Vacation time!… What to do? What to do?
Opportunities for graduate students during pandemic and non-pandemic periods
When packing my suitcases to do my Master’s in Engineering and Management at MIT, I was not just thinking about which classes I was going to take, but also about what I was going to do over the vacation period. Three months of summer vacation is a lot of time to travel around the […]
How I came to Cambridge before I came to Cambridge
Lessons I learned as a newly accepted student during a pandemic
I could finally see the finish line. If you were to ask me five months ago where I would be by Aug 10, 2020, I’d have said “in Boston” without blinking an eye. But guess what: COVID-19 spoiled my plans, and here I am, still in Mexico. To be honest, it was a bummer, mostly […]
Playing Avalon on Zoom
How a virtual board game keeps us connected during quarantine
Many of us feel lonely during quarantine times, especially international students who are now outside the US, such as myself. To stay mentally healthy through this pandemic, it’s important to stay connected with friends back at MIT. So recently, we reconstructed a favorite Friday-night ritual of ours — playing the board game Avalon — on […]
Ode to crosswords
Are you down for a cross?
(If you are interested in listening along to me reading the poem aloud, click here) Eighteen across, “Ponzi scheme”: fraud. Twenty-four down, “Heap kudos on”: laud. “Opening word”, “Deli stock seed”, Two clues, one key, The word: sesame. “Catcher’s spot?” “With pastrami it’s bought?” As the hints would imply, The answer is […]
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 […]
