MIT Grad Blog

The President’s visit to MIT on Friday is one of the most exciting events to have happened to MIT in years. As everybody celebrated and shared their story about how they caught a glimpse of the president (or in my friend Zenzile’s case, jumped over dozens of people to shake his hand ), I couldn’t help but wonder what this visit by the President of the United States meant.

On the surface, Obama came to talk about energy innovation and policy. So, one way to look at it is exactly as how I was quoted in the Daily Free Press, “the President’s visit was an exciting acknowledgement of MIT’s role in energy innovation.” (http://www.dailyfreepress.com/obama-calls-for-u-s-to-become-the-world-s-energy-leader-1.2035198) But I think it is more than that. Obama did not choose any school, not even his Alma Mater, that second most prestigious school in Cambridge – he picked MIT, the iconic institute of science, technology and innovation.

This message is consistent with Michelle Obama’s speech in the UK. She said how making good grades is cool. This country and this world had adopted a definition of “cool” that treats nerds or smart as weird. The “cool” is some sort of combination of a lack or despise of self-discipline and hard-work, the cool kids demonstrate a general indifference about the world and knowledge. What the Obamas are saying is that being smart, getting good grades, doing great in school is the new “cool” – reminding us that the world is improving because we have moved beyond a group of jock-ish cavemen into a species that respect and accumulate knowledge relentlessly, that we have evolved into a group of humans who cares and works for the ideals of the betterment of humanity. 

So, the President’s message is clear, smart is the new cool, and nerdy is the new sexy.  And a president who chooses to be at MIT rather than a president who talks about how you can be a head of state while getting all C’s in college symbolizes the re-activation of the collective brain of humanity and the path to a better earth.

Before last Sunday, I did not know it was possible for noses to scrunch in unison.  However, on that sticky afternoon I witnessed the simultaneous scrunching of two upset noses.   I actually induced the scrunching.  It went something like this.

“My mom’s coming to town next week.  I think I’ll take her to Legal Seafods.”

:: scrunch ::

:: scrunch ::

Amongst the scrunches, I also identified one gasp, two furrowed brows, and a look of horror.  “You what?” said Mike. “No.  NO, no.  Don’t do that to her.  Don’t you love her?  I don’t know you.”

they begged us not to go

Alex took a more constructive approach. “How about tapas?  Does she like Spanish food?  The best meal of my life happened at a tapas bar downtown, and — OH! Oh, oh!! Two words — DIM. SUM.  Can I meet her?  Can I come?  You know what – I’LL take her, you stay here and work on Orientation.  I won’t take her to Legal Seafoods, though.”

The mere utterance of Legal Seafoods had jolted my acquaintances into Rescue Mode.  They were federal food agents on a mission to save my mother from overpriced and overrated seafood.  They pleaded with me to change my selection, begged that I take her someplace fresher and nicer – Craigie, perhaps?  L’Espalier? Even Rendezvous?  A passersby sensed distress from our corner and, like any good Samaritan, suggested a funky new Brazilian place (Muqueca).

I smiled and pretended to acquiesce.  Don’t get me wrong – I appreciated the concern of my colleagues; I even forwarded their suggestions on to my mom.

But my mom, like me, is stubborn and forgetful and stubborn, and at the end of a long day of seeing my new apartment and commenting on my hair and commenting on my new apartment and offering to help clean my new apartment and shopping for cleaning supplies and price-comparing cleaning supplies and asking-to-see-the-manager about mismarked cleaning supplies and commenting on my hair again and generally expressing her love for me, we found our weary selves seated in – buckle your seatbelts, kids – Legal Seafoods.

We shared a house salad, and some laughs.  She had the swordfish and bite of my barramundi.  She bought me the chocolate cake and gave me cleaning advice, and when I’d walked her to her hotel to say goodnight she also gave me a kiss and a hug and told me she loved me in that you-may-be-twenty-something-but-you-are-still-and-will-always-be-my-baby voice.  As I strolled down Vassar I knew that nothing, legal or illegal, new and trendy or old and overpriced, could change that.

