What the Puck?
In my first year of graduate school, I fell on my butt a lot. It’s as if I would forget about my feet. I would be gliding along smoothly, comfortably…
BYOB or… Bring Your Own Bowl
I don’t know about you, but I like to take a break at lunchtime. When, two years ago, I started my PhD, I used to walk everyday out of building…
How to Pass a Harvard Class
Shopping Day is like speed dating for courses at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Herds of students filter in and out of classrooms. Nervous chatter splinters out across the…
MIT in a Year
Nine months. The length of a human pregnancy. Also the length of my time at MIT. To clarify, this is not a story about pregnancy. Ask most MIT graduate students…
Back to Square One
I just came back from Shanghai a week ago. It was my first trip home since I came to MIT in the summer of 2017. It’s been over a year…
Grief
My dead dad emailed me today. I was sitting in a shared office along with a postdoc when I saw my dad’s name pop into my inbox. My breath caught…
The Simple Pleasures of Gardening
There are few things in life as satisfying as eating home-grown food. Whether it is flavorful herbs, juicy tomatoes, crisp cucumbers or other delicious produce, it is simply delightful to…
So… What Do You Two Even Talk About?
When a new acquaintance learns that I am a graduate student at MIT, their first question is often about whether or not my husband is also an MIT student or…
First Impressions of the USA
I arrived in New Jersey to attend graduate school two years ago. I was mostly nervous and a little bit excited. This was the first time I had flown internationally…
Taking the Lead on Leadership
A surprising portion of my undergraduate education at the United States Military Academy (West Point) was spent getting punched in the face, trying to stay alive in a class called…
Ways of Responding to Accusations of Intelligence
An awkward yet common situation that I’ve witnessed at MIT is one in which someone is accused of being intelligent. While grateful for such charitable perceptions, the accused is often…
Gambling with Degrees
How many master’s degrees is too many? It’s not a very common problem to have. Yet for some of us that have already completed a couple years of postgraduate education…
You Got NSF, Now What?
It’s early April. You wake up and refresh the emails on your phone. There is an email from your professor congratulating you on getting the NSF, a colloquial expression for…
The Project Management Triangle
Graduate school is a wonderful time to indulge in research, fun side projects, and coursework. This is especially true at MIT, where opportunities are plentiful, whether it be startups, teaching,…
Cambridge Tea Party
I might be the only person in the world that looks forward to working on weekends. For most people, weekends are a time to sleep in or to catch up…
Safety First!
As an MIT grad student doing cutting-edge research, have you always keep safety as your first priority? I hope your answer to this question is, “yes”. But in reality, many…
Dressing for Battlefield Science
My first three years of grad school blur together as a haze of experiments and little else. Doing laundry every other week marked the passage of time. I would wash…
You Can’t Run Before You Walk
After completing my undergraduate studies in 2014, I began a slow-paced government job in India. As part of the job, I got a chance to explore the depth and widths…
A Corridor full of Giants
If you told me in high school that I would go to MIT, I definitely wouldn’t have believed you. And if I had, I would have been terrified of the…
Bilingualism is a Feature, Not a Bug
If you are a non-native English speaker like me, have you ever felt that your English was not good enough? And worse, did you feel that your English would never…
Venturing Into My Comfort Zone
Travelling is one of my favorite things to do, so I’m always excited when I get to travel for work. Since I’m a Ph.D. student in atmospheric chemistry in the…
My First Autopsy
As the autopsy technician split the cadaver’s chest open with a scalpel, a part of my identity that I had wrestled with since my undergrad finally settled into focus. I…
How can Philosophy Help Policy?
Before coming to MIT, I had no idea how much courses outside my field could influence my research and shape my intellectual beliefs. I had earned a bachelor’s in Mechanical…
The Art of Microwaving Food at MIT
My mom has been in the fertility business for more than ten years, developing solutions to ease the exhausting hormonal treatments required before in vitro fertilization. She introduced me to…
Perfection versus Persistence
A skinny envelope containing a fat “No”: my first rejection. I’d been confident of my eventual acceptance to Penn State’s Schreyer Honors College, and my 17-year-old ego winced at the…
Weighted Decision Matrices and the Happiness Question
Deciding to pursue a Ph.D. and finding appropriate programs was straightforward for me; choosing where to go was much more tortuous. Even before I had received any acceptance letters, I…
Getting FIT at MIT
“I’m going to get in shape this year!” “This time I’m serious about going to the gym.” “New year, new me.” We’ve all said it. The start of a…
The Pursuit of Happiness
Happiness is a strange thing. Take one of your glorious moments. Mine would probably be the day I learned I was joining MIT. It felt like I had just received…
Stress Mechanics for Graduate Students
MIT is a crazy place, there’s no doubt about that. But just because you’re in a crazy place doesn’t mean that you’re crazy. During grad school, everyone has days (or…
Wasting My Degree
“She’s worried you’ll waste your degree.” My friend (let’s call her Anna) relays this message to me as coming from another friend, but I can tell from her tone of…
The Right Choice for the Wrong Reasons
“There’s no wrong choice.” This was an oft-stated sentence from my friends and family when I was deciding between graduate programs. And okay, sure, when you have the option to…
How Not to Die Alone
This is an account of how three grad students came to befriend a cat at MIT. Year 1 B.C. (Before the Cat) Grad school can be an isolating experience…
A Perfect Campus Tour
I have been at MIT for almost two and a half years, and during this time I have repeatedly been asked to give campus tours to visiting friends and family.…
Unscrambling a Scrambled Egg
“We are pleased to offer you a spot for the HST MEMP program for Fall 2018….” I freeze while my brain works very hard to process multiple emotions and thoughts.…
Pottery before P-Sets
I wouldn’t really call myself a pottery guy. Don’t get me wrong… I can appreciate a good bowl every once in a while, and some of those vases can really…
