Before We Went to Boston

When I was young, I dreamed of studying at MIT.

As an engineer, that dream felt almost natural. MIT was not just a university—it was a symbol. A place where curiosity was taken seriously, where questions mattered, and where the world was understood through careful thinking and rigorous work. Even as a child, I knew what it represented.

But the world does not always make room for our early dreams.

For various reasons—circumstances, language barriers, timing—MIT remained a distant place for me. I never walked its halls as a student. I never sat in its classrooms. Instead, it stayed somewhere in my mind, admired from afar. A place I respected deeply, but never truly expected to reach.

Of course, everyone knows what MIT is.
One of the world’s leading engineering schools.
One of the most difficult places to gain admission.

I knew that even back then. That was part of the reason it remained a dream.
Life moved on. I grew older. I found other paths—different institutions, different projects, different ways of studying and researching. My life became full in ways I hadn’t anticipated. Not the life I once imagined, but a meaningful one nonetheless.

MIT quietly stayed where it had always been: in the background.

Then, a few months ago, something unexpected happened.

My son—eleven years old at the time—came to me and asked, almost casually,
“Dad, what kind of place is MIT?”

The question caught me off guard.

I wasn’t prepared for it. I didn’t know where it came from. I found myself wondering why he was thinking about universities at all, and why MIT, of all places. At eleven, I certainly wasn’t asking those kinds of questions.

At first, I thought it might be nothing more than passing curiosity.
But the question didn’t disappear.

We talked about MIT again. And then again.
He listened carefully. He asked thoughtful questions. He didn’t seem interested in rankings or prestige. He wanted to know what kind of people studied there, what they worked on, what made the place special.

That was when I realized something important.

This wasn’t about MIT as an institution.
It was about curiosity—quiet, unforced, and genuine—beginning to take shape.

One day, almost unexpectedly, he said something that stayed with me.
He told me that he wanted to try. That he wanted to challenge himself. That he wanted to see what kind of place MIT really was—not someday, but with his own eyes.

In that moment, I felt something shift.

I realized that this wasn’t about fulfilling a dream I once had.
It wasn’t about projecting my past onto his future.
And it certainly wasn’t about expectations or outcomes.

It was about walking together.
About seeing a place not as a goal, but as a question.

And somewhere between his curiosity and my long-held admiration, the idea of going to Boston quietly began to form.

Not as a plan.
Not as a lesson.
But as a shared experience—one that neither of us fully understood yet.

That was how this journey began.