I can relate to the intellectual energy that PG describes. Going to a high school in Cambridge, equidistant from Harvard and MIT, I used to feel intimidated by the city's collective brain power.
It was the kind of place where confidence intervals are a subject for smalltalk and ads for genetic research are geared toward everyday commuters.
I can't speak for everyone, but I think something interesting happens when you live in a place like Cambridge for several years. You start to feel less intimidated by the competition for knowledge.
Don't get me wrong — you still try to keep up — but Cambridge begins to calibrate your ego. You realize that you're never going to be the smartest person in your domain, let alone every domain. For this reason I appreciate the city more as I get older, and I'm glad I moved back to work as a software dev.
It was the kind of place where confidence intervals are a subject for smalltalk and ads for genetic research are geared toward everyday commuters.
I can't speak for everyone, but I think something interesting happens when you live in a place like Cambridge for several years. You start to feel less intimidated by the competition for knowledge.
Don't get me wrong — you still try to keep up — but Cambridge begins to calibrate your ego. You realize that you're never going to be the smartest person in your domain, let alone every domain. For this reason I appreciate the city more as I get older, and I'm glad I moved back to work as a software dev.