Ok, I’m done philosophizing about the origin of ideas. Paul Graham has done that plenty, and much better. I’m currently fleshing out exactly what the Summer of Ideas should look like, from a practical perspective.

My primary goal is to learn about new fields and industries, while identifying problems and possible solutions.

I struggled for a while wondering what the smart way to accomplish this is. Certainly there are things to be learned from books, the Internet, and people in those industries. I don’t want to be totally ignorant when I call up an expert on the phone: that’s a waste of their time. How can I learn the basics of a complex industry very efficiently? How can a person be expected to really self-analyze via a phone call or, god forbid, an email thread? What is the best way to hear about bottlenecks or problems with a person’s job, when the person in question doesn’t...

I mentioned in my last post the necessity of fighting theory-induced blindness – the tendency to accept limitations as facts.

Since then I’ve realized that what I’m really doing this summer is learning to sidestep it.

As students, we are still blank slates in many ways. We have never held a long-term position in our intended field. As such, we haven’t acquired a wide and deep appreciation of the tools, problems, and conventions of the field, or the blind acceptance that comes with it. Once an engineer has used a piece of CAD software for years, it will be awfully difficult for him to rethink the entire idea of digital modeling. He may however, be in a great position to suggest logical improvements to the existing system, which is also valuable. EDIT: This can be seen as “zero to one” improvements in contrast with “one to n” improvements.

My target this summer is finding those...

I got 5 internship offers for this summer…more than I expected considering I had zero with a month left in school. I ended up turning down all these offers. Instead I’m living in my fraternity in Boston, unemployed, eating Chipotle every day and bumming around the student center. That’s how my parents would frame it anyway.

In reality, I chose unemployment because I believe this is the most educationally enriching way to spend my time. After two years of college, even at MIT, there are precious few jobs I am uniquely qualified to fill. At any given internship, I will spend two weeks learning about the software used by engineers in the company or familiarizing myself with the code base. There is a prodigious amount of busy work that is not important to learn at this point in my academic life. Now is a time for exploration, yet 99% of my peers will be working in a lab or office...