What four years at MIT taught me about life
A senior’s soliloquy
One of my goals is to strive to become a better person each day. In that spirit, this column, entitled “Senior Side Notes,” is my attempt at a personal soliloquy. To begin this series, as a senior in her final spring semester, these six quotes distill the lessons I’ve learned about living well after four years of college.
1. The feedback loop of joy
“Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.”
— Thich Nhat Hanh
Professor Fan Wang shared this in Neurobiology of Self (9.36) while discussing how volitional smiling leverages the brain-body connection to lift our mood. For me, it’s a powerful reminder that while we can’t always control our circumstances, we can influence how we experience them. And, more often than I can count, the smiles and joy of others on this campus have been the source of my own!
2. The speed trap
“Being in a hurry is inversely proportional to quality of life.”
— Hector Garcia, Ikigai
Need I say more? Being in a hurry can feel like watching a lecture at 2x speed: we grasp the main point, but may miss the elegance of an experiment’s design or the significance of a finding. In fact, some may go as far as to say that the plot of life is to find beauty and awe in the daily; by that logic, mindless and directionless acceleration is certainly against us. As Mahatma Gandhi put it, “There is more to life than increasing its speed.”
3. Options and agency as currency
“Money’s greatest intrinsic value — and this can’t be overstated — is its ability to give you control over your time.”
— Morgan Housel, Psychology of Money
This quote asks us to consider the metric by which we measure and direct our lives. For me, it is also a reminder that money is a necessary enabler — something that expands agency and allows me to use my time and abilities in meaningful ways — but it is not the end in itself.
4. The ego’s decentralization
“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”
— The Dalai Lama, The Art of Happiness
This is a lesson in shifting attention away from the self. I often fall into the trap of seeing myself as the protagonist of a solo narrative. Yet, my time here has revealed that happiness is a byproduct of looking beyond ourselves — empathizing with others and doing what we can, however small, to alleviate pain and bolster wellness in those around us. In decentralizing the ego, we, ironically, can find a more robust sense of fulfillment and satisfaction.
5. Mortality as motivation
“The one who plants trees, knowing that he will never sit in their shade, has at least started to understand the meaning of life.”
— Rabindranath Tagore
Mortality, while at face level has the potential to be daunting, is also clarifying. Death becomes the tragic end only if we assume life is a story in which we are the sole protagonist. When we instead see our purpose as service — helping a friend with a problem set, directing a prefrosh as they try to navigate campus during CPW, or choosing research projects that have the potential to better the lives of others — our personal anxieties can shrink, and our life takes on a purpose characterized by contributing to the welfare of the communities around us.
6. The reality of our internal experience of the world
“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean it is not real?”
— Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Our internal world is not a secondary simulation; it is the primary lens through which we experience reality. That makes tending to our mindset, our worldview, and our lived experiences essential. The quality of our thoughts shapes the quality of our lives.
It was difficult to narrow four years of lessons into six quotations. Beyond the academic knowledge I gained — critical thinking sharpened, problem-solving skills developed, facts learned, and flooded inboxes managed — I have been fortunate to learn from and with some of the brightest and kindest people. Through their lived examples and thoughtful conversations, they show me what a meaningful life can look like. For that, I am deeply grateful.