
Lessons of an MIT Education - funkylexoo
http://www.math.tamu.edu/~cyan/Rota/mitless.html
======
dougmwne
The author was quite harsh on the soft sciencies and humanities and I'm going
to attempt a defense. First, he characterises these subjects as merely what,
facts to be learned, instead of how, skills to be mastered.

Let's take history, which seems very what, full of dates and names. A great
course in history teaches you how to think differently and with deeper context
about world events and your country's politics.

I suggest that a society only interested in the workings of machines rather
than the workings of people will soon treat people as mere machines. Let the
nightmare begin.

~~~
rayiner
The charactetization is incorrect. The liberal arts do teach “how.” Creative
writing or political philosophy or history teaches you skills you can use to
analayze scenarios and communicate with people in different ways to different
effect.

Where the author is correct is that in those fields the output isn’t
falsifiable. Your math skills allow you to construct proofs that can be
verified. Your study of history allows you to write accounts explaining and
putting in context historical events in a way that is pursuasive to other
people. But they are not falsifiable.

I agree with holding the former in higher esteem. Being able to communicate
with people is important, but it’s an impoverished basis for an education.
It’s terrifying that many students manage to graduate without much exposure to
the world of objective reality and truth that exists around them (and which
makes their lifestyles possible).

~~~
mabub24
I think you're mischaracterizing humanities as not falsifiable as if it should
be like mathematics.

The content is not wrong in the same way a math question is, but many
humanities classes are explicitly about taking arguments presented in essays,
books, journals, by the government, by public interest groups, by private
industry, and testing them against "objective reality and truth that exists
around them." No humanities course just takes every argument at face value.
Every argument is subject to intense scrutiny.

At least from my takeaway, just saying someone or an argument is "wrong" is
not really what the humanities are about anyway. The humanities focus on the
_reasons_ people have and give for their claims. Often reasons are complex and
are tied into complex human contexts. Reasons are not just evidence, they are
the entire baggage of argument, logic, context, culture, and history. The
humanities focus on understanding those reasons. Whether deciding whether
those reasons and claims are wrong is important, but not the entire purpose of
the humanities, and never was.

To be sure, there are people who come out of humanities programs with
distorted views of the world. I have met many, and it worries me in some ways
what more and more do to the humanities.

But there are also those that come out of STEM fields with wildly distorted
views of the world as well. And I think that is because they lack a solid
humanities education.

~~~
wallace_f
>No humanities course just takes every argument at face value. Every argument
is subject to intense scrutiny

Here is Orwell on the matter:

>"When the nautical screw was first invented, there was a controversy that
lasted for years as to whether screw-steamers or paddle-steamers were better.
The paddle-steamers, like all obsolete things, had their champions, who
__supported them by ingenious arguments. __Finally, however, a distinguished
admiral tied a screw-steamer and a paddle-steamer of equal horsepower stern to
stern and set their engines running. That settled the question once and for
all. "[1]

Feynman:

>"It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart
you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong."

People lived for a very long time without a proper appreciation of controlled,
repeatable experiments, and progress was _very_ slow.

1 - www.orwell.ru/library/essays/lion/english/e_saw

~~~
oblio
Until we come up with a mathematical model for human interaction or other
humanities, we have to make do with what we've got.

