Finding connection through the “Wednesday Waffle”
Staying close to faraway friends during the first year at MIT
When I first came to MIT, I was confident that I’d had a decent plan for building a meaningful social life for myself at MIT and in Cambridge/Boston more broadly. Student groups, hobby groups, one-off events, and department outings were all readily available. Even without stepping out of the MIT bubble, there were so many […]
The commuter’s crucible
Finding patience and resilience in Boston’s daily commute
Two years ago, as I prepared to embark on my grad school journey, I devised a bold plan to live far off campus in order to save money. I chose to share a two-bedroom apartment in a town fifteen miles from MIT, fully aware that it would require more effort to get to campus and […]
From “Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything” to PhD life
My endless enchantment with Boston and Cambridge
Although this is my first year in the Boston/Cambridge area as a PhD student, I actually moved here back in 2021, when the pandemic was still in full swing. I reasoned that even if I didn’t get into MIT, I would like to fulfill a childhood dream of living here that I’ve had since about […]
In defense of quitting
What I learned from almost ruining my first semester of grad school by overcommitting
If a hacker were to break into my phone at the beginning of September and read through my notes, this is the first one they would find: I think MIT is full of people who have a hard time saying no to exciting opportunities, and I am no exception. I’ve been following a roughly 4 […]
Practicing imperfection
The art of turning big failures into little victories
When I TA’d for a quantitative methods class in college, I always kept this image of one of my first attempts at coding handy to show to struggling students. Besides providing some light comedic relief during stressful office hours, the image illustrated an important lesson: our biggest failures can be little victories in disguise. Just […]
