Paul Gray on MIT pace and pressure (retirement reflection)

Quoted as supporting the "flexibility and stress-free environment" theme: Gray's retirement-era admission that one of his big disappointments was not having reduced MIT's pace and pressure.

I coined the term "flexibility and stress-free environment." The administration is worried about all the stress on the students. In fact Paul Gray, who was president of MIT all through the 1980s, when he retired as president he said one of his big disappointments was that he had not reduced the pace and pressure of MIT. Someone would say, well, the pace and pressure of MIT is part of MIT — drinking from a fire hose — and there's nothing wrong with learning to work hard. But there is something wrong with toiling and not learning anything while you're working hard. There's lots of times when people give you assignments that are for the sake of giving an assignment.