The Idea Factory: Learning to Think at MIT [Paperback]

Pepper White (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2001 | ISBN-10: 0262731428 | ISBN-13: 978-0262731423

This is a personal story of the educational process at one of the world's great technological universities. Pepper White entered MIT in 1981 and received his master's degree in mechanical engineering in 1984. His account of his experiences, written in diary form, offers insight into graduate school life in general--including the loneliness and even desperation that can result from the intense pressure to succeed--and the purposes of engineering education in particular. The first professor White met at MIT told him that it did not really matter what he learned there, but that MIT would teach him how to think. This, then, is the story of how one student learned how to think. There have of course been changes at MIT since 1984, but its essence is still the same. White has added a new preface and concluding chapter to this edition to bring the story of his continuing education up to date.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Test anxiety, lab-project drama and stylish prose propel White's recollections with enough force to make three years of engineering study compelling reading.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews

An informative and entertaining report on how a Johns Hopkins graduate faced the challenge of his young life when he embarked on a master's program in engineering at one of the toughest science schools on earth. Among the most intimidating credentials to go for in the field of technology are ``MIT cubed''--a bachelor's, master's and doctoral degree from the venerable Massachusetts Institute of Technology. North Carolina native White, son of a musician and a writer and product of a ``well-rounded'' environmental-engineering and liberal-arts education at Johns Hopkins, would have been happy with MIT simple--a master's degree in engineering. But even that accomplishment seemed dauntingly unreachable as, on registration day, he traversed MIT's infinite corridor from Building 13 to Building 6, still expecting to learn that his admission to MIT's graduate school was the result of a clerical error. From his first days spent floundering through classroom lectures (it was several semesters before White learned what a scientific model is)-- buddying up to millionaire professors who'd built companies around their patented inventions, attempting to solve technical conundrums and build miniature machines--to the final dash to the finish as other students fell victim to suicide and burnout, White struggled to maneuver through an intellectual boot camp while trying to maintain a modicum of emotional equilibrium. Here, he plays his advantage as a liberal-arts type who's a semi-outsider to full advantage as he searches for the meaning behind the madness. Despite his denunciations of MIT's merciless environment, his writing itself stands as a heartening example of MIT's broader aim- -to teach its students how to think. Required reading for all college applicants with a yen for science. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 328 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (October 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262731428
• ISBN-13: 978-0262731423
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #593,323 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars rings heartbreakingly true, November 3, 1997

By 

Philip Greenspun (Cambridge, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Idea Factory: Learning to think at M.I.T. (Plume) (Mass Market Paperback)

After almost 20 years in and around MIT, I've encountered only two great MIT books: (1) A.R. Gurney's out-of-print novel _The Snow Ball_; (2) Pepper White's book.

White went to a top undergraduate school and was very strong academically. Yet he was completely unprepared for MIT grad school and couldn't believe how easily the folks who'd been MIT undergrads took everything in stride. He didn't know that they'd had exactly the same experience four years before!

It is all here. Losing the girlfriend. Being surrounded by nerds. Scrambling for funding. Being called a jackinape by professors.

Every MIT kid should make his parents read this book, if only to increase the supply of mailed-in CARE packages.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Accurate but atypical, September 17, 2005

By 

Anonymous Grad Student (Cambridge, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Idea Factory: Learning to Think at MIT (Paperback)

I'm currently a grad student in the same lab Pepper White worked in. His descriptions of the professors, classes, and quals are dead-on, even today - not all that much has changed in that regard. Some of the same equipment is still in the lab.

But his MIT experience is NOT typical, for a whole host of reasons. He took way, way more classes than any grad student should - I've never taken more than two per semester, often only one. A master's thesis usually takes 2 years or less. Most students aren't resident tutors in Senior House, one of MIT's more, shall we say, unique dorms. Considering how unprepared he was to be a graduate student in mechanical engineering, I'd say he did pretty well in the end.

Unfortunately, the part about knowing someone lost to suicide is all too typical, but many, many ways MIT is a kindler, gentler place than it was in the early '80s, for better or for worse.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars learning to be human, September 8, 2001

By 

Robert Burnham (Hales Corners, Wisconsin USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Idea Factory: Learning to think at M.I.T. (Plume) (Mass Market Paperback)

It's interesting to see the binary response readers/reviewers have given this book -- like an inverted bell curve. For my part, I'd say that the picture painted of MIT's graduate program is pretty repellent, but the very things that repel are also a source of the school's strength. Maybe civilization needs places like this and Caltech -- but you wouldn't necessarily come out of the experience a better person. To his credit I think White does emerge a better person, and that makes the story interesting. For those who haven't read the book, I'll just say keep an eye on the peripheral figures. They are more important than you think at first -- and more important than White initially thought, too.