The Vicious Cycle of Boston Leases
Raise your hand if you hate moving! The Greater Boston Area, especially lovely places such as Allston, Cambridge, and Somerville, can be quite a painful place August 31st when most…
A Nature Lover’s Journey in Cambridge
Are you a nature lover? I sure am, and I only realized how important it was to me when I moved to Cambridge after being admitted to the PhD program…
Learning to Sail
As mentioned in one of my previous blogs, the trio-factors of inability to swim, belonging to a country where sailing is not common, and the presence of the Charles River,…
The Dizzying Cost of Life Science Research
Where were you when you bought the most expensive thing you’ve ever purchased? I was definitely in lab. In life science, you can spend a staggering amount of the lab’s…
Graduate Student becomes Chickpea Master Masher
I am sitting at my desk, debugging some code that does not seem to work. The week has been tiring, to say the least. But next week is Brunch Week!…
When Science Is More Art than Science
Maybe climate change is a hoax and vaccinations cause autism. Maybe 9/11 was an inside job, the earth is as flat as my grandma’s pancake, pineapple belongs on a pizza,…
Taking the Plunge
Applying to grad school can feel like climbing a mountain. We’ve all heard the analogy, but I’ve found that there’s very little advice on what to do once you’re at…
How I became an engineer overnight
Applying to graduate school is a nerve-wracking process. It’s a blanket of excitement that, when uncovered, reveals a flood of conflicting emotions–from wondering whether you are rushing and have no…
Realizing running is awesome
This is a story about me transitioning from occasional running to try and get fit, to becoming super into running. Only two years ago, I was struggling with the boredom…
When Your Hobby Is Your YouTube Channel
It was two months before I was set to move to Boston for my PhD, and I had decided that there would never be a better time to create a…
A Home Away from Home
Prologue When I first came to MIT, I planned to work, but not much else. Certainly no time to play Gu-zheng – the Chinese zither. There are simply too…
The Paradox of Choice:
I am a brand-new Ph.D. student and I have already figured out my least favorite part about MIT: the overwhelming number of choices. As I am enrolled as a student…
Full Send
What if I told you that the most fun thing that I do regularly since moving to Boston is running up and down a lot of tall steps (technically, seats)…
Discovering the multiverse at MIT
I still remember that chill running up my spine seeing the MIT dome for the first time from the Harvard Bridge, a chill that was indicative of the bounty of…
Creating my niche in grad school
Imagine being in a roller coaster that’s on fire, adrift, going full speed. That was my first year at MIT. Coming straight from an undergraduate institution in Puerto Rico, it…
Eating my way through Cambridge’s cultural heritage
“What’s for lunch?” is one of the more universal questions of the human experience, though the presence of two large universities in Cambridge affects the range of choices available to…
Dynamic equilibrium through Classical dance
Stepping away from India into the US led me to a stage where I was frantically searching for some semblance of my culture to hold on to. It was at…
Making the most of Cambridge’s amazing salsa scene
Thankfully, life at MIT as a grad student is not ALL about research. For me, one of the greatest breaks from lab is dancing. Growing up, classical ballet was part…
B-list Superpower – Food Edition
What is “meal prep”? First things first, what does “meal prep” mean? Is it the newest fad in age of fitness and health fanatics? Is it a euphemism for being…
The Most Important Change in My Life
I was an anxious child, an anxious teenager and an anxious young adult. So much so that the concept of anxiety didn’t make much sense. “You’re telling me it’s possible…
Starting Graduate School on the Right Foot
On the snowy February morning before my MIT graduate school interview, I rolled out of bed, bundled up and went for a run along the Charles River path. As a…
When You’re Up for an Exercise Adventure!
Feeling sluggish after indulging in one too many conference happy hours? Your normal gym workout not really doing it for you (or you not really doing the workout)? Try something…
A Techless Path To MIT
When people hear that I’ll be spending the next half decade at MIT, many seem to think I’ll be spending my days huddled over an intelligent robot plotting for the…
Diving into The Deep
Ever since high school, I have been a maker to my core. I spent almost all my free time in an art room and my evenings were often spent wrenching…
The Unofficial Guide Book for the Grad School Applicant
I made the decision to apply for graduate school in mid-September of my senior year of college. With application deadlines only weeks away and the GRE looming in the distance,…
On Becoming a Professional Student
If you are an academic masochist who constantly enjoys being over-involved and under pressure, then your undergraduate “career” was probably something like mine. My (pre-grad) college years regularly felt like…
Iḷisavsaaqtuam aakam qaitkaa uqautchiñi kiŋuvaamiñun
Aullaqisaqtuq – It is the beginning Iḷisaguuruŋa Iñupiatun MIT-mi. I study Iñupiaq at MIT. Iñupiaq is the language of the Alaskan Inuit, whose population numbers 24,500 and whose speakers’ number…
Ivy League Entitlement
“No.” I said. “I don’t want to.” I was standing on the street in front of a man in a suit. That man (let’s call him Ryan) was frantically trying…
An Open Letter to My Future Self
Dear future Ming, The date is August 26, 2019 – today is your/my/our first day at MIT. When you next read this after/if you graduate, it may well be the…
Being Strong in Strong Situations
At my undergraduate institution (one of the three big U.S. military academies), every cadet was required to take a class called “The Behavioral Science of Leadership”. In this class we…
Unashamed to Be a Nerd
My friends at school weren’t really into Harry Potter. Many had watched the movies, and a few had read the books, but the magical world did not have the same…
Giving Back to Society
The ultimate aim of all the jobs the world has to offer in today’s time, whether in the field of entertainment, business or research, is to ultimately serve the human…
Biologists Need More Angle Grinders
I was very surprised one day to realize that I had developed a single callous on the pad of my right thumb. I can’t remember the last time I got…
Fated Friends
Walking into my MIT dorm for the first time, I itched to meet my peers. Although MIT students are known for being nerdy, I figured grad students (myself included) already…
Dildo.io, Where Did You Go?
Cambridge and the online dating landscape When I first arrived in Boston, I was teeming with curiosity and excitement. My thirst for scientific discovery and research was paralleled only by…
