Being a Muslim Woman at MIT
Why I choose to wear a hijab and how it has affected my graduate school experience
On a sunny day last fall, I wanted to try cooking a typical Indonesian food called ‘rendang,’ a delicious spicy beef curry. Figure 1. Rendang is best served with warm jasmine rice, shrimp crackers, and fresh cucumber. I left my apartment to go grocery shopping while catching Pokemon at the same time. Then, suddenly, a […]
Where Are All the Women?
Experiences in computer science from visit weekend and beyond
This may sound crazy, but for a brief time, I pictured MIT’s Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) department as only women. Yes, this happened. Due to a weirdly warped golden recall of MIT’s Visit Weekend, I somehow only remember the Saturday Pancake Breakfast for women in EECS: A hundred women crammed in a conference […]
The Many Flavors of Theoretical Computer Scientists
An explanation of my field for non-experts
Sometimes I tell people that I’m a theoretical computer scientist. If they haven’t yet found some sort of excuse to go to the bathroom before I take my next breath, the next question is often an exasperated, “What does that even mean?” I tell them that it’s sort of like math except that instead […]
Get Beyond the Bubble
The importance of interacting with non-MIT people during graduate school
Last Saturday night I was in my living room surrounded by a dozen people, but there was only one topic of conversation: the joys and sorrows of working at a hospital. My girlfriend Jaimie is a psychiatry resident, and we had invited her co-residents over for dinner. Doctor-talk monopolizing the night wasn’t a surprise; I’ve come […]
Don’t Panic
How to survive falling into a grad school hole
The people that get into MIT and places like it are used to being the best of the best. The people who come here are used to success. In particular, they’re used to success being easy. The easy success you may have experienced in undergrad is not going to continue at MIT. (Okay, it might […]