Who knows if it is even possible to model human interactions?

~~~
jfoutz
I have an unpopular view, that physics is probably the easiest science.
Chemistry is harder, biology is even harder. Heading up the chain into social
sciences is just unbelievably hard to get good answers.

With physics, you can build a machine an test to your hearts content to
determine what the underlying rules are. That's real tough to do when you're
studying, say, an economy.

So, i don't mean this as a slight to physicists. It would never occur to me to
use oil drops to measure the mass of an electron. It was a brilliant insight.
But, with modern tools, I kinda think i could replicate that experiment in my
apartment. Evolution? I mean, golly, that's a really subtle insight. I _might_
be able to do something with petri dishes and poisons, but that seems like a
pretty tough thing to detect. I'd like to compare Darwin to Newton, but Darwin
is probably closer to Aristotle. We haven't begun to get to the really good
stuff yet.

I'm skeptical of phycology, there are issues with replication all the time.
But clearly they're on to something. The whole advertising industry is built
on psychological insights.

I've dealt with crazy race conditions that make me want to pull my hair out.
They're not consistently reproducible. Eventually i work out the logic and
things fall into place. But i have access to the source :) I can't imagine how
hard it is to get anything out of random interactions of black boxes. Social
sciences just aren't for me.

Anyway, yeah, i believe it's possible to model human interactions. We do it
all the time. As with all things, some models are just more useful than
others.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
I think your unpopular view is very true. Worse, it's the key to finance and
politics.

I used to know someone who had nothing but contempt for developers and the IT
team, because while he was busy playing the corporate ambition game, they just
wanted to do a good job.

As far as he was concerned, this made them easy prey.

Guess which kind of person runs the world?

Engineering and science won't teach you this. You can finish your PhD with a
completely unrealistic view about how politics works, and how political
outcomes are generated.

Neither science nor engineering are immune to this. Popular beliefs and high-
status areas of research are decided politically, not dispassionately.

It's tempting to say that things would be better if we had dispassionate
objective AIs deciding policy, instead of individual and tribal ambition - but
of course one of the challenges of AI is that instead of simply automating
math, AI has the potential to automate and amplify influence and persuasion.

When you don't really understand influence and persuasion - but others do, in
practice if not in theory - that's not necessarily a good place to be.

------
bjourne
> Lesson Six: You must measure up to a very high level of performance. I can
> imagine a propective student or parent asking, "Why should I (or my child)
> take calculus at MIT rather than at Oshkosh College? Isn't the material
> practically identical, no matter where it is taught, while the cost varies a
> great deal?"

Is there any truth to this? Because it seem like classical university jingoism
to me. "My institution is better than yours." Anecdotes like "All MIT
graduates I've met were dumb" or "All MIT graduates I've met were smart" does
not count.

Because I looked at the DE course he taught (18.03) and I completed harder
math courses than that in my non-MIT education. I'm sure many other HN readers
have too. I wonder if there is some test you can take to see if you are just
as good as an MIT graduate?

The EU has done great work in this area by trying to standardize the
university curriculum across the union. What that means is that a master's
degree in computer science from the university of München is mostly comparable
to one from Madrid, so name-dropping your university "does not work." It also
means that it is trivial for a Spanish student to study one year in Germany
and then come home to Spain (see Erasmus). The US system, where some colleges
are rated higher than others for irrational reasons, is strictly worse.

~~~
neltnerb
As an MIT alum, I don't see a ton of value in competing over whose classes
were the hardest. I've met super impressive people from everywhere from
community colleges to Rhodes scholars and do not subscribe to the idea that
MIT alums are uniquely good.

But having taken some physics and math courses at multiple universities MITs
went much deeper in a shorter period of time. This isn't necessarily reflected
in the syllabus because the _topics_ may be the same but the devil is in the
details.

MIT had absolutely fantastic problem sets that took me 10+ hours a week per
class to finish and were rarely changed from year to year. This is because
they've been tuned over so long that whether you get the answer correct is
almost besides the point, the useful part for learning was the process of
banging your head against them. This was true to an extent at other
universities I've been at but usually the expected proficiency required to
excel in a course was not quite so severe.

I ended up getting a PhD (in materials science), spent many hours working as
hard as I could in lots of classes, and despite honestly knowing my stuff
quite well I never got an A in an undergraduate physics course at MIT. Those
were only gotten by the students who were obviously frighteningly talented,
often with research experience in the course material already. Don't take that
as sour grapes or anything, I am super proud of my B's in these courses. But
MIT grades harshly, which may be part of why it's "harder".

Most MIT students stop caring about grades freshman year. Most MIT students
interact with one another in class as fellow masochists struggling together
against a common foe (learning the material) rather than competing against one
another for grades. This is what I would personally call the weirdest and most
advantageous aspect of MIT versus Ivy Leagues, but I actually think state
schools are awesome at this too.

