I think I’ve forgotten how to write. In the past two weeks I’ve turned in two 10 (ish) page papers, two presentations (one 10 minutes and one 90 minutes), and one pset, as well as taken two exams and read untold numbers of papers in an attempt to magically learn everything there is to know about Xeroderma Pigmentosum, the evolutionary capabilities of E. coli, the use of plaster by the Maya as both a building material and a mode of expressing themselves, gender biases in STEM academia and the reasons they exist, and (of course) etheno lesions and how they are repaired (lab stuff, in English). Basically, the past two weeks have been a microcosm that looks exactly like how the past four years at MIT have looked, if more condensed. It should be no surprise then, that more or less immediately after I finished my last assignment for class, I sat down to take a nap (since I still needed to work on some things for lab, and had planned to do so that night) and slept through my alarms and for eight hours straight. Like I said, pretty much exactly how the past four years at MIT have gone.
But I’m done now, with the exception of a final exam that I need to take next week and lab stuff, because I’m me. And it should honestly feel weirder than it does. Maybe it hasn’t sunk in that instead of two years left here, like the title of this blog, I have more like three weeks left here. And not to be completely maudlin, but I’m not sure when I’ll be in Boston again after that. I have grand plans, of course, of returning for occasional things. But the best laid plans of mice and men, as they say, often go awry.
I’m writing this while sitting in a common area of the MIT Media Lab. If you’ve never seen it, it’s pretty much one of the coolest places in the world (If you’ve seen Big Hero 6, think the San Fransokyo Institute of Technology. If you haven’t seen Big Hero 6, go watch it, and come back when you have. And if you don’t have time for that, imagine really cool things, and glass walls, and spiral staircases and robots in labs. And you’ll get somewhat close to what the Media Lab is). Strangely (for me and the reasons I love the place), it has very little to do with biology (at least the parts I’m looking at). It does, however, have a lot to do with innovation. People here are working on everything from social robots, to writing code that can be translated into orchestral performances, to coming up with digital pets (think Tamagotchi) that can help keep an eye on one’s health. And that’s just the UROP openings. There’s an incredible amount of research being done here, on things that we can only dream about right now.
The outside of the Media Lab… It’s cooler inside, but I wasn’t thinking and didn’t take a picture.
Despite what I always say when asked why I chose to come to MIT (that I finally found people who consistently laugh at my nerdy jokes (which is true, by the way)), the real reason that I fall in love with MIT over and over is the innovation. MIT sucks, and making it through with my sanity somewhat intact is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. But even on the worst days, when I’m convinced that my life would have been infinitely better if I’d just chosen to attend a different school, there’s something cool going on somewhere on campus. People are constantly working to come up with new things, committing a significant amount of hours to research that will impact the world in some way. My grad student will frequently be like “Look at this” and then show me some data that he has analyzed that proves something cool, or a video of cells becoming fluorescent over time as they repair DNA mutations. My friends come home and tell me about something bizarre their professor told them about in class. I go to a lecture and hear about growing cells in a specific way that lets them form normal brain structures (Out of single cells guys. Scientists are growing brain-like structures. They’re not full brains yet, since they don’t have blood vessels. But they form into the right shapes. How cool is that??).
I’m going to be science-y for a minute, but I’ll try to be as non-confusing as possible. The reason I chose biological engineering as a major initially (and actually why I switched to biology eventually) was in part, an innovation. One of the major problems with transplanted organs is that unless you can exactly match a set of markers that exist on each of your cells (which is rare unless you have an identical twin) you have a very high chance of rejecting the transplanted organ. The results of this can be anything from mild infection to complete rejection of the organ, meaning that the patient’s body attacks the transplanted organ as if it were an invader. A really convenient way of getting around this would be if we could just have a copy of the patient’s own organ, but with whatever the problem was fixed. And people are working on that (not at MIT specifically, but related research is certainly happening here). Specifically, a lab at the University of Pittsburgh has stripped a mouse heart of its cells, leaving only the scaffolding, and then taken cells from different mouse and used them to create heart cells to put back onto the scaffolding. And after all this, when you have a heart back that has all of the appropriate cells in it, it beats again, in the way you would expect a heart to do. To the best of my knowledge, the new heart hasn’t been re-transplanted into a mouse. But if it were to be done, the heart would be made of the mouse’s own cells, so it would have the correct markers and thus wouldn’t be rejected.
