Color my life with the chaos of trouble
How to persevere after research leaves you with a literal headache in the desert
Cracking open the trailer door and peeking out, I checked to see if the storm had subsided. Who knew it could rain so much in the desert? Water had begun overflowing the tanks and spilling onto the testing pad. Impatiently, I yelled to the other engineers, “I’m going to try and disconnect the hoses!” With […]
Relearning how to learn
Returning to school after years on a boat
As I sat down at my desk in the middle of the Pacific Ocean waiting for an Internet connection, I wondered if the long-awaited response would be sitting in my inbox. I kept hitting F5, hoping that the page would refresh faster. Internet on a naval vessel isn’t as instantaneous as the luxury Internet speeds […]
The breaking point
And the slow path to recovery
I got off the escalator and stepped onto the platform. Three minutes until the train, eighteen minutes until I get to MIT, twenty minutes until my meeting. My breath was a bit fast: I’d been walking briskly. Suddenly, my chest tightened, and no more air could get in. My first reaction wasn’t fear – it […]
How to hang in there
For one grad student, holding onto their scientific dreams involves more literal grip strength than you might think!
I was skimming the schedule of a conference last week when I saw the last thing any 6th year PhD student wants to see: a title that could describe my project, on someone else’s abstract. I froze with dread. Did I just get scooped? No: the other project used a different experimental approach in a […]
The conflict and the privilege of MIT
I didn't think I could come here, yet here I am, and that made me question everything
The arrival It feels very strange to be writing this. I never thought I would be writing as a student at MIT but after a rollercoaster of events I was given the opportunity of a lifetime: the opportunity to study at MIT. I applied to MIT as a high school student, and after being rejected, […]
