Remember That Undergraduate Internship?
How an unhappy internship experience helped me discover my passion for research
I did not know I was considering graduate school until the beginning of my senior year. During undergrad, I felt like a squirrel in a nut factory jumping at every opportunity that came my way. In the summer of my sophomore year, I began working for a traditional chemical engineering company called Air Products and […]
My Recipe for Getting In
An application assistance program to level the playing field
I had never considered a PhD until late in my undergraduate degree. Most students in my program were either grabbing one-year master’s degrees or becoming entry-level grunts at consumer goods or biomedical device companies. I remember a career fair where I talked to a recent graduate who was working as an entry-level engineer at Proctor […]
From Professional to PhD
The costs and benefits of a substantial career change
A 70 percent cut in pay — that’s what my next career move would cost me. And yet it was an opportunity I knew I couldn’t pass up, and it was possibly the best thing I could for my career. Still, a 70% pay cut would definitely change my idea of a vacation for the […]
It’s Not About the Weather
Don't choose a grad program for the location or climate
I’m a first year graduate student in Materials Science and Engineering, or “Course 3” to anyone who’s familiar with MIT’s classification system for majors (more on this later). I’m on my way to a PhD (or as my good friend calls it – Permanent Head Damage, Piled Higher and Deeper, Pretty Huge Diploma, etc.). For […]
Being a Historian at MIT
Perspectives on MIT from a student of the humanities
I’m a graduate student at MIT, but my experience here is not the norm. I state that with confidence because I… am a historian. As of writing this post, I’m a fourth-year doctoral candidate in an interdisciplinary PhD program shared among the History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology & Society departments—HASTS for short. There are only […]
