Ayşe, Ali, and Oya
Three types of students- from the eyes of a procrastinator
After seventeen years of being a student at three different schools, in three different countries. I have come to the resounding conclusion that students can more or less be placed into three categories based on how they procrastinate: the always-overachiever, the workaholic socialite, and the surprisingly competent bare-minimalist. While being taught to read and […]
Be Wrong
MIT graduate students, like pigeons, run into glass doors sometimes.
When I was in college I smacked my head on the same tree branch three times within a single month. A year later, during a particularly hectic period, two glass doors each acquired a decent print of my face. I am delighted to report that my head has not come into contact with a tree […]
Every Scientist is a Sherlock Holmes
Why we do experiments, even if they don't work
This summer I voluntarily stayed up all night for about nine days to stare at some computer screens and push some buttons. Voluntarily, I became a true night dweller by waking up at 7pm and going to bed at 8am. I wasn’t practicing some weird voodoo sleeping schedule or avoiding the sunlight. I was working […]
Build Bridges, not Walls
Celebrating linguistic diversity at MIT
When the movie Arrival came out in 2016, I was overjoyed: for the first time, a woman linguist was the main character in a Hollywood movie, not to mention the fact that the linguistic consultant of this film – Jessica Coon – is an MIT Linguistics alumna herself. But I was more excited about the public […]
Literature Review for Pleasure
The importance of reading in my life, both for research and personal pleasure
Literature review – nothing strikes terror into a graduate student’s heart more than these two words! You can’t live with it, you can’t live without it. Considered an essential part of research, you print hundreds of papers till the printer’s ink and/or paper runs out, read tens of papers with multiple naps in between, and […]
