My musical journey in Boston
An Instrumental Encounter “I am a musician.” I did not expect to hear those words during my lab rotation for the Health Science Technology program. I clearly remember the day. It was a chilly winter afternoon of 2018 at Lansdowne Street in Cambridge when I was introduced to a lab administrator, who showed me around […]
Grad student by day, standup comic by night
According to Psychology.com, Americans fear public speaking more than death. Personally, I’ve never been followed by an unknown man in an alley after dark and thought I bet he’s trying to take me to a convocation. To the contrary, I have always loved making people laugh. Some of earliest memories include imitating my family members, […]
Packing for MIT: Laptop, winter coat, math phobia
When I put my pencil down after muddling through the last particularly hairy integration-by-substitution puzzler on the 2013 AB Calculus AP exam, I felt relieved – both that I had survived the exam, and, more fundamentally, that I’d never have to take a calculus class again. Seven years later, picking up a different pencil to […]
New England-themed reading list
First Impressions I grew up in southwestern China and Singapore, two sweltering hot places on Earth. In 2015, when I graduated from a college in Connecticut not too far from here, I decided that never again would I venture back to the New England climate and promptly moved to California. Well, fast forward to 2020, […]
A journey through time: Voyaging into Boston’s “other” history
When you read the words “Boston” and “history,” what do you think of? For most folks, two events typically come to mind: 1) The Boston Tea Party, or 2) Paul Revere’s Midnight Ride (contrary to popular belief, he never actually shouted “The British are coming!”). Boston is often considered “the birthplace” of the American revolution: […]
This isn’t Canada, eh?
Born and raised in Canada, I wasn’t expecting a big societal change coming to MIT for grad school. In my mind, Canada and the US had essentially the same culture. But in this post, I wanted to share some of my experiences in the US that left me deeply confused. This isn’t going to be […]
Unleashing my inner rockstar
How can we have work-life balance when the “work” part is infinite? This was my excuse for not prioritizing exercise when I came to grad school. In reality, I was drowning in insecurity. I despised every form of exercise while I was growing up. In school, I always had the slowest mile (by far), and […]
COVID-19 elevates incidence of impostor syndrome in 1st year PhD student
“Please have your tracking number or a copy of this email and your MIT ID with you when you come to the Facilities Customer Service Center located in Building 7 Room 019. Keys may be picked up Monday through Friday from 7:00 AM to 3:00 PM excluding MIT holidays.” Great! Today was the day I […]
The silent 50%
Every year, I look forward to the annual Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology (HST) Fall Dinner. Not for the free food, open bar or rare opportunity to dress up (although they surely don’t hurt), but almost exclusively for the company. HST is a unique program that allows PhD, MD and MD-PhD students to take classes […]
![Be the [climate] change you wish to see](https://oge.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/unnamed-file-156.jpg)
Be the [climate] change you wish to see
“What were they thinking?” That’s a common phrase we might say when we shake our heads at past generations for war, genocide, and slavery. As we eat our cheeseburgers in our air-conditioned cars while rolling past carefully manicured and fertilized lawns (otherwise called a climate change crisis), we might not think this phrase may one […]
There is more to MIT than lectures and labs!
I couldn’t have been more excited when I joined MIT in summer 2018 and started with research straight away. I came here thinking that all I could do at MIT is complete the coursework and conduct research because that is what I had done as an undergrad. However, I knew not that something very exciting […]
An unconventional path to MIT
For many of us, MIT has been our dream school since childhood. My personal journey leading to MIT took four years. It was a long time, but worth the wait. Let’s start at the beginning, in the summer of 2013. I had recently obtained my bachelor’s degree, and had decided to take some time off […]
A (rest)room of one’s own
In the COVID-19 research ramp-up, one return-to-work guideline was hotly contested. Community members should remain seated while flushing to limit viral transmission. For a moment, my department was as obsessed with toilets as I was, although for different reasons. As a non-binary trans person, I’m familiar with non-ideal bathroom situations. The year I started at […]
Lost hobbies and how to find them
“Someday I’ll have more time for _______(insert your lost hobby here).” For years, this statement has been my approach to hobbies. I’ll have more time when this project is completed, or when the semester is over, or when I graduate from college. By constantly pushing these activities into the future, I’ve accumulated a jumbled collection […]
Dousing first-year burnout
“How was your first week, hon? Have you found any fun clubs to join? Are you making any friends?” Typical Mom, still thinking of me as a kid. I had just started a graduate program at MIT. I was joining a group of the world’s most elite scientists, and I certainly didn’t have time for […]
Mitconceptions
“Wait up for me!” I shouted after my father as I scrambled to keep up with him. At 6 years old, I didn’t really fit in with the college students dotting the quad under the hot summer sun, but I also didn’t really care. My dad, a professor of economics, was letting me tag along […]
Prospects of a prospective international student in a pandemic era
The first six months of 2020 have been an emotional rollercoaster. The initial highs included receiving my acceptance letter from MIT; the lows — the COVID-19 outbreak and everything that followed from it, a canceled flight travel nightmare, the MIT campus closing, changing policies for international students which led to denied visa appointments at US […]
Art of comfort