So, despite the corniness of this blog posting, all you Craigie-loving, Legal-Seafood-hating, tapas-bar-seeking critics out there can kindly unscrunch your noses, grab someone you love, and go to dinner.  Go anywhere you like; I don’t care.  And you know what?  That loved one you grabbed probably doesn’t care, either.  So long as you let them have a bite of whatever it is you’re having, and comment on your new apartment.

I think, generally speaking, I’m relieved and glad to see the release of the two journalists, Euna Lee and Laura Ling. The picture of Euna Lee hugging her little girl after several months of sleepless nights and intense fear is priceless. The idea that I live in a country where the government took on extra effort to save a couple of people’s lives makes me proud to be an American. BUT somehow I am miffed to see that in some sense, Kim, Jong-il won. Now he has vindicated his power since a former US president has to come to him to ask for favors. The way we look at it in the US, it’s a purely humanitarian effort, and it ought to stay that way. However, he probably sees this as an encouragement of his belligerent and oppressive behaviors. Why is it always the good people that back away?

okay, you are probably thinking this girl is crazy. At the end of the day, we won. We, the people with compassion and empathy, want to see families unite and individiuals freed. I agreed and that’s exactly why I am perplexed and ambivalent.

This got me thinking about thick-skinness. In order to get what we really want, do we have to be thick-skinned? Ultimately, Americans want the journalists freed. To do so,  Bill Clinton and many other people involved just had to endure what the North Korean government requests and says. Had sargent Crowley been more thick-skinned, maybe he would’ve walked away from the heated words that were exchanged and saved a lot of diverted energy from health care reform. I guess, sometimes, one just have to bargain with the unbargainables, with a long term vision and some thick skin.

Last Thursday, I was arrested on my front porch.

It came at the end of a long trip, full of research, meetings, reading, grant-writing.  I was greeted with a front door that had swelled shut in the Boston humidity.   My friend unlocked the side door, came around front, and helped me shove the stubborn thing open.  Imagine my surprise at being confronted with a police officer a few minutes later.  I showed him my ID, established my residency, but he did not believe me.  I got frustrated; I got upset, I yelled.  We moved onto my front porch.  He arrested me.  On my front porch.  For . . . yelling?  For being black?  For both?

Technically, this did not happen to me.  This happened to Professor Gates, down the road at Harvard.  But at times like this, when a fellow member of my tiny minority group — African-Americans in academia — experiences injustice, I feel as though I experience the injustice, too.  I want to step out on my own front porch and yell a few things.  I would yell about my pride, my confusion, and my frustration.

I would shout first about my pride, my rich history.  I would holler about my grandfather who shoveled coal instead of finishing  ninth grade, my grandmother who clerked fifteen years in a New York ER to feed the seven mouths in her house, my father who finished his homework every night on an ironing board so that I would one day have a front porch of my own to stand on.

I would yell about the years I had spent in school — the hours in lab, the weekends in the library, the sunny days lost to my desk and my laptop.  I would yell that I had invested those years to contribute to a discipline and to a generation.  That I was a scientist, a researcher, a teacher.  That I was black.  That I was a woman.  That I was so much more than black.  That I was so much more than a woman.  I would cry about stereotypes, and stereotypes broken.

I would scream about affirmative action, and diversity initiatives.  I would wail that though I appreciate and benefit from such programs, I hold a secret fear that with every success, and every failure, that others see only the black, or only the woman.  I would scream about the frustration that comes with that fear.  The impossibility but the necessity of being prideful but focused, of forgetting and remembering oneself at the same time.  Every day.  All day.  My whole life.

I cannot say with certainty that Professor Gates was mistreated because he was black.

I cannot say with certainty that Professor Gates was not mistreated because he was black.

I can say with near certainty that Professor Gates was mistreated, and that Professor Gates is black, and that the mistreatment conjured up a minority’s life-long struggle between pride, and confusion, and frustration.  Maybe more so for me than for him.

