<p>I was giving a tour a couple of weeks ago and a father asked me what I thought about the academic atmosphere (rigor and competition between students) at the school. I forget what answer I gave, but I think that given what happeend to me this weekend I'd be able to give a much better answer:</p>
<p>I was sick leading up to the weekend, so I had to put off both of my problem sets due tomorrow. I worked on them tirelessly all day (with pauses to watch Tiger fumble his chance at a 5th green jacket) and made little headway. If anyone has any illusions that this place isn't rigorous, shake them off. My problem sets (especially intro to analysis) were difficult, to say the least. This is week 2, btw. But that's not what I want to actually highlight. I want to address that second portion, the one regarding cooperation amongst students.</p>
<p>I was incredibly stuck in a problem from the econ hw. I was getting nowhere. The kid who lives in the room next to me is a physics major, so I figured he could help with lagrange multipliers. When I walked in his room, he was by his desk, looking at piles of loose paper with tons of integrals and a couple physics books laid across. The man looked like he was working kinda hard, to say the least. So I asked him for help. For the next half an hour he spent his time away from his homework to explain to me how to have used the lagrangian method to solve that particular problem and would make sure I understood it along the way. HE DIDN't DO it for me. He took his time to actually teach it to me and make sure that I understood it.</p>
<p>After I was (semi) done with that one, I moved on to math. I'm glad to say that I've had a great friend who is taking Honors Analysis help me out over these couple weeks. Again, the same story. He gladly takes time off of what he's doing and seems really excited to help me through a proof or through a concept that I haven't fully grasped. These are wonderful people.</p>
<p>When it comes to help from actual classmates, my econ professor (Victor Lima) clearly stated that his goal is to educate us, so making impossible tests to generate grading distributions or grading on a curve are incredibly unnecessary. As it is the case in the actual profession, he wants us to look to each other as colleagues, and highly encouraged us to work in study groups to complete the problem sets. In line with that, a friend and I will meet tomorrow afternoon to reason through our answers to make sure that our arguments make sense. </p>
<p>I don't know what my main motivation for posting this is (maybe simply because its really late and im not thinking very clearly), but perhaps it is because I think that today I've finally understood what people mean when they say that their peers were the defining aspect of their college education. Well, I have to say that I've been fortunate be in a place with fantastic people, virtually all of whom are excited about what they do and want to genuinely be here and learn - and help others learn. This is a great place.</p>