Vera Kistiakowsky quantum mechanics course

The night-before-final pedagogical epiphany — Tom skimmed the textbook for high points, finished a three-hour final in 80 minutes, got an A. The origin story for Tom's "guess my lecture" method and his abandonment of note-taking.

In my junior year I took an elective course in physics called Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, taught by Vera Kistiakowsky. She was the first tenured woman faculty member in physics at MIT. Her father had won the Nobel Prize at Harvard in chemistry. Brilliant, always brought her big German Shepherd to class. I had no clue what was going on in that class. I always got 15s out of a hundred when class average was 85. The night before the final, I figured I was gonna flunk this course. I didn't know what was going on. So I took the book and I decided, well I'm just gonna go through and try to pick up what the high points are. Went into that final, three-hour final, finished it in an hour and twenty minutes, checked it over another twenty minutes, walked out of the class and got an A in the class.