I had the privilege of making the announcement for the MIT100K ACCELERATE Finalists, and the energy level tonight was just… wow! Also, having personally interacted with some of the teams during the Team Stream filming sessions, just seeing their reactions tonight was a great privilege! What could I say? Just an all-round wow! Can’t wait to see what the Demo Show will be like!
School has started again. A new semester is at hand.
IAP is now over. A fun time IAP was. Got tons of lab work re-setup, got tons of 100K work done up, and overall a good time of break from classes. Every university should take a 1 month break between semesters to let their students explore fun and crazy things.
1st week of classes have also gone by just like that. Time really flies now. Hopefully, I have carried over the same level of snappiness from the last semester.
Alrighty, 4:31 am. Time to sleep.
Wow!
What else can I say, but wow?
It’s been a whirlwind ride here at MIT during my first semester. Looking back, the last entry I wrote was at the beginning of semester, and only now, at the end of the semester, do I have the chance to write up something.
Back at the start of the semester, when things were a little lighter, I took stock of a few things I wanted to do in school throughout the first semester. Here they are:
This, on top of regular school work of course.
Granted, school work did eat up a lot of time. But things have become clearer in the past semester as to how things will pan out for the coming semester.
I’ve moved from web team member to web team lead + marketing member. It’s been quite an interesting journey along the way. I’ve had the chance to converse with many Sloanies, and they bring a very different type of energy to the table. I really enjoy working with the 100K crowd, and I’m looking forward to continued involvement until the Business Plan Competition.
More importantly, I’ve learned quite a lot about business from an outsider’s lens, and I realize that a lot of it is commonsensical, except that in the excitement of doing a startup, perhaps one may lose sight of that common sense. Of course, that’s the theorist inside me speaking; if I were to one day get involved in a startup or industrial management work instead, perhaps my perspective might change.
…is more or less defined! And I have made more inroads into advancing the project further. Bacterial color photography. This IAP I will be beginning the first cloning steps to assemble the DNA, and with the 2nd semester around, I think I will be in the lab more often. This will mean balancing my studies better; in particular, making sure I’m reviewing the material right after each class rather than darting off.
1 hr 30 min every week, and then a drama episode or two when I have time, and I think I have made much progress in listening and understanding Korean. But my vocabulary is much too weak, and my confidence much too low, to be able to string together a sentence. Hence, I’m looking forward to moving onto the Intermediate level classes. Hopefully I’ll be able to make some progress here.
I’ll take Chris’ suggestion and keep my involvement low until I pass quals. This year might not be the year for me to step up just yet.
In this area, I haven’t done so well. During the semester, there were times when I went swimming, biking, and playing badminton, but there were stretches where I was too tired to go for it, or it was too hassle-some to go, or… okay, enough of the excuses. Basically, my primary care physician @ MIT Medical says I should have a 500 cal difference between intake and output, with intake < output, to lose weight properly, and I no longer have an excuse for being this much overweight. The coming semester is a time when I think I’ll raise my game more. I hope to go for more regular badminton games now, starting from tomorrow’s badminton game with Ian.
It’s been a while since I last had the chance to write up here. School has started, things are ramping up, and I’m finding quite a lot less time to do writing like this.
Since this is my first year back in school after a year and a half hiatus from being in a learning community, and because I’ve got at least 4 years here in total, I decided to spend the first year exploring around, to see what opportunities lie awaiting, and what opportunities I might be able to help create.
It’s an entrepreneurship competition. But for now, I’d like to get back into the teamwork groove by helping out with the organizational side of things, rather than do any actual entrepreneurship work. Things are looking positive here.
Thesis project idea has been defined, I’m essentially taking on color bacterial photography. It’s a “handed-to-me” project, but I’m trying to anticipate ways I could work with others, as well as potential problems that I would need to solve that would help advance the field forward. We’ll see how that goes.
Apparently there are Korean language classes offered for free here! No word on the location yet, so no confirmation that it’s actually on, but I’ll hope to hear back from the instructors/organizers on this.
iGEM remains in full force here, and after talking with a few guys in the Weiss lab, I think it’s something I’d definitely explore, after 1st year ends, of course.
Badminton, biking, basketball. It’s time to get back into shape. The past week I’ve played bball twice, and though it really showed how unfit I am right now, it was real fun to get back into running around, thinking strategically on the court, and shooting some hoops. Once my rackets come, I’m totally going to play some badminton as well.
Looking forward, the coming year certainly looks like it’ll be exciting, including classes of course, which I guess I will have to try to make my way through. That is the one part of school work where I think I will most certainly be depending working through things with my fellow classmates.