Finding My Place

So I'm slowly realizing a few things, one of which is that being a small fish in a big pond may not be > being a big fish in a small pond. The high school I went to is one of the best in the country (my senior class had the highest avg. SAT in the US) and I was middle of the class there. It was fine, but come college admissions time, it was super hard to get in where you thought you belonged simply because there were so many smart kids competing for the same places and colleges can only accept a certain number of kids from the same school.

As a result, kids get placed at schools they can crush. My first semester I had a 4.0, two of my friends had 4.0's (at different schools), etc. So I transferred to where I had always wanted to go and, now that I'm here, I'm back to being a small fish in a big pond. Just the other day, one of my professors was saying that our weekly problem sets should take 2-3 hours. Rigghhhhttt....Mine are taking 8-12 hours...

It's just frustrating having to bust my ass to stay afloat when I know I could be cruising at other schools. Maybe more frustrating is the fact that a lot of kids here aren't putting in nearly as much work and they're doing better, just coasting by because they happen to be really fucking smart.

This isn't to say that going to a good school doesn't have its advantages. It'll look good on a resume, I like being around intellectually curious kids, etc. But it also means that I'm competing with them for grades and that makes it much harder to do well. I think part of my frustration stems from leaving a small liberal arts college, thinking that the big, bad ivy was going to be all I thought it would be...and then having that dream shattered upon matriculation.

Knowing what I knew at the time that I decided to transfer, it was definitely the right choice. It simply would have been impossible for me to know what this (new) school would be like without actually being here, studying here, and taking exams here. Now that I know, I sort of wish I hadn't transferred. At the liberal arts college, I had constant access to professors, a really collaborative math department, the best professor I've ever had (who would have been my advisor), and a great group of friends. It was just too hard for me to realize what I had at the time. I got caught up in feeling like I belonged at a top-flite school, in putting too much emphasis on prestige instead of enough on the actual experience.

Surprisingly, I've found that professors here are generally not as good. By and large they're more qualified and they're far better researchers, but this doesn't imply that they're good teachers. In fact, I've found quite the opposite; it may be that quality of research (or at the very least, focus on research) and quality of teaching are inversely related. Sure, it's cool to say that I have access to a Fields medalist, but if he isn't a good teacher, how does it really benefit me?

We also have lots of TAs here who suffer a similar phenomenon; they're great math students, but not great math professors (and this is even more true with TAs than professors because they have virtually no teaching experience). One of my TAs can't pronounce words with more than three syllables...you get the point...

Go to a liberal arts college, get access to professors, get a good gpa, forget what US News has to tell you about colleges. Don't get me started on US News...

Thanks for reading,
Yodaddy