When I first heard about this research freshman year, I was convinced it was the coolest thing since sliced bread. Since then, I’ve learned about innumerable other cool things. I’ve learned that you can use viruses to shrink cancerous tumors, and that you can build a 190 ton structure held together by only gravity and physics. I’ve learned that you can use a mathematical model to explain the amount of DNA repair that an individual will be able to do. I’ve seen people make apps, and write code to make their computer play a game of checkers, and discover new interactions between proteins. But the stripped and rebuilt heart has stayed with me as one of the coolest things I’ve ever heard it was possible to do.
For me, the possibility of the rebuilt heart exemplifies everything that is good about science and about knowledge in general. At the center, we do science because we are infinitely curious and want to understand how the world works. We do science because we want to be able to shape that world to our whims, in order to make it the best world possible. We do science so that we can make people’s lives a tiny bit better. Or maybe a lot better. In 40, or 70, or 100 years, when rebuilt hearts are commonplace, that will affect a ridiculous number of people, hopefully for the better.
Maybe because I’m a week out from my last final and I’ve finished all of my class assignments, I’m firmly on the “I have truly found paradise” side of IHTFP (MIT students’ favorite saying). Last week, when I was running on 3 hours of sleep a night, I was firmly on the “I hate this freaking place” side. But there are two things that got me past those days- the aforementioned innovation, and the people who find my nerdy jokes amusing. If the reason I fell in love with MIT is innovation, the reason I stay in love with it is the people that that innovation will eventually be done and used by. If you know me at all, you might find this mildly surprising, since I’m not really a people person in any sense of the term. But I might not have come to MIT if my family didn’t tell me I could do it. And I might not have managed to get as much work done as I have if my friends weren’t there to deal with my temporary insanity and to make sure I ate (even if I’ve eaten a considerable amount more candy than is probably advisable). I almost certainly wouldn’t have managed to stay committed to a career in science without basically everyone, but specifically without my advisor and professors and, of course, my grad student.
Mildly related chocolate wrapper I got while having my bout of nostalgia today. (Text: You are exactly where you are supposed to be.)
I’ve been pretty chill about the whole “I’m leaving Boston, possibly forever” thing. And then I was in the middle of writing this and realized that next week is finals week, and the underclassmen will be leaving, and the nostalgia hit fairly hard. I was at my department’s poster session this week (I promise that at some point I’ll explain what a poster session is) and my grad student’s college professor was there. After telling her about my poster, we chatted a little bit about the fact that I’m leaving soon, and whether I was sad about it. I told her that I hadn’t had time to be sad yet, since I was still in the middle of a couple of assignments. But we’re getting to the sad bit, which is going to be an issue given that I still have three weeks before I’m actually done.
Despite the fact that I have three weeks left and am honestly fairly ready to be done with the hate part of IHTFP, It’s obviously more difficult to give up on the paradise part. I’m not going to go into it now, because it’s another post worth of writing, but MIT has changed me in a lot of ways, some obvious and some subtle. But the change is, in general, for the better, no matter how much I’ve kicked and screamed while getting to the end of the change. It’s going to be hard to leave. There’s no question in my mind about that. The real question is how many times I’m going to be nostalgic before getting on a plane back to Seattle. If you asked me, I’d have to say a lot of times. Since I’m not a huge fan of being openly emotional, it might be a rough three weeks. There are going to be a lot of the people that helped me stay in love with being at MIT that I’m going to say goodbye to, which is going to suck, since saying goodbye always sucks. But at least the innovation bits will be fairly consistent, and will help soften the blow (or at least that’s what I’m telling myself… I’m probably wrong about the blow softening bit. I can hope though.)
Not actually super relevant, but MIT is really pretty, and I like this picture.
There’s not really a moral to this post, which usually means I should have stopped writing a couple of hundred words ago. But some things need to be said, even if it’s just in a blog that 10 people, max, read. To those people, thank you for reading through the past two years. And get ready for more nostalgic posts- I have exactly zero doubt in my mind that they will happen sometime in the next three weeks.
All the best,
Alycia