I'd have put that environment on the list of lessons way before any of the
ones on there. Learning the value of close collaboration with people,
regardless of whether you may think (probably wrongly anyway) that they're
"better" or "worse" than you. Learning that when it comes to the real world,
on a team you're all up against a way bigger opponent than each other, you're
up against the laws of nature. And that success against that opponent is far
more satisfying than any grade.

~~~
bjourne
> As an MIT alum, I don't see a ton of value in competing over whose classes
> were the hardest.

There are many schools around the world with much harder and more technology
intensive curriculum than MIT. If you disagree with that statement, then you
do see "value in competing over whose classes were the hardest." If you do not
disagree with that statement, then you must agree that the "MIT experience"
you describe can be gotten in many schools other than MIT. F.e, I also worked
10+ h/day 7 days/week year round at university and also felt that getting A
grades were impossible.

I think the professor is making a great point by comparing math to sports.
Yes, you can go to a sports university but you don't have to. The way to get
good at it is by busting your ass of (and having good genetics). It's your own
effort that counts, not the name of the institution, imho.

~~~
neltnerb
I think you're misunderstanding what I was trying to say. I am explicitly
saying that lots of other schools are fantastic, and also that schools which
aren't pitched as the "best" produce fantastic alumni. So, as you say, I
agree.

Yes, I think that there are schools around the world with harder curricula
than MIT, with the caveat that every university has different strengths. I
could go into my accomplishments in undergrad, but it's truly besides the
point.

At some point it's truly ridiculous to compare as if it's a linear ranking.
It's counterproductive to worry about rankings, and causes completely
unnecessary friction between institutions. Pride and insecurity get in the way
of solving problems, and all of us are ultimately struggling against a much
more interesting challenge than each other.

I think the professor here is really not making a compelling argument, to be
honest. None of the listed things are unique to MIT for sure, though strictly
speaking he doesn't claim that they are -- he says that they are lessons of an
MIT education, rather than unique aspects of an MIT education. He's a
mathematician so this may be intentionally precise.

------
abecedarius
An insightful list, but one part bugs me: the approval of working so hard you
can't stay awake. This is bad for learning, and apparently there are even
experiments showing that it's bad -- which casts an ironic light on the part
of this list about demonstrably knowing things vs. bullshitting.

Maybe there's a deeper reason it's good, but I'm skeptical.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Indeed. I thought Lesson 8 was simply a statement of institutional-scale
masochism.

>MIT students often complain of being overworked, and they are right. When I
look at the schedules of courses my advisees propose at the beginning of each
term, I wonder how they can contemplate that much work. My workload was
nothing like that when I was an undergraduate.

Ok. How is that at all healthy, not just medically but academically? There are
limits, and when you push too far past them, you reduce long-term performance.
The human machine operates within engineering tolerances like anything else.

~~~
abecedarius
Maybe it works better at sorting people by ability (in some more visible sense
of ability) than at helping them develop. I think that goal explains more
about precollege education (as one of many goals for it, all fighting it out)
-- at the college level the biggest sorting happens in admissions. I'm just
guessing about all this, though.

------
xkcd-sucks
MIT is a very good school, but shouldn't be fetishised. After several years of
hiring people in the Boston area, I've seen just as many mediocre MIT grads as
mediocre BU grads. In fact, the only person at my company to be fired for
incompetence was an MIT graduate

~~~
sabujp
was the person incompetent or did he/she not get along

~~~
SiempreViernes
> fired for incompetence

Surely that was clear enough?

~~~
trendia
In defense of the person you're replying to, a lot of large corporations have
"employee improvement plans" that are designed specifically to create
documentation that can justify a firing, especially when that firing is for
some other reason (e.g. "not getting along"). The improvement plans have
nothing to do with getting the employee back on track, but rather to either 1)
show that the employee is unable to keep up with artificially high work
demands, or 2) get the employee frustrated enough to quit.

That means that when a person is fired, the stated reason for that firing is
not always the same as the _real_ reason.

------
baxtr
> Lesson Ten: Mathematics is still the queen of the sciences. > When an
> undergraduate asks me whether he or she should major in mathematics rather
> than in another field that I will simply call X, my answer is the following:
> "If you major in mathematics, you can switch to X anytime you want to, but
> not the other way around."

You can argue that with Physics as well. However, I have learned in my life,
that there is a value in not having the option to "go back". Flexibility comes
at a price.

~~~
david-gpu
> "If you major in mathematics, you can switch to X anytime you want to, but
> not the other way around."

I hear people say that about mathematicians, physicists and even philosophers,
yet I've never come across any of them in my career. I suspect it's wishful
thinking.