What’s your deepest impression of Boston? Lobster, or the Charles River maybe? For me, it’s the rich art atmosphere. It’s not just about how good museums are, but more about how convenient it is for us students to visit them. The Harvard art museum is by far my preferred destination. It’s right next to the […]
Between three worlds
“So are you an aerospace engineer or a mathematician?” asked my interviewer. I grinned. I was applying for a job in an applied math department, and with two degrees (bachelor’s and master’s) in aerospace engineering, I was expecting some form of this question. “I’m a computational engineer,” I replied. What’s a computational engineer? You might […]
My advisor left MIT during my PhD
It was a chilly November morning in 2014, and two months into my second year at MIT. My PhD advisor called for an all-hands group meeting with required attendance. We crammed into a tiny conference room: all 15 of us, whose lives were about to be turned upside-down. On the screen, my advisor flashed a […]
Welcome to the CandE shop
I came to MIT knowing exactly what I wanted to pursue: ensuring reliable, secure, clean, and affordable energy for all. You’d think that it would be easy to find a community of similarly minded peers in MIT’s large climate and energy ecosystem. And in a way, it was. My master’s program, Technology and Policy, has […]
Safer grocery shopping guide during the COVID-19
I never thought that getting good food without a car would be difficult in my life since I lived in Taipei before moving to Cambridge. In Taipei, you’ll see convenience stores everywhere because Taiwan has the highest density per capita of convenience stores in the world. A five-minute walk in Taipei can get me anything […]
Ohana means family
I was freaking out. My whole body was shaking from a massive adrenaline rush. No, I hadn’t just seen the data that would complete my thesis work. I had just been hit by a car. Honestly, it was more of a “love tap” and I was okay, but there was real contact by a real […]
To the mom applying to grad school:
“Can’t believe you got it done with children! Good for you!” an old friend told me. I received similar remarks from other people as they learned that I had applied, enrolled and now attend graduate school with two young toddlers; they applaud my ability to do so DESPITE motherhood. However, as I reflect on my […]
MIT-isms
“Are you a first-year grad student?” “Yes, I am! What are you studying?” “Oh, I’m a Course 2, working on my SM – I’m taking my last 24 Units this semester. What Course are you?” “… ah, well, I’m taking statistics this semester?” To fresh recruits to the graduate community at MIT, this conversation may […]
Strange lands
“So how’s everything? How’s the baby?” This is the opening line at almost all of my meetings. And I really can hear the emphasis on the second part. Growing up watching my own parents complete graduate degrees and then becoming a grad student myself for many years did not prepare me for the life of […]
Volunteering in a home away from home
When I was accepted to the Comparative Media Studies Master’s program at MIT, I had spent the previous five years working on technology for social justice nonprofits in Mexico. This work exposed me to and involved me in hundreds of projects with all sorts of collectives and organizations, and it showed me that my very […]
A stroke of luck?
Back in April, I wrote about how running has remained an important form of stress relief to me during the pandemic, despite the loss of the usual social runs and goal races that motivate me to put on my shoes and get out of the house. On April 20th, I was meant to run my […]
Vacation time!… What to do? What to do?
When packing my suitcases to do my Master’s in Engineering and Management at MIT, I was not just thinking about which classes I was going to take, but also about what I was going to do over the vacation period. Three months of summer vacation is a lot of time to travel around the […]
Reasons to cook for yourself
Have you noticed how MIT seems to repel good restaurants? Go Northwest to Harvard Square, and you’ll see a squadron of restaurants catering to fortunate Harvard students. Go South, across the river, and you’ll see a delightful selection of restaurants catering to happy shoppers. Go further East to Chinatown, and the whole place is teaming […]
Why I vote and why you should too
“Voting is our civic duty.” This sort of rationale can seem awfully abstract to a graduate student who has multiple class assignments due this week and is being hounded by their advisor about an impending paper deadline. Taking time out of your busy day to register, apply for an absentee ballot, research candidates, and go […]
Beer in class—but peers afar
I sat in class, the professor again repeating the technique we were expected to learn but about which I was still woefully confused. I was immediately struck with self-doubt. I put my head down on the desk and started to cry. The small upside was that at least no one could see my meltdown. Because […]
How I came to Cambridge before I came to Cambridge
I could finally see the finish line. If you were to ask me five months ago where I would be by Aug 10, 2020, I’d have said “in Boston” without blinking an eye. But guess what: COVID-19 spoiled my plans, and here I am, still in Mexico. To be honest, it was a bummer, mostly […]
Finding a Cambridge coffee home
* Writer’s Note (September 2020): Wow, how things have changed. Re-reading this piece, which as written pre-COVID, makes me feel as if I’m now in my late seventies, looking back fondly upon the simpler times of my youth. Ironically, I write this note while drinking jasmine tea, alone in my garden, which evinces of just […]
Bench, bath and beyond
One of the very first lessons you learn in microbiology is that while countless things can – and will – go wrong, you can almost always count on your microbes to grow. There is some strange comfort in knowing that what looks like clear liquid today will reveal countless gleaming colonies smiling up at you […]
Playing Avalon on Zoom
Many of us feel lonely during quarantine times, especially international students who are now outside the US, such as myself. To stay mentally healthy through this pandemic, it’s important to stay connected with friends back at MIT. So recently, we reconstructed a favorite Friday-night ritual of ours — playing the board game Avalon — on […]
