A nanotechnologist and a social scientist walk into MIT MechE….
Finding my place in the MechE department without a technical background
“What’s your name?” “Where are you from?” “What’s your research area?” These are, without fail, the first three questions exchanged between MIT Mechanical Engineering grad students who are meeting for the first time. I quickly learned this convention after spending just a few minutes at department orientation events when I first got to campus in […]
Adventures on Amtrak
A story of antics and perseverance
Powered by three hours of sleep and some reheated potstickers (in hindsight, this was truly an omen for how the rest of the day would go), I sprung into action at 5:22 am to make the final preparations for my journey back to Cambridge. Coming from a town in Delaware, I had managed to live […]
The unstructured symphony of grad school
Embracing challenges in academia and jazz
My first solo Over the past 4 years at MIT, I have often had my comfort zone pushed. To name a few things, I’ve presented to NASA leadership, received my first peer reviews, and traveled alone to conferences. But one very different anxiety-o-meter peaking experience occurred about 40 seconds into the hard bop standard Nutville […]
How to train your robot
Cool research is built on a series of rather uncool moments.
It’s late on a Monday night, and as usual, I’m standing in the middle of a large playroom filled with a bunch of pretend tools. There are toy hammers, plastic wrenches, and even a pretend drill, all strewn across racks, tables, and bins. I walk around the room, running a final check to make sure […]
Positive Procrastination
Why taking breaks can be good for productivity
I think procrastination gets a bad rep. It’s something you’re meant to grow out of and certainly, as a busy graduate student, there’s no time to procrastinate. Well, I think procrastination is really misunderstood and should not have an immediate negative connotation. When you don’t feel like doing something, there is often a reason why. […]
