Burnout Prevention and Recovery (the MIT stance) | Hacker News Reader

Burnout Prevention and Recovery (the MIT stance)

evenmere.org

101 pointswickedchicken9 comments

I read this and (like most readers I suspect) smiled and enjoyed the satire, although I have to disagree with the statement "Drink more coffee" - in my day it should have been "drink more Mountain Dew".

However the article did bring up two unpleasant memories.

1. The suicide of Fes-Mike Moore: http://tech.mit.edu/V113/N2/moore.02n.html http://tech.mit.edu/V113/N3/martinez.03o.html -- I was living in the dorm room that was directly three floors below his - the Campus Police misread the leading "5" in his room number for a "2" and they came to my room on the night he jumped. I didn't know Fes-Mike personally but I remember seeing him on his roller blades as he came down the central stairwell. He always had a smile for everyone.

2. Carrying a fellow student downstairs who was experiencing severe (what we suspected was) stress-induced ulcer pain to a waiting ambulance.

I can laugh at thess kinds of submissions and my experience at MIT certainly made me stronger (in fact nothing in my professional life has been as hard as MIT, and I say this as someone who has almost been killed on the job more than once), but an elite education isn't something worth dying over. If you are at the breaking point, please take a step back and try to enjoy life a little. A "C" (heck, even an "F") isn't the end of the world.

And here's a Microsoft-adapted version of the same document: http://www.bouldertherapist.com/html/humor/MentalHealthHumor...

I wonder which one came first.

this is very accurate, even if you don't come in like this, you come out of MIT with this view.

5 years later I've never escaped the "MIT VIEW: Increase intensity. Maximum intensity = maximum productivity. If you find yourself relaxed and with your mind wandering, you are probably having a detrimental effect on the recovery rate."

I love it, but I completely recognize that I came in a person and out a machine.

Wait? Is that an honest comment? Because I go to a somewhat challenging Tech School, and am down in the trenches.

If that is indeed true, I might try and adopt some of the listed stuff, given that I already do some of these.

Please let me know!

hey-so in my interpretation the basic thesis of this document is that MIT's culture doesn't really support "burnout prevention and recovery" which rings true to me.

I never experienced burnout at MIT but yea my intuition about avoiding it is strongly warped just for having been there.

Having gone to MIT, gotten burned out, and gotten better... Yeah, that about sums it up.

This has been passed around MIT circles for a while and is as profound and relevant for me as ever.

Took me a while that this is pretty tongue-in-cheek.

Let's just say that I had a meeting with my boss at 7pm last night. Yes, Friday. But at least we all went for beers afterwards.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com