I didn’t do research with him, but I TA’d his class for two years and he signed off on my classes every semester for three years. Every term, I would walk into his office with the list of classes I wanted to take, he would give me the ok, and then ask, “So, what do you want to do after graduation?”

“I’m not exactly sure,” I would say, and, before he could jump in with a suggestion of more school, I would blurt out, “But I definitely want to get a job!”

I wanted no part of grad school and would explain that to him. I don’t actually like going to class and I wanted a paycheck. I didn’t know what type of job I would get, but a job it would be!

He kept trying to talk me into grad school. “You’d be good at it,” “Grad school needs people like you,” “I think you’d have fun.” I wasn’t buying any of it. He was a guy who had spent 9 years in grad school because he enjoyed it just that much.

I returned to campus in the fall of my senior year after having a wonderful internship experience that made me think I’d have to get a PhD. I met him in his office and and he signed off on my classes. I waited for the question, which I knew was coming.

“So, what do you want to do after graduation?”

“I think I might want to go to grad school,” I said meekly.

“Yes!” He threw his hands into the air. “We got her!”

Five years later, he’s now in an office down the street from me. You know what this means?

Whenever my experiments are failing and my simulations make no sense, now I’m tempted to march into his office and announce, “This is ALL YOUR FAULT!”

I keep holding back - I don’t even know if he remembers me.

The scene: My apartment, last week during the Angels-Yankees ALCS
The actors: My roommate, myself

Roommate: I really like the number 14.

Me: Why’s that? Because it’s even.

Roommate: Yeah! It’s so pretty.

Me: Oh, I like odd numbers. I have a thing for prime numbers.

[I rolled my eyes at my own statement here because, I have a thing for prime numbers? What?]

Roommate: Prime numbers are ugly.

Me: Why? Because they have no factors?

Roommate: Exactly!

—————————————-

Yes, my roommate also goes to MIT.

Go Yankees!

The circus transports all of their equipment and animals up from New York via train. The train pulled into Cambridge a few days ago and they parked it on a track right near MIT. Now, if you were the circus management, how would you get all those animals from Cambridge, across the river, and to the Boston Garden*?

You walk them. Naturally.

Here’s a YouTube clip from a few years ago.

Elephants on Memorial Drive

Last night was the annual elephant parade. Around 7 pm I found myself out on Mass Ave as elephants and horses passed. The circus staff was walking with them - elephants need supervision - and handing out clown noses. So now I have a Halloween costume too.

* Yes, yes, it’s no longer the “Boston Garden” technically, but it’s gone through so many names that I have no clue what to call it. I’m reverting back to the original.

At some point, my uncle turned to my dad and said, “Hey, do you know what 2009 is the 40th anniversary of?”

I rolled my eyes behind my sunglasses and, inside my head, started shouting, “For the love of God, WE KNOW. Man walked on the moon!” But this is my family, so I didn’t shout at them.

Why didn’t I want to hear about the moon landing? Because MIT has been celebrating it for most of 2009. It culminated in June with a three day event that included tours and panels and a general space love-fest. The Boston Pops played a special performance of Holst’s The Planets that was only open to the MIT community. Buzz Aldrin narrated.

It’s not that I hate space or the moon or Buzz Aldrin, but I was sick of hearing about it. Landing on the moon was certainly an accomplishment for mankind, but when can we have a party for the transistor?

Anyway, I was smiling politely on the beach when my uncle asked my dad what 2009 was the 40th anniversary of.

“That’s right,” my dad said. “Woodstock.”

Aha! Woodstock! Normal, non-MIT people remember that other things happened in 1969!

It was so lovely to sit there, listening to them reminisce about what they were doing during that weekend and how they were both oh-so-close to going. It’s truly vacation when you’re on a beach with a book, surrounded by people who would rather talk about Jimi Hendrix than Buzz Aldrin.

Popular consensus was that learning to solder was the best part of the class. Man, if you want girls to feel empowered, just give them a hot iron and tell them to go melt metal. It works really well.

What did we solder? Jewelry. We’re girls.

(Well, we also soldered some heart-shaped circuits… because we’re girls who like things that light up. See here.)

I didn’t want to be left out of the fun, so I made some jewelry too. I thought about where I would wear jewelry made of wire and resistors. I’m going to be in a wedding in August, so first I thought I would make blue earrings to match the bridesmaid dress that I’ll be wearing. Then I thought that the bride wouldn’t really appreciate that.

So I thought some more. And finally made these.

Where will I wear such hideous, tacky earrings? My 5th reunion is coming up next spring. I’ll fit right in with this guy.

Photo is courtesy of the Princeton University Alumni Association. And some awesome dude in the class of ‘42.

You know what I forgot though? How do you feel about mice?

Let’s say, for example, you see a mouse scurrying across your desk one morning. Do you think, “I need to snap that sucker’s neck until he’s dead dead dead”? Or do you think, “Cute! I’ll name him Milo”?

