Girly
What a scientist should look like
“Let us choose for ourselves our path in life, and let us try to strew that path with flowers.” – Emilie du Chatelet, Physicist I love dresses and bows, face masks and makeup. When I get ready for a day in lab, I avoid it all. It’s my first semester at MIT, and I wear a […]
First Impressions of the USA
Did he just call me Mrs. Lincoln?
I arrived in New Jersey to attend graduate school two years ago. I was mostly nervous and a little bit excited. This was the first time I had flown internationally and also the first time I had flown in an airplane! Upon arrival I was greeted by the air hostess who apologetically told us that […]
Bilingualism is a Feature, Not a Bug
Shifting perspective on my non-native English
If you are a non-native English speaker like me, have you ever felt that your English was not good enough? And worse, did you feel that your English would never be as good as a native speaker’s? I did. My native language is Mandarin Chinese, and while I learned English growing up in China […]
Wasting My Degree
Why is having kids, moving out of the city, and following an unusual path a waste?
“She’s worried you’ll waste your degree.” My friend (let’s call her Anna) relays this message to me as coming from another friend, but I can tell from her tone of voice that she’s clearly worrying about the same potential waste. That makes the question doubly irritating. As if pretending to be merely the messenger could […]
Not a Contradiction
You can raise a family at MIT
“You know,” my wife said, “For our kids, MIT won’t be this abstract place they hear about sometimes in the news. It’ll be home: where they learned to ride their bikes and to read. They’ll think of it as the place where they grew up.” My wife – who deserves more credit than I could […]
