Yes, I was talking about the few special people who are self-motivated.

That said, such situations or exceptions still do not detract from the fact that MOST people would benefit from a richer and more diverse campus environment than one that is not. That is the point of my perspective when I agreed with another poster’s similar observation. More specifically, even the ones who thrive in staid campuses (as you cited) because they are self-motivated will probably do even better if they are placed in a more vibrant university.

What if someone is not surrounded by people from diverse backgrounds? Or lacks access to a good learning environment? It does not mean that he/she can’t do well. Furthermore, one’s attitude towards learning makes all the difference. If someone had no interest in her/his studies, and just dug up past year exam papers to barely pass, even the most fantastic, condusive and diverse leaning environment cannot help him/her.

@Stibbons,

I realized that you are right about the need for peer review… in fact, that’s relevant even in programming. But online communities exist in the form of forums, IRC and blogs. If one lacks access to a good learning environment, perhaps those communities can fill the void. If one is determined, one can find people to do peer review with.

No worries, no one understands darkness 99.9% of the time. But it sticks in the head right! I know that feeling only too well.

I remember having a similar conversation with him some years back ago in Bukit Timah mountain trail, when I kept falling off my bike. He came over to chat with me. In this conversation, we touched on education and he went on to say, it was just a “process.” He said you may have a lousy, mediocre or even excellent process, but at the end of the day whether you are in the University of Baghdad or MIT. We all eventually go through the same “process,” to learn to do only one thing again and again: construct hypotheses, test them, reject the good, throw out the bad and that is how we all define progress. But he capped it off by saying something really weird, true progress requires a man to search out where “the terror” lies.

When I asked him, how so? He mentioned some clap trap about a cat jumping on a hot stove. He said, If the cat did it even once. It would probably learn never to jump on a hot stove again. So I asked him, what’s so bad about that? He replied, it also means, the same cat wouldn’t jump on a cold stove either and that’s the great lie abt education. He did something very strange after that, he asked me very politely whether we could change bikes.

When the group started off again, I realized his bike didn’t have any brakes! There was no way to control the descent, you just had to hold on and go with the flow. And its no joke I want to make that clear, not at 60 mph, a man can die on the trail. I remember everything suddenly sharpening, the whole experience was like I was ridding a bike for the very first time. Even the trail, I had ridden for a hundred times was new. Through it all as I tore down the trail, I realized what he meant when he said, “the terror of it all.”

I really don’t know if this goes to clarify or confuse, as for me, it fixed my problem. I never fell off my bike again, not even once since then.