Education

Wrapping up the ‘student chapter’ of my life! 👩🎓 7️⃣ lessons I’ve learnt in the last 1.5 years as I moved from India to USA for my Masters. 1️⃣ I came to 🇺🇸 with these expectations of how student life looks here. It looked lavish, fun and easy. But that’s not all. It is tough , filled with ups and downs. Very few people talk about this. This is the reason I create study abroad content - to show the good and the bad. 2️⃣ When applying for my masters, I was confused. CS or MEM? One had too much demand and one was something I genuinely wanted to learn. I chose what I wanted to learn and it was the best decision! 3️⃣ Find your tribe. Find people who you can rely on, because this place can get lonely. 4️⃣ Learn to live with uncertainty. Accept that you’ll fall, you will pick yourself up and you’ll come back stronger. 5️⃣ Be on your feet. Act fast and try to stay ahead of others. Response time matters. The difference between people who want to be successful and who are successful is that successful people not only talk but also ACT! 6️⃣ Life is going to be uncomfortable. Everything at home felt comfortable and I left that comfort. Leaving everything I had know for years, taking that risk, taught me so so so much. 7️⃣ You’ll get opportunities, if you seek them. This is the land of opportunities. If you’re coming here - make use of it. If opportunities don’t come to you, create them for yourself. Learn from others who’ve done what you want to do and start acting. That’s it. A wrap on my student life! I hope you can learn from my mistakes and my success. Keep hustling! ✨ That’s also a wrap to my 2023 content! I’ll be back in 2024! Happy Holidays 🎄 #students #career #masters #studyabroad

Don't assume your neurodivergent employees are being insubordinate or trying to ruffle feathers when they ask clarifying questions. As an AuDHD person, I need to understand the bigger picture. I don't believe in doing things just because, "It's always been done that way." I want to understand how things work together, how I'm having an impact, and look for ways to make processes more efficient and effective. If there are rules, I need to know why those rules exist. Healthy workplaces welcome questions and curiosity. Don't assume ill intention when your employees are simply trying to understand their role and impact. We need people who question and disrupt. This is how we improve and innovate. Curious employees are an advantage, not a threat. #audhd #neurodiversityatwork #neurodivergence

Here are 10 mistakes I made as an international student. See how many you made too. I graduated from Columbia University in 2019 with a master’s in Management Sciences. But not before making a TON of mistakes along the way. Here are the top 10: 🛑 1: Converting everything to rupees Oof. I converted EVERYTHING to rupees. From monthly rent to weekly laundry to daily food. It made me penny wise, pound foolish. And worse, it led to #2 below. 🚫 2: Eating shitty food everyday My daily diet consisted of either $5 rice & daal, or $0 pizzas and pasta. You know, the poster-child of healthy eating choices. 😴 3: Sleeping at 5 AM I was part of the 5 AM club. Except, I would go to sleep at 5 AM. Forget morning meditation. Forget morning cardio. I would wake up & rush to classes. ❌ 4: Only focused on getting an internship I focused too much on, “How can I get a referral?” and too little on, “How can I build a relationship?” If I had a penny for the number of good connections I missed, I could probably fund my master’s all over again. 📛 5: Not mingling with the international crowd Moving to a new country is hard, scary, and… lonely. So, within a few weeks, groups form everywhere. Indians mingle with Indians (mostly). Chinese with Chinese. French with French. This led to so many missed connections. 📕 6: Learning for the sake of doing well in an exam Because of the pressure to find a job, network, finish assignments, stay alive and a million little things, I didn’t learn for the sake of learning. I learned to do well in an exam. 🏆 7: Not being proactive about RA/TA-ship Should you approach a professor for RA/TA-ship as soon as you land in America or after a few weeks? Answer: neither. You should approach even before you fly out from your home country. 📄 8: ”H-1B is my only option to work” It’s not. H-1B is a popular option. Not the only one. If you’re still in school, check out the O-1 visa, self-employment OPT, EB-1 visa, etc for starters. 💭 9: Thinking very short-term Every decision was taken with a short-term goal in mind: getting a job to pay back the loan. This led to missed connections, robbed joy in learning, and eating shitty food. But life isn’t that short in most cases. 🥑 10: Eating shitty food every day (encore!) Yes, this is not a typo. If you’re still in college, PLEASE SPEND MONEY ON HEALTHY FOOD. I promise you: you’ll make it back sooner than you think. What mistakes did you make in college? Share them below. 👇 ... Please re-share this post so it helps more students! 🙏 Finally, if you’re an immigrant in America, join 15,000+ who get my weekly newsletter packed with breaking news & free resources like this: https://lnkd.in/gKtUGU-r :) #students #immigration #studyabroad #unshackled #USA #Education