~~~
throwanem
I disagree. I've worked with a sizable number of people whose training was in
mathematics or physics. I've never worked in an organization dedicated to
either field; my surmise is that a high level of facility in those subjects
demands an activity and agility of intellect which lends itself well to almost
any complex and primarily mental pursuit.

~~~
foldr
Most people in most jobs are doing work that's not directly related to their
degree.

~~~
throwanem
I've worked with a lot more math and physics grads than, say, poli sci or
sports medicine grads. Not to disparage fields that aren't math or physics,
and I don't have a degree in the fight in any case; just that I have noticed
something of a preponderance over the years among those who do have degrees
not actually in the field.

~~~
foldr
Right, but there are other fields of work where poli sci grads would be more
common than math and physics grads.

~~~
throwanem
Government, I suppose, but then that's basically what they're trained for,
so...

~~~
foldr
Do you have actual stats on where poli sci graduates work?

Take English majors as a more straightforward example. Virtually no English
majors are employed doing anything directly related to their studies.

------
icc97
> The world and your career are unpredictable, so you are better off learning
> subjects of permanent value.

I've been looking for a way to express this idea for years. Doing a core
subject at University like Mathematics or Physics can be used in a million
different careers.

In a similar way I'd recommend learning say Functional Programming over React
or Scala.

Plus I guess learning Category Theory over functional programming too,
although I'm not quite sure how true that is.

~~~
wenc
> learning Category Theory

There is a level of abstraction which for most people is the wrong end of the
stick to start from. Category theory is one of them. (and I'm a big fan of
category theory and Haskell).

Category theory may occasionally lead to elegant, orthogonal and consistent
solutions, especially if you are building new abstract tooling (LINQ in C# is
a good example). It gives you tools to reason about structure.

However in most situations, it doesn't give you anything you can directly use.
Most of them time it serves to clarify and enlighten rather than generate.
Categorical thinking [0] may be more useful than the actual theory.

If you seek to apply category theory without first getting your hands dirty
with conventional "inefficient" programming, you will end up with abstruse
solutions that are potentially overly complicated and unmaintainable. Applying
theory without the requisite real-world experience (to temper the tendency
toward heavy abstraction) is a problem of youth. The world is not full of
highly-intelligent people who can work with highly abstract code. One needs to
learn to work with the inelegance in the real world and with other people in
the system. A larger coherent system, though weak in parts, may produce a
better result than a few bright people.

[0] [https://www.johndcook.com/blog/applied-category-
theory/](https://www.johndcook.com/blog/applied-category-theory/)

~~~
tome
Yes! Absolutely. Unless you already have quite some proficiency with
mathematics and/or generic programming then learning category theory is pretty
pointless. In fact I don't even know what it would mean to "learn" it if you
don't have a suitable background to build it on.

------
senthil_rajasek
This was written in 1997. "From the Association of Alumni and Alumnae of MIT
April 1997"

~~~
lr4444lr
That explains what he might have meant when he was talking about the "hidden
curriculum" in comp. sci. Nowadays, the complaint more often heard is that the
curricula have become too applications-focused, with the kids having huge gap
in their understanding of theory.

------
asciimo
> Those who do not become computer scientists to the second degree risk
> turning into programmers who will only implement the ideas of others.

The horror! Maybe this was truly a terrible fate in 1997.

~~~
TheGrassyKnoll
There's probably a few poor souls at Google pulling $150k+ that are doomed to
this...

------
ploggingdev
(Off topic)

> Scientific biographies often fail to give a realistic description of
> personality, and thereby create a false idea of scientific work.

Any recommendations for biographies which give a realistic look into famous
scientists' lives? I am reading the Einstein biography by Walter Isaacson and
it's pretty good so far.

Completely off topic : how do you configure a LAN to have <domain>/~username
urls (such as the linked post's url) exposed to the internet? I remember
having such a directory in my school's linux network where I could place files
in public or public_html (can't remember)and other users could access it by
going to <internal school ip>/~myname, but it wasn't exposed to the internet.

