Dressing for Battlefield Science
Fashion & being yourself while complying with laboratory safety
My first three years of grad school blur together as a haze of experiments and little else. Doing laundry every other week marked the passage of time. I would wash the same set of Gap Body shirts in every neutral color along with my three identical pairs of NYDJ jeans. At some point, I realized […]
At MIT, New York City Is in Your Backyard
Navigating your transit options for weekend trips
It was a Friday at 10:30am, and I was behind schedule to catch my bus to New York City. I rushed from the Red Line T stop at South Station to the bus terminal, annoyed that my rolling suitcase prevented me from running up the escalators. As it turned out, I shouldn’t have worried. The […]
How My Wife Stole My Car in Massachusetts
An object lesson in navigating the registry of motor vehicles
When we moved from Arizona to Massachusetts, my wife graciously offered to take care of registering our car, letting me focus on starting classes at MIT. If someone offers to go to the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles (RMV) on your behalf, you say two things, and two things only: 1) ‘Yes’ and 2) ‘THANK […]
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 […]
The Wonderful World of Procrasti-Baking
How I manage grad school stress in the kitchen
You have spent days – maybe even weeks – planning the perfect experiment. You have gathered all the materials you need, written down the protocol in your lab notebook, and made sure all the necessary equipment is available. Line by line, you perform the protocol with precision and manage to get through it without any […]
