Am I too busy for radio?
How my time spent on-air made me a better scientist
The way I see it, a major part of being an “entitled millennial” is our personal conviction that we all have a message to share and a voice to be heard; its primary symptoms are the oversaturated podcast market and the unlimited supply of Instagram influencers. As a new graduate student at MIT with new […]
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 […]
Navigating MIT
How to Survive in the Forest of Numbers
MIT exemplifies a uniquely analytical and quantitative intellectual approach. It’s a good thing, usually; after all, scientific revolutions like Newtonian physics began when we started putting stuff into quantitative perspective. MIT, however, took it a bit too far. Humans are, in general, pretty bad at memorizing numbers (with a few exceptions like Akira Haraguch, who […]
Making the switch
My journey of changing labs
A year and a half into my master’s program, I decided to change labs. This may not sound as terrifying, but it means jumping into an ocean of uncertainty. Unlike many PhD programs at MIT, my master’s program doesn’t have the luxury of lab rotations with secure funding from the department. This means that the […]
Best burgers and convos at BBC
A quirky tradition unfolds the journey of grad school
The first friend I made in grad school doesn’t go to MIT. We didn’t even meet in Cambridge. Josh and I met at a chemistry grad school visit weekend at Princeton. We instantly clicked not only over our obvious shared interest in chemistry, but also a strong passion for teaching. I spent a good chunk […]
