January 2024 in Review

Books Read: 8, Average Rating: 3.8 Stars

If We Were Villians by M.L Rio: Perfect for Shakespeare nerds, although a bit cheesy. 4/5 Stars.

We are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby: Some of the essays were great, other ones fell flat, way too many of them involved shit. 2/5 Stars.

Time is a Mother by Ocean Vuong: Gorgeous poetry, Thoughtfully compiled. 5/5 Stars.

The Road to Roswell by Connie Willis: This was a fun, campy, and comedic book involving alien abduction; it would make a good beach read. 3/5 Stars.

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson: One of the best and most thoughtful books I’ve read in awhile, highly informative about how much racism/caste has informed the structure of the US. 5/5 Stars.

Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden order of Life by Lulu Miller: I was surprised by how much I liked this book, makes me think a lot about the responsibility scientists have to ethics. 5/5 Stars.

When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut: This book was an interesting exploration of the role scientists play in shaping the world but the writing was just okay. 3/5 Stars.

Sula by Toni Morrison: Potent, poetic, tragic, and difficult to read at times, certainly worth the effort. 4/5 Stars.

General Thoughts

January was a challenging month for me. I recieved a lot more graduate school rejections and have been working hard to learn how to network. Even if they don’t help my odds, the networking has resulted in some incredibly interesting and helpful conversations most notably with Eshed Margalit. We talked a lot about his fascinating reseach on T-DANNs and their applications. I’m glad I reached out to him. It was one of the most interesting conversations I had this month. In addition, I revamped my resume which will hopefully help me get into some masters programs if I do not get into a PHD program. Work was also difficult as I had to lead the building of a fairly large project with a very tight time frame. I’m grateful to my coworkers for taking on some of the tasks and being supportive. I also started this this website! which I’m super excited about!

Reset Questions

What went well in January?

• I did some networking and got to have more interesting conversations as a result
• My resume looks a lot better
• I built myself a website for the first time! and it’s not completely terrible
• submitted two masters program applications, one to ETH, one to the university of copenhagen.

What didn’t go so well in January and what can I improve?

• I’m not making the progress I would like in the gym and I’m realizing meeting with a dietician is a good idea.
• I wasn’t great about managing my stress/energy levels from work to allow myself to work on things I enjoy in my free time.

Goals for February?

• Take myself a bit less seriously and try to bring more silliness into the month
• use my birthday as a time to take stock of the things I have done and am grateful for.
• Make an appointment with a dietician, and see some improvement in the gym (geting to 40lbs of resistance on the pull up machine for 12/10/8 reps would be awesome).
• Improve this website! Specifically add and fill out a page that tracks previous projects I’m proud of.