Seems like a good idea at the time…

Two older graduate students in my department who I admire quite a bit have personal blogs, where they post life musings, computational insights, and other thoughts on grad school. They also happen to be two of the graduate students with whom I’ve had the most pleasure working, students whose work and approaches jive very closely with mine, and who seem to “get” that the non-science parts of science are super important too. They’re probably going to graduate soon, so I figure I better start putting into practice some of the things I’ve learned from them.

Also, all the data science blogs say that “building your presence” is a good thing to do to get a good job. I’m not super pumped about making myself a “presence” - words can be taken out of context, my usual communication is mostly through body language, and I don’t pretend to know anything at all, let alone know anything well enough to have it written down in a place where it’s mine to own. That said, I’m involved in some pretty interesting things that I wish the world knew more about (the things, not my involvement). And I often complain about feeling lonely - that I’m the only one this side of Kendall Square who cares about these things, who rejects the traditional academia/industry/other divide, who doesn’t eat breathe and sleep science and who knows it. I know I’m not the only one, and I know that I should complain less especially since I know I’m not the only one. But I still wish there were more visible spaces for non-“academic” conversations in academia, and I wish that the accepted de facto in non-scientific spheres (i.e. society) were less accepted and challenged _de novo _more often by my peers. So here we go.