Friday, August 21, 2020
IAP, CES, and other acronyms
IAP, CES, and other acronyms January is âsupposedâ to be an off-month for MIT students a break between the semesters to relax, recharge, recoup, and reflect*. But somehow I managed to be at least as busy as I was in October or November, which, despite the excitement and adventures, has wrought havoc on my personal health, just in time for me to start the spring semester at the tail end of a prolonged battle with the flu. * Iâm actually not sure about the last two; I just started with ârelaxâ and ârechargeâ and then felt obligated to continue. Sometimes I feel like Iâm slowly devolving into a Markov Chain. I drafted most of this post in the eerie, apprehensive calm before the academic storm, when classes had started but I didnât yet have any work, but then life happened and school exploded and my to-do list overflowed its buffer in memory. But without further ado or apologies, letâs recap the last 106 days (!!!) since my last post. During IAP, the MIT Alumni Association runs an âExternshipâ program in which they pair undergraduates and alumni for miniature, month-long internships. Externships are awesome because theyâre accessible to anyone and are a bite-sized, low-commitment sampling of the corporate workplace. This year, there were over 400 externship listings, including positions with alumni working at Apple, Google, and NASA. I wasnât originally planning on externing (if MIT has taught me anything, itâs that everything can be a verb), since there was a class on campus I wanted to take over IAP, but while browsing the externship catalog one night, one position jumped out at me. It was with Plume Labs, a French tech startup, and they were looking for MIT undergraduates to go to the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas with them. Itâs going to be difficult to put this in perspective, so bear with me. CES is the Mecca of the technology world. Itâs a trade show not open to the public for every company around the world even marginally related to technology, who all descend on Las Vegas the first week of every year to exhibit all the cutting-edge tech that will trickle down into consumer markets in the next decade or so. Last year at CES 2015 the convention attracted over 170,000 attendees (more than twice the population of the city I grew up in) and over 3,600 companies, including 82 of the Fortune 100. Itâs kind of a Big Deal. CES is geek paradise, and Plume Labs was offering two free tickets. Needless to say, I applied with excessive enthusiasm. Plume does air pollution (fixing it, not making it). They made a mobile app that works like a local hourly weather forecast, but for air quality, and are working on other things I canât speak about publicly right now (words Iâve always wanted an excuse to say). Originally I wasnât exactly sure what my job would be, so in late October, Seiji â19 (the other extern) and I had lunch with Romain Lacombe, the founder and CEO, who walked us through the concept: since Romain would likely be busy networking with investors, executives, and doing other mysterious professional CEO-y things, Seiji and I would scout out all 2.2 million square feet of exhibit space looking for potential partners, competitors, or anyone who could be interested in Plume, armed to the teeth with business cards and sales pitches. And so, on January 4th, I flew into Las Vegas with Seiji and Romain for CES 2016. We stayed at a villa with a few other startups that were visiting, spent a day preparing, rehearsing, and plotting, then hit the exhibit floor the minute it opened. I expected CES to be huge, but it still blew me away. Just Samsungâs booth was the size of MITâs entire career fair. I shook more hands and talked to more executives than I could possibly keep track of, and handed out business cards like they were free money. I felt like the physical incarnation of every tech startup cliche, spewing condensed streams of mysterious buzzwords to everyone who would listen, and I actually kind of enjoyed it! I cant really describe how convincing these holograms were! This feels like a metaphor for something, but Im not sure what. Somehow, the rest of the month didnât slow down either. After three exhausting days, I flew back to Boston to resume a class Iâd started remotely the one I wanted to do instead of externing. I decided to eat my cake and have it too, so I missed the first week of 6.037 (âStructure and Interpretation of Computer Programsâ) and emailed in the first assignment while in Vegas. I moved out of my dorm into the Zeta Psi house with a new roommate, the estimable Obasi â17. I went back to my group in the Media Lab and joined another project as a UROP. I set an aggressive schedule of personal projects I wanted to tackle for fun. I redesigned my website. But there are different kinds of work and stress, and reorganizing my life and exploring new spaces despite demanding an equally unhealthy sleep schedule was a refreshing and re-energizing break from the intense, theoretical academic semester Iâd just exited. I felt in control and on top of the world. It felt like that weird kick you get from cleaning your room without anyone telling you to. Apart from getting the flu, I felt the most content Iâd even been. And now Iâm back, immersed in classes, and taking a quick break on a beautiful sunny day to blog about it all. Iâll write some more about my spring semester shenanigans soon (âsoonâ â¢), but until then, here are some pictures of the Kresge oval that Im writing this from!
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