Asking For Help @ MIT Video Transcript
Asking for help
Sam Maequart, 2011, Course 17: “So, asking for help. I think that everybody comes to MIT
and no one feels like they need any help because they were the best in their school or the best
at pretty much anything before they got here.”
Susie Greenman, 2011, Course 9: “I was totally at the top of my class. I never had to try. I
slept through classes every single day and made straight A’s, like no big deal. Then I get here
and I actually have to work for my grades. And at first it was still kind of okay because I was still
working off of my knowledge from high school. But like three weeks in it was completely new
material and I was lost and overwhelmed and I didn’t know where to catch my footing. The pace
was so fast, and there was so much information and there was so much more work than I had
ever done before and I just, I wasn’t ready for it.”
Andrew Yang, 2013, Courses 2 and 3: “My freshman spring, I oversubscribed my academic
workload because coming in as a freshman, especially after Pass/No Record, and in high
school, where it seemed all natural, where you could do as much as you wanted to doacademically and in terms of extracurricular activities-I felt overconfident. And, also, there’s a
culture at MIT where there’s a pressure to pursue effortless perfection, where you can take as
many classes as you want, you can do as many activities as you want, and still not sleep, and
still not have to take a break. So I fell into this, I fell for this, I caved in. I took too many classes
and I felt stressed out and I needed help.”
Ekaterina Parmanova, 2013, Course 22: “There’s a point in the semester where you’re sitting
there working on a couple of psets a week and you realize you really just are not enjoying your
MIT experience. That’s probably the time when you go talk with your advisor. And they’re all
very knowledgeable, and ask them, you know, ‘What do you think about me dropping this
class?’ And most of the time they’ll ask some suggestive questions to figure out exactly what’s
going on.”
You’re not Alone
Andrew Yang: “It’s important to know that asking for help is absolutely normal at MIT.”
Matthew Falk, 2012, Courses 6, 3, and 18: “Every one of your friends, whether they tell you or
not, are getting help in some kind of class. They’ve emailed the professor or the TA saying ‘I’m
not really getting it. I don’t fit in here. I don’t belong. What’s wrong?’ And that’s not the case,
you’re here, you belong here. Everyone wants to succeed together. So the more you ask for
help, the more you’re going to benefit.”
Sam Maequart: “The first test that I took, I got back and I like bombed it. I mean like failed
worse than everybody else. And I called my mom and was like ‘I suck at life.’ And she was like
‘No you don’t. It’ll be okay. Everybody fails.’ And I thought that nobody was as bad as I was but
everybody’s on the same boat.”
Ask Sooner not Later
Andrew Yang: “Asking for help is, again, the norm at MIT. Everyone sooner or later will ask for
help. And it’s to your benefit to ask for it sooner.”
Matthew Falk: “I was going to my recitations and I was going to the lectures and I just wasn’t
picking up everything that I should have. And, probably after the first exam I should have asked
for a little bit more help from my TA so that I could have, you know, learned the material better
and finished off with a little less stress. I guess at the end of the semester making sure I was
passing that class.”
Ekaterina Parmanova: “Going to professors kind of scared me off initially but then, you know,
sophomore, junior year I realized that it wasn’t that bad and that they actually knew what they
were talking about. So I could go and ask them questions and that helped out a lot. I should
have done that earlier.”
Don’t get Intimidated
Ekaterina Parmanova: “A lot of the bigger classes, they might be intimidating to be one of the
only ones that goes up after class and, you know, 300 people to go and ask a question but that
makes you stand out and the professors usually enjoy the attention that they get from individual
students.”
Matthew Falk: “I think a lot of people have that mind set at first, walking up to a professor.
They’re like ‘Whatever I say to this guy, they’ll just assume that I’m stupid and that I don’t belong
here. What if I come across like I don’t know anything?’ That’s not their mindset. They’re not
there to say ‘Okay, you don’t know anything, you shouldn’t be here.’ They’re here to say ‘Okay,
what do you need help with? I’m here to give you that help.’”
