背包走天涯之纽约

Unrealised Dream

Boston has Harvard University and MIT. I didn't know they are in Boston before so I decided to pay them a visit since they are easily accessible by subway. I have a friend who graduated with a double degree from MIT. Well, not exactly a friend but an acquaintance from military and who, by the way, topped the whole cohort for Junior College in my year.

The subway brought me to Harvard Square, a shopping area which catered to the students. There were restaurants, clothing stores, book shops and the square was bustling with students decked out in the nicest and sporty winter wear. The square was located in the heart of the university so I could imagine the students coming out to shop during their lesson breaks. The university was part of the town, but really the university was the town. The school itself was even more fascinating. Buildings were colonial and low-rised, and student hostels laid just next to the school libraries and classrooms. In the middle of a set of buildings would be a big green space called the yard. If it were summer I suppose students would busk in the sun reading books under the trees, and if they forgot to bring their teaching aids they could calmly walk barefooted back to their nearby hostels to get them. To add to the already beautiful scenery there was the Charles River cutting right through the university. This must probably be the most conducive environment to study in the world, and my photos didn't do it justice due to the snow.

MIT by the way, was made up of a pathetic small number of buildings. The buildings had no special architecture that could differentiate itself from the surrounding commercial buildings. One could walk into MIT and still wonder whether he was in MIT. Modern universities are built up and so concerned with using every piece of precious land that there is hardly any greenery and it is suffocating to the soul. Xianghua read a book called "The Pattern Language" and she told me human beings have this innate instinct to be close to nature and I think that is very true. That is why houses with a seaview are so expensively priced. A good summary of the book can be located here http://downlode.org/etext/patterns/

I left Harvard with a strong desire to get a place in it. It could be that Harvard overwhelmed me with its beauty, or it could be that I was trying to make up for an empty, unmemorable undergraduate experience in NTU.

posted by wayne @ 6:39 PM