My roommate and I fall on opposite sides of this fence. If she feels the mouse run by her feet, it makes her happy. If I ever felt the mouse near my feet, I’d scream so loud the entire block would hear me. I have no desire to name it; I want it dead. Now.

I think my roommate is coming around to the bloodthirsty side of things. This morning, she woke up to find that the mouse had gotten into her (very tasty) cherry nut bread. Now it’s war. Milo must die. If the traps don’t work, I’ll go after him with my softball bat.

I find that my fellow grad students and I start fantasizing about other jobs we could have. These other jobs that we think about don’t have downsides when our experiments are failing and our advisors don’t like our physical explanations. No no, being an opera singer would be easy.

Personally, when I start to daydream about other career options, I don’t start wishing I had taken that consulting offer. If I’m going to leave grad school, it won’t be for anything that practical. If I leave, I’m going to take up the violin and become a fiddle player in a bluegrass band. Or maybe I’ll go play professional baseball.

I know I’m really frustrated with grad school when my delusions get a bit more real. Those are the times I find myself thinking, “My family has COOKED for the POPE. WHAT am I doing HERE?” It’s all planned out, you see. I open a restaurant (with what money, exactly?) where I cook my grandmother’s gnocchi and my mother’s meatballs. I make it big, maybe get a show on the Food Network (I almost forgot - having a show entitled “Cooking through Grad School” is another possible career option for me), and then I cook for the pope. It’s foolproof.

And then I think about how many restaurants fail and how I hate the minute details of business and could I really stand to chop garlic for the rest of my life? Usually by this time, it’s the next day, and my experiments are working a little better - or I at least understand why they’re failing.

But there’s always that part of me that wonders. Maybe I should have been a cook. I mean, you can’t make diodes for the pope.

But I’ve been thinking. Before the surgery, the WTP staff was working pretty hard to read applications and make our decisions. I’ve never done anything like that before and it gave me a whole new respect for admissions offices. I’m sure the application seemed long to the girls filling them out, but they contain such little information for us.

I suspect this is normal, but I couldn’t help trying to put myself back in 11th grade and trying to fill out the application. Which teachers would have written recommendations for me? What activities would I list? How would I answer the essay questions? This last one threw me for a loop. The first essay question was something like, “How does your interest in science and math influence the way you interact with the world?” How would my 11th grade self answer this vague, nebulous prompt? Actually - how would my 4th year grad student self answer this prompt? How do I interact with the world?

And then I filled out a pre-surgery questionnaire. It asked for my surgical history.

In 1995, I had an appendectomy. In 2002, I had a fibroadenoma removed (some of you, especially guys, may not want to know more about what this is, but go ahead and Google if you like). And in 2009, I had an ACL reconstruction.

Well now that’s a pattern! Apparently I have surgery every 7 years. I called up my mom and told her of this great discovery and she just said, “I can’t believe it. You’re right.” This is how I look at the world: I find patterns.

Does anyone want to take bets about what I’ll need done in 2016?

My research is finally in a place where I can take it and run. I have things to measure, things to design, and things to fabricate. For the first time in my graduate career, I’m not dependent on anyone else to get things done. I could easily spend 12 hours a day in the lab working on this stuff. It’s awesome.

Also, I’ve been offered and accepted a teaching position for the summer. I’ll be the electrical engineering instructor for the Women’s Technology Program. I’ve been wanting to teach in this program since I got to MIT, but only now really have the time and flexibility to do so. I’m psyched. It doesn’t start officially until the summer, but there’s tons to do to get ready. Right now, I’m preparing the curriculum and reading applications. It’s awesome.

I’m also taking a writing class this term. Each student picks something to work on for the entire semester. Since the EE class in WTP doesn’t have a very good textbook, I’ve decided to try to write one. (If any future WTPers are reading this, I apologize if the text is crap. I promise you that it’s better than what was used in the past.) I’ve never tried to write something like this before. It’s awesome.

However, my Big Plans have gotten derailed. After years of coming up with good excuses, I ran out this year and agreed to go skiing a month ago. I was having a great time and wondering why I had refused to try it for so long. On the last day, I got a little ambitious and tried to go down an intermediate trail. I took a weird, slow fall and felt something pop in my knee. Some doctor’s visits and an MRI later, I was told that I tore my ACL and will need surgery. Not awesome.

I’m not in much pain anymore; I’m just walking around slowly. Stairs are difficult and I have to wait for the elevator. I just can’t move quite as quickly as I would like and it’s really frustrating me. I’ll have the surgery in a couple of weeks and after that, I’ll have an even harder time getting around for awhile. I’m hoping to get a lot of work done on whatever I can with my feet elevated. I’m also hoping the painkillers don’t make me too loopy.

Future WTPers, if your text reads something like, “lectrical ingineering is totally awesome!!1!11!! Whooooo!” just know it was the drugs talking.