~~~
hoke_t
Try "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman?"

~~~
HiroshiSan
Surely you're joking Mr Feynman is an autobiography and definitely does not
reflect Feynmans life unbiasedly. Its a great book but if you want a more
unbiased account of his life check out Genius by James Gleick.

Walter Isaacson also just came out with a biography on da Vinci and he has one
on Benjamin Franklin, though I never finished it, it was written to the same
standard as Einstein.

~~~
sn9
_Surely You 're Joking_ is a great read but _Genius_ is what you read for
genuine insight into the man, and it's probably the best biography I've yet
read.

------
ta_1509903111
I liked the part about the hidden curriculums. Any idea how one would balance
it with the actual one when you have plans to go to grad school?

For me, the hidden curriculum is in machine learning and AI. I was recently
given a chance (as an undergrad) to join such company. I think this is my best
chance to learn about the field in a qualitative way and possibly get my name
on a research paper before I graduate with a BSc. I'd work under the
supervision of Ph.D.'s in the field.

That being said, for my grad school efforts, I would need to keep my GPA in
check, which is currently 3.2, but which would suffer a blow. My question is
that does anyone have an idea whether admission boards (in private US
colleges) tend to tolerate lower GPAs for whatever hidden curriculum I've
found, given it's still academic and aligned with the actual degree I'm
applying to? I'd be applying as an international student.

------
jancsika
> It is demoralizing to give a young person role models of Beethoven,
> Einstein, and Feynman, presented as saintly figures who moved from insight
> to insight without a misstep.

There isn't a single Beethoven scholar I can think of who seriously entertains
the idea of Beethoven being a "self-generating" genius who never made
mistakes.

Also, the Beethoven pieces that today's composers most admire-- the late
string quartets-- were almost universally shunned by actual Romantic period
commentators.

Perhaps the Romantic Age stereotype is demoralizing to students because
professors with a narrow domain expertise don't actively seek out music
history experts to revise their outdated views about the Romantic Age.

~~~
Klauster
Yes, scholars. Maybe it's a generational thing. Young people have too many
people they have to compare to. You have to be great at everything! I'm
hearing that high schoolers don't have confidence anymore.

~~~
jancsika
> Yes, scholars.

As well as anyone who has played a piece by Beethoven or read a children's
book about him. The Beethoven stereotype is the impassioned if erratic genius
who literally ripped through the paper correcting his own errors in a quest
for perfection, persisting in his struggle to write masterworks even after
going deaf.

The author is almost certainly confusing Beethoven's myth with the Mozart
myth-- the child musical prodigy through whom Christ's perfection sounded.

This matters because the author is attempting to make a causal relationship
between Romantic-era genius myth-making and higher education in the U.S. at
present. If he can't even match the myth with the right composer I think I'm
right to be skeptical of his theory.

------
jpmattia
If you find these lesson interesting, there were another 10 lessons from the
Rotafest: [http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~cahn/life/gian-carlo-
rota-10-le...](http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~cahn/life/gian-carlo-
rota-10-lessons.html)

[Prof Rota was a bit of an institution already in the 80s, when I took his
probability course 18.313. The course utterly kicked my butt, and I believe
him when he writes that the homework would occasionally lead to publications.]

------
internetman55
I thought that the point of a liberal arts education was 'knowing how' to live
a good life, and then possibly knowing how to communicate effectively through
speech and the written word.

One of the most cutting arguments I've heard from liberal arts education
advocates is that STEM extremists want to turn college into a high-level trade
school.

------
melling
Has the course number changed? It’s not on the Open Courseware list.

[https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/](https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/)

~~~
phereford
It is 18.03. He may have just inadvertently flipped the 0 and 3. It is 18.03
now, and was in 2002 :D.

~~~
ll931110
No, it's not 18.03 (which is differential equation). Check the syllabus.

[http://www.ellerman.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Guidi-
Not...](http://www.ellerman.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Guidi-Notes-Rota-
Probability-Vol-1-2.pdf)

Seems that after Gian-Carlo Rota died, the class is defunct. The closet one
can get is 18.175, but it still presents material from purely theoretical
standpoint (e.g. no application to physics to CS).

~~~
phereford
Hmm my mistake. The blog post said Differential Equation and a classroom of
300 some students. Not many non-core classes have 300 students in them. I
remember my diff eq class (18.03) being rather large (similar to 8.01, 18.01,
etc etc).

While 18.03 is not core, it is a requirement for most engineering disciplines
at MIT.