I highly doubt any child dreams of becoming a customer representative. However, there are gazillions of them (yes, gazillions..) This post is dedicated to them. As I typed, I was reminded of this story about a telemarketer on This American Life (Check out Act Four.)

Okay, back to customer service. Two consecutive events this week triggered me to ponder on the question of what makes a good customer representative. First, I was at the postal office with a flimsy box which contained these crystal turtles for father’s day (which falls on Aug. 8th in Taiwan.)  This guy that worked there looked at me and told me that the box and the turtles would never make it to Taiwan as is. He was extremely helpful getting me to a side counter where additional shipping material was placed. As I repackaged away, another worker came out and started scolding at me for almost no reason whatsoever – something about where I was working, what I was doing and so on and so forth. Anyway, when I walked out of the post office, I was engulfed in fury – on one hand cursing at her for yelling at me and on the other hand cursing at myself for not thinking of something clever and insulting to get back at her. I’m sure this experience is probably not new and you probably have similar experiences. Please feel free to comment on clever responses you have given to rude services.

Before heading back to my office and releasing my anger on my experiments, I stopped by VWR, the campus store that sells lab supplies, to pick up some gloves. The guy that worked there was funny and friendly. He was like the aloe vera gel after a bad sunburn or a nice hefeweizen after a stressful day. I walked out of VWR humming some kiddish and pleasant tune.

I started thinking about why the lady at the post office can’t be as friendly as Steve, the VWR guy. It can’t just be about money. There must be some personality trait that makes a person a better customer representative or any seemingly mundane job which involves human interactions. I believe the answer lies in empathy – the ability to put oneself in someone else’s shoes. Had the lady been able to feel how I felt as I clumsily tried to wrap these turtles with the Metro and was glared at by all the people in line as entertainment, she would know that instead of yelling at me, she should at least leave me alone. Had the Cambridge Police guy thought about what it must have been like for Skip Gates to break his own door in order to get into his own house, the police probably wouldn’t have “acted stupidly.” The challenge, however, lies in the fact that empathy is such an intrinsic and vague quality to measure. Honestly, before Obama started using this word frequently, I never gave it much thought. Up to this day, I still don’t know if there is a way to train for empathy or fire someone for being apathetic. Perhaps it’s a lesson for all of us to be more empathetic.

Next time you go to the Kendall Post Office, avoid the blond. :p

In case you’ve been living under a rock encased in lead inside the Fortress of Solitude on the far side of Borneo, the sixth film in J.K. Rowling’s inconceivably lucrative series, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, came out this week. I saw it at a midnight premier on Tuesday, and as a person who did not read the books but is following the movies, I was unimpressed.

The movie suffered from what one friend called Pirates-of-the-Caribbean-2-Syndrome, a condition in which a movie lacks sufficient self-contained action and functions chiefly as a bridge between two other movies. Put simply, not very much happened in the movie.

“But Brandon!” you exclaim, “this is the movie where [spoiler] Snape kills Dumbledore! How could you say not much happened?!?”

Easy there fanboy. Yes, something major happens late in the movie, but it’s like getting one notecard on your third try at passing quals; it’s too little too late.

The same is true of the time spent on Voldemort’s back story, showing glimpses of his childhood when he was probably called Tommy and enjoyed wholesome activities like quidditch and pulling the limbs off of small animals. As played out as the whole “he-had-a-rough-childhood-and-was-an-orphan-and-nobody-hugged-him-so-now-he-kills-people” shtick is, it can still work if it’s done right. At its best, it adds nuance and depth to the villain and encourages asking tough questions about the nature of mankind and morality and other topics that seem oddly pertinent at 1am in The Thirsty Ear while playing Connect Four (or maybe that’s just me). At its worst, which it pretty much is in HP6, this sort of thing is just annoying. You’ve spent 5 movies and >3000 pages convincing everyone that Voldemort is more evil than Hitler mind-melded with Cthulu and drinking a smoothie of newborn tears, and now you’d like me to understand him? No thanks, I’d rather just see him impaled on a quidditch broom.