Dungeons and biology
A tale of biologists, some dice, and keeping each other sane
Every other Sunday, six biologists gather around my apartment’s dining table. The meeting starts out normally enough, each of us giving one science and one non-science update about our lives since we last met. We recap our previous meeting. What happens next is less normal. I begin narrating: “The barroom is dimly lit, and rain […]
Forced to leave home
MIT Grad Housing’s Disorganized Response to COVID-19
A message to MIT grad housing: if your tenant’s best housing option is to haphazardly make a 13-hour interstate drive in the middle of a literal plague after being given only two days’ notice, you are doing something horribly wrong. I live in one of the graduate dorms — Ashdown House — and I absolutely […]
Schrödinger’s graduate student
The paths to success in graduate school are as arbitrary as the goal itself
Four years into graduate school, I still struggle with a simple question: what makes a successful graduate student? I don’t mean the end product of a student with a flashy C.V., a long list of publications, or a dream job. Instead, I wonder: what does a successful graduate student look like in their day-to-day life? […]
Surviving grad school for the strong of mind
A year with anxiety and depression
This post is part of a special issue: “Mental Health Matters: Asking for Help & Reaching Out”. It was New Year’s Day ’17 when I first set foot at MIT for a one-week intensive Quantitative Biology Workshop. Little did I know that it was the experience that would change the course of my future. From […]
Creating my niche in grad school
How diversity and outreach initiatives helped me find my place in MIT
Imagine being in a roller coaster that’s on fire, adrift, going full speed. That was my first year at MIT. Coming straight from an undergraduate institution in Puerto Rico, it was difficult for me to get used to the fast pace in which topics were taught in a different language and to the amount of […]
