Making it work
What if I told you that a grad school education could include the finer details of wooden corgi carving? If you told me that a year ago I would immediately respond with skepticism — “right, because that’s a productive use of time”. Yet, today I would argue that such education is not only possible but […]
Two cats move to Cambridge
Every night, when I come home, I’m greeted by the hungry calls of my two cats, Kiwi and Clem. Clem, the tortie, usually weaves in between my legs as I walk in, while her sister Kiwi, the calico, leads the way to the kitchen. After dinner, the cats loaf around in their usual spots―Kiwi on […]
The buddy system
Graduate school is overwhelming and lonely at times. In addition to producing good research, graduate students have to balance networking, taking classes, staying updated on advances in their field by reading papers, and managing personal life goals. Everyone has a research advisor and, usually, labmates with whom they can discuss research concerns, but it’s not […]
A thermodynamic model of friendship
Disclaimer: I have not taken a physics class in years, and the unavoidable inaccuracies in the discussion that follows should in no way reflect poorly on the professors/department that bestowed a physics degree upon me back in the day. Friendships take energy to maintain. Entropically speaking, the preferred arrangement is total disorder, an every-person-for-themselves world. […]
My year in the wild
Once I realized I wanted to be a professor, grad school felt inevitable. It was a question of when I wanted to spend at least five more years in school, not if I was going to do so. I spent my last couple years of college deliberating whether I was going to apply to graduate […]
Loafing around at MIT
I started baking not too long ago, mostly at the advice of acquaintances who were already proficient bakers. My first few attempts weren’t great; I once managed to omit an entire cup of water from a naan recipe, resulting in a hard puck-shaped mass with the texture of stale Ritz crackers. But I kept at […]
Terraforming friendship
My friend recently flew back to visit his grad school friends. All of us used to do many things together. Since he was back, we decided to play a game we enjoyed — Terraforming Mars. The game took place on a very special Sunday in Boston: it was 70 degrees Fahrenheit — in January. His […]
Is grad school harder than a headstand?
Editor Note: This post was originally written before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US. The first semester of graduate school is pretty hard. You’re surrounded by new people from all over the world, you’re taking challenging classes, and in many departments, you’re also required to teach and do research right off the […]
Teaching a lab module…on Zoom
“The first thing we have to talk about is coronavirus.” That’s what the director of the undergraduate chemistry laboratory said when all the lab teaching assistants (TAs) gathered at the beginning of the semester. Back then, our only concern was helping students who were missing class due to self-isolation after winter break travel. Since I […]
Big changes in the qualifying exam procedure
Imagine standing in front of a panel of faculty members, some of the most prominent academics in the world of aerospace engineering, having prepared for a short 60 minutes to complete an oral exam and prove your competence in the field in which you hope to receive your PhD. In many departments at MIT, this […]
An Indian Spice Blend™ you won’t find at Whole Foods
One of the most challenging tasks every family must undertake at some point in their lives is deciding what to watch together. One evening, the compromise for our family was Hasan Minhaj’s Netflix standup special, Homecoming King. It was a win-win: my immigrant parents got to see a young brown man rise to fame, and […]
Dungeons and biology
Every other Sunday, six biologists gather around my apartment’s dining table. The meeting starts out normally enough, each of us giving one science and one non-science update about our lives since we last met. We recap our previous meeting. What happens next is less normal. I begin narrating: “The barroom is dimly lit, and rain […]
Letters to a not-so-young-anymore grad school applicant
Now that I am close to graduating with a masters degree in City Planning, I’m reflecting on how I’ve grown in the past two years. It was a year before that, in the summer of 2017, when I decided to apply to grad school. By that time I had worked for five years at several […]
The bright side of isolation
Being a graduate student whose work mostly takes place on a PC, the changes in MIT policies related to COVID-19 have not impacted my academic work by a large amount so far. On the other hand, the social impact of it has been much more profound. From an exponential increase in the discussions (mostly about […]
What do I do when I can’t go to lab?
Sometimes, going to lab isn’t an option. Whether it’s due to an injury, illness, family or, as in 2020, COVID-19, life often gets in the way of planned experiments. But that doesn’t have to stop you from working on your research! There are lots of ways to push your research forward without physically running experiments. […]
COVID-26.2
I’m a big fan of running, to the point where one of my labmates described me as being known among her friends as “a running and cider fiend”. I’ve written before about my lab’s crazy adventure in running across New Hampshire together and about using running as a form of stress relief, but I never […]
Great podcasts to accompany quarantine
Allow me to remind you of a fantastic form of entertainment that you used to listen to during your commute: podcasts! For those of us who have already finished Tiger King (as well as seemingly everything else on Netflix), podcasts are a great way to pass the time between Zoom calls. I’ve established quite a […]
What business does a modeler have at sea?
If you’re anything like me, then there is a good chance you have never even heard of a research cruise. That was about my (lack of) knowledge level until I started applying to graduate schools. Next thing I knew, I was a part of the incoming class for the MIT-WHOI Joint Program in Oceanography/Applied Ocean […]
Dang, you live in Tang?
