<p>From what I've gathered here on this forum, MIT is extremely hard and makes AP classes look like middle school fluff. (Some of said APs, I found hard, namely Physics C E/M.) If E/M is a freshman course at MIT, it only has to get harder, right? So how does one survive?</p>
<p>Before anyone says 'time management,' spending 10-12 hours on one homework set seems...impossible. How do you have any time in your life when each assignment takes that long? What defines time management at MIT? Does anyone ever get to sit down and just rest? I have hobbies, like art and such, that I really don't want to die over the school year... Or is rest reserved for Christmas break, Spring Break, and summer?</p>
<p>Watching the i3 video and seeing the list of clubs, it seems like people have all sorts of free time and have fun, but...how?</p>
<p>Also, what would you advise for a person who gets stressed out very easily? I've already confirmed that I'm coming to MIT, so I'm there for better or for worse. But losing sleep + stress, for me, = mental death and total burnout. Is there a way for someone like that to actually live through MIT?</p>
<p>Personally, I've found that classes have only gotten easier since freshman year. It's not that the material has gotten easier (it hasn't), but I've figured out what I need to do to deal with it. Plus, I'm taking classes I really care about in my major rather than GIRs; I do much better in classes that make me happy.</p>
<p>As far as time on problem sets -- not every class problem set takes 10-12 hours. Sometimes they do, but you don't do it all in one night. You do it in short chunks, an hour here, two hours there. I've found planning my weeks to be very helpful (Sunday: HASS paper. Monday: first half of problem set, lab notebook. etc).</p>
<p>Don't forget that there are 24 hours in a day, and you only spend maybe five of them in class if you're taking four classes. If you plan on sleeping eight hours and doing maybe five hours of homework, that's still 6 hours a day to have fun and be silly and goof around.</p>
<p>MIT is hard. Nobody's going to lie about that. But it's survivable, and it's even enjoyable.</p>
<p>So lots of people find this weird, I guess, but I've just come to take it for granted:</p>
<p>Doing psets is a social event. Seriously. I know tons of people who call them "pset parties."</p>
<p>That's not to say that psets are necessarily fun, but doing them can be. ("can" being the key word there.) I mean, you get together with your friends to work and of course you're not 100% efficient. You do some work, you tell stories, you talk about your week, you crack physics jokes (ok, so I crack physics jokes, maybe not everyone else does). You can learn a lot about a person by doing a pset with them. =)</p>
<p>Otherwise though, there's no real answer to your question. We make it work, I guess. I think a lot of people here are very proactive- I know it's part of what attracted me to the school. So I think a lot of us just live this way. =)</p>
<p>As for stress, there will be ways for you to relax. There's always free food to be had at study breaks. My dorm pays a couple of massage therapists to come in once a week to give free massages to students. "Institute holidays" give us at least one more-than-two-day-weekend per month. There are free mental health services (with walk-in hours every day) if you're really in over your head, and if it's not that serious you can always call [url=<a href="http://web.mit.edu/nightline/%5DNightline%5B/url">http://web.mit.edu/nightline/]Nightline[/url</a>], which is a "peer-listening service" you can call to talk about anything at all.</p>
<p>Anyone from BC can sign up for the massages. See Mollie's post. I imagine other dorms have similar programs, or could easily implement them anyway.</p>
<p>Yeah, whoa there, who said anything about MacGregor residents being more likely to commit suicide? There hasn't even been an undergrad suicide in years, let alone one from MacGregor.</p>