Right as I graduated high school, I had a realization: I want to see more of the world. Part of me was excited to visit friends and family, but I was more excited at the prospects of exploring a new place and seeing what that new place could offer in terms of its culture.
Although I grew up in NYC, I felt weirdly unsatisfied with just getting to know one city, even though you might argue that NYC can probably give you everything you ever wanted (but I digress, I’m biased).
Throughout undergrad, I tried my best to utilize breaks to travel. Those breaks were few and far in between, and most of the time I had zero net income. Most times I ended up traveling around the Northeast on buses ($1 to 5 bus tickets really worked wonders). I was particularly blessed to intern in different cities during my summers.
So when I came to grad school, I knew I HAD to find different places to travel to. Maybe I made up for a lot of lost time in terms of traveling, but I was able to make a few trips last year during fall quarter.
Here’s a couple of pics that I took from those trips with the beautiful people who came along for the ride!
Oct 2019: Traveled to Chicago (one of my favorite cities!) and Philly for lab retreat and BMES