Are You Alive Still?
Maintaining a healthy marriage in the face of graduate school challenges
“Are you alive still?” the text read. My wife Alex woke up in a panic. 4:41 AM and the bed was still empty next to her. My team and I had been working in the urban design studio on our final proposals for a development in Union Square since 9 AM the morning before. I […]
Defense of the Ancients
An alternative get away
After losing an 82 minute Dota2 match, maybe it is time for me to step back and write a brief, informative post about competitive video gaming and how it helps to relax. Wait, what is Dota2 – other than being the sequel or re-creation of the Defense of the Ancients (DotA)? For non-gamers: Dota2 consists […]
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 […]
Drawing the Lines of Work-Life Balance
How my time-management skills are crucial to my productivity, and more importantly, to my happiness
Most mornings, I don’t set an alarm. As a student in cognitive science, when I’m not working with participants, almost all of my work is done on the computer and can be done from anywhere at any time. This is both a blessing and a curse, but it translates to the fact that I am […]
PhD and a Baby
Debugging code and changing diapers
I wasn’t married when I got to MIT, but I had a boyfriend named Randy who moved up to Boston with me. Two years in, we discover that it is, in fact, possible to simultaneously plan a wedding and write a master’s thesis! Two years after that? I’m sitting uncomfortably in a floppy hospital gown […]
