I moved to MIT from Stanford in 1984 to teach, and became the founding director of MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab.
In 1973, I left the Rockefeller University to join the Yale University Medical School. The main reason for the move was my belief that the time had come for fruitful interactions between the new discipline of Cell Biology and the traditional fields of interest of medical schools, namely Pathology and Clinical Medicine.
I got out of university and there was a general panic throughout my family as to what I was going to do. For about six months, I did this job in recruitment and I was just so awful at it. I jumped before I was pushed.
I did not enjoy Cambridge. But I shouldn't blame Cambridge alone. I wasn't ready for university or for the wrench of leaving home. It was a big cultural shock.
If you read a book about school - someone else's book - you always translate it into your own school experiences. It's describing the student: he's bewildered and lost in a large crowd in a university classroom. You'll visualize that from your own experiences. So, everything you know is what you're really writing.
When I left my parents' home when I was 19, I went to the University of Florida, and within 24 hours was in the mental health department. And within 20 minutes, I was being told by the director there that they didn't have what I needed there.
This line of research continued when I went, and brought my research group with me, to the new University of California, Irvine campus in 1966 to become the founding Dean of the School of Physical Sciences.
Teaching was my first job after leaving university. It was a challenge, but I enjoyed it. Some of the kids were disruptive, but I could deal with it because I was only 24 at the time, and my own school memories were still fresh.