Random grad student: “Do you live on campus?” Me: “Yep.” RGS: “Where?” Me: *slightly wincing in anticipation of oncoming judgment* “I live in Tang Hall.” On the surface, this seems like a straightforward conversation. However, my answer often elicits two kinds of reactions. I either get a slightly sympathetic look (or an occasional smirk from […]
Networking for introverts
Editor’s Note: This post was written and submitted to us before the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States, but we believe that the advice given here is still highly relevant in the time of quarantine – when both group and one-on-one meetings are as important as ever. Networking. For some of us introverts out there, […]
Away, with a slice of MIT
It’s no secret that MIT celebrates differences and diversity. Different interests, backgrounds, working styles, expertise, ambitions, perspectives, voices … the list is endless. As an outsider, before I joined MIT, I was amazed and attracted to this deeply interwoven fabric of differences. But MIT is also a place of contradictions. As an insider, i.e. after […]
Fitting into MIT
When I got my acceptance email from MIT, I actually cried. My childhood dream was coming true, and my emotions were a whirlwind of excitement and disbelief. In a fit of excitement, I called my mom and somehow managed to string together words to convey the good news to her. At the end of the […]
Continued community in the era of social distancing
Coronavirus has drastically changed our daily lives as MIT students. In the span of a week, we have gone from attending regularly scheduled classes and happily discussing spring break plans to an almost vacant campus. My heart goes out in sadness to the senior undergraduate students who never got the joys of senior spring that […]
A different kind of long-distance relationship
Now that we’re working from home and many of us have relocated from campus, maintaining effective communication with our advisors remotely presents an additional stressor (on top of trying not to catch coronavirus). But some of us are already well-acquainted with the joys of skyping in sweatpants and rolling out of bed ten minutes before […]
Wait? It snows here?
It was 7:00 AM. Okay, 7:08 AM because I always hit my snooze button at least once. Since Thanksgiving break had just concluded, I was feeling well rested for the first time this semester. I appreciated the break from thinking about the final projects that were threatening my next few weeks. As part of my […]
To build a home
When you introduce two people to one another, you often contextualize who that person is to you. The words we use to categorize these people are sometimes simple, but sometimes people fill more than one role in your life. For example, your mother may also be your dental hygienist but you’re probably going to introduce […]
Forced to leave home
A message to MIT grad housing: if your tenant’s best housing option is to haphazardly make a 13-hour interstate drive in the middle of a literal plague after being given only two days’ notice, you are doing something horribly wrong. I live in one of the graduate dorms — Ashdown House — and I absolutely […]
COVID-19 prequel
Unlike a lot of MIT community members, who were only affected by the coronavirus outbreak starting in March 2020, I was paying attention to the outbreak since the very beginning on 12/31/2019. This was because one of my high school classmates – also my best friend – worked in Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak. […]
Reset (or set) your morning routine
Coronavirus has caused a work from home (WFH) phenomenon unlike anything seen before. It’s an experimental time for many and, given the circumstances, it can be stressful and isolating. Setting up a good routine can be a great way to create order in chaos. A while ago, I read a book called “Daily Rituals: How […]
Work from home 101
Being a grad student is hard. Being a grad student during the coronavirus pandemic is even harder. We’re used to running between classes, meetings, and labwork; suddenly, we’re barricaded in our apartments with no access to our labs, coffee shops or libraries, and we’re somehow expected to still be productive. While this situation is less-than-ideal, […]
To separate or to engage?
In China, each year begins twice. First on January 1 and once again on the traditional Lunar New Year (this year’s date: January 25, 2020). The days in between the two New Years are a somewhat peculiar time – though New Year has dawned in other places of the world, in China, students are taking […]
Schrödinger’s graduate student
Four years into graduate school, I still struggle with a simple question: what makes a successful graduate student? I don’t mean the end product of a student with a flashy C.V., a long list of publications, or a dream job. Instead, I wonder: what does a successful graduate student look like in their day-to-day life? […]
Practice imagination in MIT Hogwarts
In J.K. Rowling’s commencement speech at Harvard, she talked about the importance of imagination. I was really struck by her definition of imagination – how she described it as people “thinking themselves into other people’s worlds”. It made me appreciate my own capacity for empathy and compassion and how that’s been strengthened by the challenges […]
A matcha latte a day…
It’s no secret that students everywhere love their coffee, so when I tell people that I almost never consume the magical beverage, I usually receive an incredulous response. Something along the lines of: “So, you just… wake up in the morning and live?” Most of the time, that’s exactly right. I all but swore off […]
I want to be a ballerina when I grow up
It was an average Wednesday. I rolled out of bed at 7:30AM, turned on Spotify’s “Monday Motivation” playlist and tried to let the cheerful pop seep into my bones. Everything’s looking up now! How could you not believe him when he sings so convincingly? I swayed to the music as my routine swung me around […]
Guidance beyond your advisor
Before starting grad school, whenever I considered the concept of “mentorship,” the first person I envisioned was my future advisor. However, as a PhD student in the middle of my second year, I have come to realize that there are many facets of mentorship throughout the graduate school experience. This is particularly the case for […]
