Give me back my Crayons

Doing some light reading at work on a Friday morning and I found a great quote today from the How to be Creative manifesto (Hugh MacLeod) on ChangeThis.com:

Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten. Then when you hit puberty they take the crayons away and replace them with books on algebra etc. Being suddenly hit years later with the creative bug is just a wee voice telling you, “I’d like my crayons back, please.”

So there, go on a be creative. And go reclaim your box of crayons.

Media Lab Update

So, apparently I’ve been wait listed from being admitted to The Media Lab at MIT.

Thank you for your application to the graduate program in Media Arts and Sciences at MIT. It is not possible for us to accept every qualified applicant at this time. Therefore, we have placed your name on our “waiting list.”

This reminds me of the time when I was on the MIT waiting list for my undergrad application, a little less than 8 years ago. But then I got rejected so I went off to Georgia Tech instead. The waiting list is a funny place to be.  So I guess I’ll just wait, hang tight, and if one of the other people drops, I’ll have a shot. 

Wired

My friend Phil made this, pretty funny stuff. You can make your own Wired cover here.

Media Lab – One in Fifty

Those are my odds of getting into one of the groups at the MIT Media Lab. I had a meet-and-greet with one of the professors at the Media Lab yesterday, and it felt like a good one. My personal interests seem to be aligned with the main focus and projects of the research group. But at the end of the meeting, the professor indicated that there were 100 applicants for two spots. Yes, that’s one in fifty.

I guess this is expected and I’m up against some great talents out there. To illustrate my point further, here’s a simple illustration.

At this point, I must ponder the following. I would suspect that the professor could not possibly have met all 100 applications. There are issues with applicants being far away and simply the lack of time. So I’m estimating that only 30 applicant were interviewed. So maybe my odds are actually 2 out of 30. Or one in 15, that’s a bit better than before. But 6% is still a small number.

Pondering further, the factors in determining the person(s) that gets to be orange. Is it based on the interview? Credentials? Shear luck? Chaos theory? Who knows. In the end, time will provide an answer. It always does.

George Lange Photo

This is absolutely fantastic.  Combine a bunch of quality photos and an eccentric song, you get this.

Share your Stories

While reading The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, I came across a number of fascinating stories of Richard Feynman getting into trouble and funny situations.  Most of these situations could’ve been mundane or ordinary, but Richard tells them in such a way that makes it fun and easy t0 relate to.

A lot of his stories were from when he worked at Las Alamos during the atomic bomb creation.  This made me reflect on my career here at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, and some of the troubles I’ve gotten into and out of.  For example, there was the incident where I tried to smuggle in a personal fridge, and another one where I broke the group fridge trying to defrost using a hammer and screw driver, and just random tricks and jokes played on coworkers.  All of these things help to make life more interesting, especially the work place.  I should try to remember my stories and share them more often, becoming a master story teller.

Share your stories; become a story teller.