Geeky Cool

My first brush with the fun side of this university was when I opened my bedroom window one morning and saw an entire building morphed into a game. The building had been ‘hacked!’ It was my first taste of brilliance at work.

Ihad always scoffed at “techie” things. My interest in how things work would barely last five minutes before I would scream “this is too technical for me!” My natural inclination was towards the Arts. I fancied literature for the beauty of language and admired visually aesthetic artwork that spoke volumes. So naturally, when my father landed a teaching position at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and announced that we were going to live on campus, the first thought that came to my mind was “I’m going to be so bored!”

To my utter surprise, the two years that we spent at MIT turned out to be life changing. The University was then the top university in the world. All the top brains were there, and I expected to be surrounded by geeky people who spoke a strange academic language. I was wrong. We lived in the university staff accommodation and our neighbours, although they were some of the smartest people in their fields, were not awkward and anti-social, and did not sound like robots when they spoke! They talked and walked like normal people and some of them were actually fun to be around.