Kismet

How budget cuts affect Harvard lives

2010-09-09T20:26:00.000-07:00

Me: Are we really out of money?
PD (looks at me seriously): yes.
My heart skipped a beat, will this lead to a future pay cut?
Me: how bad?
PD (pauses for a second, and says in a grave tone): We don't have free coffee anymore.
Me: ....
PD: We used to have free coffee, tea, bagels, everything! It's a big life style change!

Intuition

2010-09-04T20:42:00.001-07:00

I highly recommend reading Allegra Goodman's Intuition, a profound psychological thrill that sets place in a (made up) Harvard biological research institution and takes a deeper look into the humanity in the fierce community that is academia.

Morals learned:
1. Do NOT date someone in your lab. Ever.
2. No man, nor lab, is an island.
3. Competition is like the One Ring that brings out something in us that we never realized we had.

At the end of the story, the author tells a story:

A woman learns to knit, and one day, she left her almost-finished sweater on the couch and went to bed. The next morning, she found that her sweater had disappeared. It turns out that her mother had taken it apart because there was a mistake on line 3 (the bottom of the sweater), so she had to start over. Her mother tells her that it's what happens when you make a mistake - you start over. However, the problem here is that it was her sweater, not her mother's, and it wasn't anybody else's business to take it apart except for her.

I guess things work a bit differently in real life.

09-03-10

2010-09-03T07:15:00.000-07:00

@ Harvard, among other things, I learned to walk in high heels on uneven cobblestone ground.

I have yet to learn, however, to look up while doing so.

Facebook is dumb

2010-09-02T13:13:00.000-07:00

Before you tell me to "Reach out" and "Write on their wall", please make sure that I am off limited profile.

Day 2/2007

2010-08-31T07:39:00.000-07:00

It takes approximately 2010 days to graduate...

And the road to graduation is not unlike putting a 2010 pieced puzzle together