academics and focus on doing cool things inside the university. What a concept! And it gets better: Cool projects here are called “research.” I always thought of research as working in a wet lab with goggles and a lab coat, slaving away over equipment until you could publish some insanely dense paper about some esoteric topic. I was blatantly wrong. Even more awesome? I get credit for doing research (working on cool projects)! Credit = graduation, so if I load up on research I can graduate earlier. Since I’m already ahead, this would allow me to basically finish my B.S. in three years. And you know what they do in graduate school? Research!
In less than three weeks, I’ve gone from never in a million years getting a “co-terminal” degree (working on undergraduate and graduate degree at the same time) to planning on getting a Master’s of Engineering in Computer & Systems Engineering by Spring 2011! I’ll spend the same four years here on the same financial aid I receive, but instead of coming out bored with a B.S., I come out having worked on an awesome project and with a really cool piece of paper that says I’m qualified to do all kinds of stuff.
The pieces just sort of fell together, really. My girlfriend had this awesome professor this semester who she kept bugging me to meet. I finally sat down with him, and now I’m “stuck” with him for the next three years working on his Mobile Studio project! It’s software, hardware, user interaction, and embedded control all in one project! Oh, and I already know and like his grad student who I’m replacing. I worked with Matt at a startup in the incubator last fall, and I am having a blast learning from him. He taught me this really cool game called Allegro where you have to connect all the little pins according to the plan without letting any of the wires touch. So fun!
So yeah, I’m sorry to all of you who I’ve laughed at (internally, of course) or ignored. I was the naive one, but I’ve finally come around. It sure took long enough! 21 credits (the normal load is 16) per semester, here I come!
