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
A screenshot of the author’s faulty Java code from one of her first attempts at coding 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, […]