Andrew Yang: “It’s surprising to know how approachable they are. Even though they’re very
distinguished, they’re very busy. They always try to make time to help their students out.”
Turn to your Peers
Ekaterina Parmanova: “Mostly I talked with older students and figured out what they did when
they were taking 8.01, or just the regular classes.”
Andrew Yang: “Being a part of team sport led me to interact a lot with people older than me.
And so they could share with me their experiences. They could share with me their advice.”
Jesse Triplett, 2013, Course 18: “If I go to help out a friend out, it always comes back around.
So even though it’s late at night and I have an assignment due two days from now, my friend
needed help with his Java homework, I stayed up with him until three a.m. helping him with that
now and then months later, you never know, he you know comes back and helps me with
things.”
It’s not just about Academics
Madeline Clark, 2012, Courses 18 and 12: “The thing that makes MIT feel impossible at times
is when you have other things going on-when you have family stuff, when you have personal
stuff, when you get sick, when, you know, when real life affects the MIT bubble. If you ever have
stuff like that go on and, unfortunately, it’s probably going to happen in your four years here, talk
to someone. Talk to your friends, talk to your GRT, talk to S3. Let it be okay to get help. You
have to let that be okay, because if you don’t like deal with your personal stuff, if you don’t deal
with your own emotional health, then your academics are going to crash and burn.”
Susie Greenman: “I got really sick and ended up needing to get surgery during finals week and
I didn’t know how to go about that. Do I go up to the professors and be like, ‘Hey, look. I can’t
take your final, even though you already told me there’s no late makeups?’ It was very
interesting to go around to like S3, Educational Disability Services and talk to people to figure
out like what were the correct channels to go and get help.”
Sam Maequart: “MIT has amazing resources for students who need help with everything
outside of academics and academics. I needed a support system that really was there for me.
The way that I was able to create this was by going to Student Support Services and just by
letting my guard down and really like saying for the first time that I needed people to help me
and that I didn’t know what to do.”
Take Advantage of Resources
Andrew Yang: “For example, Associate Advising I don’t think is a resource that’s utilized
enough. Every advisor has upperclassmen that help-out in guiding a group of freshmen. The
thing that group of freshmen should realize that associate advisor is there for them. That is one
of the greatest resources there for them.”
Sam Maequart: “Having my associate advisor turn into one of my best friends while I’ve been
here for my four years is really cool.”
Susie Greenman: “My freshman advisor was very awesome and I’m still friends with her. I go
and see her probably like on a weekly basis.”
Ekaterina Parmanova: “There was a TA who was very, you know, very friendly, open to
helping. I could go up and ask them questions. Then they would redirect you to resources, say
you know ‘You can go to this person’s office hours. They really help out a lot.’”
Sam Maequart: “Office hours. You need to go to office hours. You get the opportunity to
actually ask the questions when you don’t understand. Lectures and recitations are great, but
no. Officers hours is where it’s at.”
Matthew Falk: “The TA told us that, you know, ‘It’s great that you show up to office hours.
When I took this class, I was struggling like no other. I had to meet with the TA twice a week just
to, you know, understand all the material. So because of that, I learned it very well. So I‘m here
to give you guys the same opportunity that I had to make sure you guys can understand it the
way that I did.’ Turned out that, with the exception of one other kid in the class, everyone had
already had been coming to his office hours since the beginning of the semester. It wasn’t that
we were actually missing something or that we were just stupid. It was, we were actually not
getting this extra help that everybody else was getting. So, after that, I mean, we went to that for
the rest of the semester and then finished really well in the class.”
Andrew Yang: “Don’t be afraid to ask for help. My success at MIT is largely dependent on how
much I ask for help and not being afraid to do something. The second you start asking for help,
you realize there’s this whole world that opens for you. And so you become more competent,
you become more confident in your abilities.”
End Credits:
Produced by MIT Office of Undergraduate Advising and Academic Programming
Video Editor: Greg Aimo
Camera: Dan Chapman
Interviewer: Leslie Bottari
Music: Kevin MacLeod
MIT Center for Academic Excellence