~~~
jamessb
The confusion is that the article refers to two different courses:

"18.30, differential equation, the largest mathematics course at MIT, with
more than 300 students" [ths might be the course that is now 18.03]

"18.313, a course I teach in advanced probability theory"

------
patientplatypus
I quickly scanned for "You will be hired at places that others are not even
considered for because you are largely paying out the nose for a brand name."
Didn't find it. Lame.

------
MilnerRoute
I just realized that was written in 1997.

It's interesting to wonder if, 20 years later, the author would change some of
what he originally wrote.

------
pkrumins
Lesson zero: You don't need an education.

~~~
ooronning
found the self-taught programmer :)

No offense intended; I'm self-taught as well and can appreciate the sentiment
immensely. But damn do I wish I made a few different decisions during high
school. I'm ~1 year into my web development career and I'm concerned about
what happens when I get bored of building APIs and web apps -- I seem to have
a talent for picking up new skills pretty quickly, but I'm afraid my lack of
formal math and algorithms training is going to limit the career trajectory of
self-taught programmers like me. That's without considering the ramifications
of an irrelevant college degree.

~~~
pkrumins
Come work for me. I only hire people without college degrees. I consider
college degrees a red flag.

~~~
ooronning
Why's that, might I ask? I've seen statistics that I haven't verified that
indicate that while somewhere between 25 and 40% of CS undergrads aren't able
to find work as programmers, around 40% of professional programmers don't have
a CS degree. And I'm really not sure what to make of this.

~~~
pkrumins
Because they wasted years of time learning useless garbage that universities
teach that is of no use.

~~~
theossuary
I wanted a college degree because I see it as hedging my bets. I may not want
to work at the boring companies of the world, but if I ever needed that
stability I can have it with a college degree. Four years while I can work
part-time in my field and the offer of my parents to fund my education made it
a no-brainer.

All I'm trying to say is it's never so black and white, and while I don't plan
on using the lack of a degree against somebody, I certainly wouldn't call it a
red flag either.

~~~
pkrumins
I don't like people who hedge. I like risk takers.

~~~
theossuary
Hedging isn't the avoidance of risk, it's reasoning what risks are worth
taking and hedging against those not worth taking.

Put in other terms, when you have to play cowboy on a production server, you
take a backup first to hedge your bets; otherwise you aren't brave, you're
just foolish.

------
trisimix
Man I think I hate Ivy leagues.

~~~
Buldak
You're in luck, MIT is not one of them.

~~~
akhilcacharya
They are in HYPSM though.

------
mcguire
On the other hand...

[http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/03/16/suicide-rate-
mit...](http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/03/16/suicide-rate-mit-higher-
than-national-average/1aGWr7lRjiEyhoD1WIT78I/story.html)

~~~
sanderjd
I can't seem to get to the article. What does it say?

~~~
mcguire
Sorry about that. Wr,dr: Suicide is a bit of a problem at MIT.

" _Over the past decade, the university’s student suicide rate has been 10.2
per 100,000 students, according to a Globe review of public records as well as
university and media reports. More recently MIT’s suicide rate has been even
higher; over the past five years the campus has reported 12.5 suicides per
100,000 students._

" _The increasing rate has been driven by the school’s undergraduate
population, whose suicide rate in the past decade has outpaced that of the
school’s graduate students — 12.6 to 8.5._

" _The national average for college campuses is roughly between 6.5 and 7.5
suicides per 100,000 students, according to three major studies that looked at
undergraduate and graduate student suicides from 1980 to 2009._ "

On the other hand, over across the street at that other school,

" _At least one other local school, Harvard University, has an above average
rate for its undergraduate population. The rate of suicide at Harvard was 11.8
per 100,000 undergraduates over the past decade. When accounting for both
undergraduates and graduates, the rate at Harvard was 5.4 per 100,000._ "

So maybe it's Boston.

But wait,

" _...the university’s undergraduate rate has declined, particularly since the
early 2000s. Between 1994 and 2005, the undergraduate suicide rate at MIT was
18.7 per 100,000._ "

Holy poop.e

Edit: And I just noticed the "Ten Lessons" were written in 1997.

