Curiouser and Curiouser…
Why being at MIT is like being Alice in Wonderland
On my first day of grad school. I drank a magic potion from the firehose! And there I went, down the rabbit hole… “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as […]
Fiddling through Grad School
My experiences learning the violin as a grad student
“Do you want to get lunch this weekend?” “Can we get dinner instead? I have a violin class in the afternoon.” You can do that as a grad student? Wow. As a first-year graduate student, I had not yet realized the degree of independence I now had in the choices I made in my life. […]
Where Are All the Engineers in Congress
Lessons from talk radio
The United States has elected one of the most anti-science Congresses in the democratic world. Mainstream leaders unabashedly espouse scientifically untenable positions in areas such as climate change, vaccinations, and evolution. In a world that is becoming increasingly technologically driven, it would be remiss if STEM programs did not encourage more of their students to […]
Finding Work-Life Balance Through Sport
Extracurricular activities can help keep you sane
After a long day of class or research in lab, there is no better feeling than walking across campus to soccer practice. The stress of the day melts away as I step onto the field. Finally, I am able to clear my head and to connect to the present. We pull on our cleats and […]
Policy Debate vs. Research
Applying high school debate skills to PhD research
Unlike many of my fellow graduate students in computer science who have been doing programming and math competitions since high school (or potentially earlier), I spent six years in middle and high school in policy debate. This usually meant I was traveling around the country almost every weekend to argue about the government and international […]
