Managing your finances when your spouse can’t work
Being an F1 and F2 couple living on graduate stipend is challenging but manageable
“Are you ready for the change in lifestyle?” That is the question that most of our friends asked when they heard about my plan to go back to school. We had a good life back in Jakarta, and we were about to leave all that and live on a budget in one of the most […]
How I passed my 1st-year classes
...by skipping them (please don’t tell anyone)
That’s right, I confess: I am a serial class skipper. It all started in high school, when I discovered it was possible to learn a lot more about a subject if I studied the material during class instead of paying attention to the teacher. Of course, I couldn’t physically skip classes back then without getting […]
The infinite rotation
After six failed lab rotations, one last chance to find a home
Switching labs is, optimally, disruptive. On September 3, 2019, the very beginning of my second year at MIT, my PhD program director called me into his office to explain that I needed to switch labs because one of my co-advisors was a research fellow, not a tenure-track professor, and the other presently lacked resources to […]
Life at MIT could be stressful, but not for you!
Simple ways to manage stress as a grad student
Stress is one of the common issues that every grad student experiences. Experiments or simulations don’t work most of the time, and the relationships with advisors/lab mates/friends might have their ups and downs. We all know the feeling of getting closer to a deadline and not having enough data to present/submit. Being a graduate student […]
Getting into gear
The grad student’s survival guide to biking in the Boston area
Living in the south of the US for most of my life, where the distance between locations of interest are large and biking infrastructure is almost non-existent, biking as a primary form of transportation never seemed like a serious option. Moving to Boston, I knew I wouldn’t be able to bring my car which I […]
