Aullaqisaaqta! Let’s begin! Iġñiġa Daał miluguuruq. My son Daał nurses often.  I once read somewhere that Karl Marx had to chain himself to a library desk in order to finish Das Kapital. You might wonder what Marx has to do with nursing? Well, more than you might imagine. Baby Daał’ feeding habits...

Last year, I started to get really into running, in part due to the fact that it’s a great way of relieving some of the stresses of grad school. I’ve written before about all the different...

“I guess I’ll just power through the weekend and get this P-set done,” I said to myself. This was a common refrain during the first year of my PhD program in Chemical Engineering. An endless stream of assignments from courses and self-imposed research deadlines meant that I ended up spending most...

Raise your hand if you hate moving!  The Greater Boston Area, especially lovely places such as Allston, Cambridge, and Somerville, can be quite a painful place August 31st when most housing rental leases end. For one night, until the new lease begins on September 1st, many people become practically...

As mentioned in one of my previous blogs, the trio-factors of inability to swim, belonging to a country where sailing is not common, and the presence of the Charles River, always full of sailing boats right next to the campus, instilled a...

I am sitting at my desk, debugging some code that does not seem to work. The week has been tiring, to say the least. But next week is Brunch Week! When I first joined MIT, I was plagued by the usual...

This is a story about me transitioning from occasional running to try and get fit, to becoming super into running. Only two years ago, I was struggling with the boredom and difficulty of exercise and could never sustain regular running for more than a month or two. Now, however, running is an...

Applying to graduate school is a nerve-wracking process. It’s a blanket of excitement that, when uncovered, reveals a flood of conflicting emotions--from wondering whether you are rushing and have no experience and should work for a few years to questioning your self-worth and doubting if you have...

Prologue   When I first came to MIT, I planned to work, but not much else. Certainly no time to play Gu-zheng – the Chinese zither. There are simply too many things to learn, to explore. But, from time to time, I was possessed by a lingering anxiety – an integral part of my voice was left silent,...

What if I told you that the most fun thing that I do regularly since moving to Boston is running up and down a lot of tall steps (technically, seats) a lot of times, twice a week? Would you think that I’m crazy? A masochist? That Guy™ at the party who won’t shut up about how great running stadiums...

Imagine being in a roller coaster that’s on fire, adrift, going full speed. That was my first year at MIT. Coming straight from an undergraduate institution in Puerto Rico, it was difficult for me to get used to the fast pace in which topics were taught in a different language and to the amount of...

Stepping away from India into the US led me to a stage where I was frantically searching for some semblance of my culture to hold on to. It was at this time that Bharatnatyam — an Indian classical dance form — crept onto me subconsciously.   First and foremost, I am a major klutz; reactions that I...

What is “meal prep”? First things first, what does “meal prep” mean? Is it the newest fad in age of fitness and health fanatics? Is it a euphemism for being lazy? Well, maybe. At its core, meal prep is exactly what is sounds like — preparing your meals. The key, however, is that it is done prior to...

On the snowy February morning before my MIT graduate school interview, I rolled out of bed, bundled up and went for a run along the Charles River path. As a former Division One cross country and track athlete, I have been running almost daily for almost a decade. The picturesque scene of a light...

When people hear that I’ll be spending the next half decade at MIT, many seem to think I’ll be spending my days huddled over an intelligent robot plotting for the technological apocalypse. When people hear that I’ll be spending the next half decade — and, hopefully, a lifetime — studying philosophy...

I made the decision to apply for graduate school in mid-September of my senior year of college. With application deadlines only weeks away and the GRE looming in the distance, I spent one month scrambling to familiarize myself with the application materials that some of my peers had been refining...

Aullaqisaqtuq – It is the beginning Iḷisaguuruŋa Iñupiatun MIT-mi. I study Iñupiaq at MIT. Iñupiaq is the language of the Alaskan Inuit, whose population numbers 24,500 and whose speakers’ number 2,000. Iñupiaq is considered “moribund,” which means having few or no child speakers because the...

Dear future Ming, The date is August 26, 2019 - today is your/my/our first day at MIT. When you next read this after/if you graduate, it may well be the year 2025. How’s life at 27 treating you? In the year 2025, your younger brothers, currently high school freshmen, will be halfway done with...

My friends at school weren’t really into Harry Potter. Many had watched the movies, and a few had read the books, but the magical world did not have the same appeal for them as it did for me. I was enthralled by the story of the Boy Who Lived, captivated by the psychological complexity of the...

I was very surprised one day to realize that I had developed a single callous on the pad of my right thumb. I can’t remember the last time I got a callous: I don’t rock climb, play an instrument, or do extreme sports. I don’t even take classes anymore, so I rarely write with a pen. Then it hit me:...

Cambridge and the online dating landscape  When I first arrived in Boston, I was teeming with curiosity and excitement. My thirst for scientific discovery and research was paralleled only by one thing: my eagerness to explore the multitude of online dating platforms. Up until that point, I had...

How many times have you heard grad students express concern over qualifying exams or declare that they “survived” it? Qualifying exams (“quals”) can be a grueling process spanning anywhere between 1 to 2 years involving multiple examinations. The effectiveness of such exams depends on specific...

Hi MIT Grads! The MIT Graduate Admissions Blog is excited to announce its upcoming August workshop on blog writing. In brief, Attend a 2-day blogging workshop: August 26th and August 29th, 10am-12pm. Write two blog pieces Earn $200 upon completion...

I entered graduate school as an awkward, uncoordinated person. I will leave it as a prima ballerina. Just kidding. But jokes aside, Boston has quite a few fun, unique dance fitness opportunities, and I have them to thank for making me a more coordinated, flexible, happy person. Dance fitness...

One year ago, my advisor, Prof. Charles Leiserson in CSAIL, arranged for our research group to take a stand-up comedy class with Dana Jay Bein, a local comedian with Improv Boston. Charles sold it to us as an...

I was brought up in places far from lakes and rivers. The non-availability of swimming facilities in my high school and college led to my inability to learn to swim until I joined MIT as a graduate student. Here at MIT, however, the presence of Charles River right next to the campus inspired me to...

I came back to Boston after a month of traveling to find out that my boyfriend and I had fallen out of love. After an ever-difficult conversation during a rainy September night, I was faced with the necessity to adjust to my “single” relationship status while staying on top of my responsibilities...

Last January. A friend recommends a scientific paper. At this time I am a computer science student thinking of quitting computer science, because I live in California, and love computers but have grown exhausted by Silicon Valley. The paper is called ‘Building Machines That Learn and Think Like...

Whether you attend MIT or another school, one of the things you may find challenging is planning the courses you will take over the entirety of your graduate career. As an incoming student of a cross-disciplinary program in Integrated Design & Management, I had the opportunity to select courses...