RETHINKING LIBRARIES: BUILDING COMMUNITY MINI BRANCH BY MINI BRANCH What would happen if we reimagined the public library and school so as to give them a much larger role in the neighborhood landscape? Such that they did not just service individuals but nurtured relationships neighborhood by neighborhood. Libraries, for example, are prime for a rethink. They serve an important role promoting reading and enabling access to information and should continue to do this. In recent years, many facilities (such as the closest library to my house) have added a wide range of facilities for people to use, including basketball courts, coffee shops, meeting rooms, playgrounds, etc. These all help attract a wide variety of people to their core function as well as offer families access to amenties they might not have otherwise. But if the goal was to become a neighborhood hub, the scale still works against it. In my county, neighborhoods are decently distributed but still serve huge amounts of people (50-100,000 each). In the neighboring county, it is even worse, with a small number of libraries serving a vast area. This means that there is no intimacy, few spontaneous relationships developed, and no impact on actual places. In an age where information is abundant and relationships increasingly scarce, libraries should become smaller, far more numerous, and embedded within local neighborhoods. This would give them an intimate relationships on a human scale with a relatively small number of people - say 10-20,000. They would include some of the newer facilities, and see themselves as a hub nurturing ties between people from the streets immediately around them. One way to achieve this would be to leverage existing public buildings - schools, for example, may be unused on weekends and nights and offer facilities that could be leveraged by libraries. Another way would be use a former church building, a lot meant for a house, or a spot on the edge of a park - after all, we are not talking huge, but about developing a local hub where people can access information and find relationships that are unavailable elsewhere. (Schools once built community simply because they were located at the center of walkable neighborhoods, encouraging kids to play with each other and nurturing robust family support networks in the process.) In an age where there are fewer and fewer organizations nurturing relationships organically, it is time for us to be creative about the institutions we have that can play a larger role here. Libraries are one of the few public institutions that could do this at scale -- working sideways small branch by small branch, neighborhood by neighborhood, to restitch the social fabric. Sam Pressler Ian Marcus Corbin Anthony (Tony) Guidotti Placemaking Education PlacemakingX #isolation #neighborhoods #community #humanflourishing #library #communityhub Ron Ivey #librarians Ofri Earon David Erickson Shawn Duncan David Edwards

I've noticed that many employees disclose their disabilities then don't receive the desired responses from their leaders or colleagues. They disclosed one of the most vulnerable parts of themselves, and wonder why their leader or colleagues aren’t responding in an understanding manner. Often, the disclosure was the disability alone. But telling people your disability doesn’t automatically tell people how to interact with or better understand you. Even if you disclose to an expert on your disability, they don’t know exactly what that means for you from the diagnosis alone. For example, I’m autistic and brain injured. vs Because I'm autistic, I don't pick up on subtle cues and do better with direct communication. I tend to be straightforward and I find that conversations go more smoothly when people realize that I say exactly what I mean, without any hidden meanings or implications. I also interpret others' words by the dictionary definitions. And because of a brain injury, I can get overstimulated easily which could lead to seizures. At those times, I need to go somewhere quiet to decompress. The first one says nothing to help others understand me. The second explains the nuances I hope people understand about me, and how they can support me. We can simplify and improve our interactions significantly by speaking to what matters most - not just the disability itself, but what the disability means for us, what we need, and how we need it. (Often, we can say that without disclosing the disability if we don’t want to.) So, next time you seek understanding or support around your disability, try saying what you actually need or the specific points you want others to understand instead of solely disclosing your disability. #DisabilityInclusion #DisabilityAwareness #neurodiversity

After I finished almost 3 hours of autism diagnostic tests, I was asked if I thought I also had ADHD. I was in no state to offer a coherent answer. That was also after ADHD and autism were "scientifically deemed" compatible but before AuDHD became widely talked about. Sure, I am nearly not as organized as a "stereotypical autistic person," but there is nothing stereotypical about the variety of ways in which autistic traits can be expressed. Sure, I spent half my childhood daydreaming, but is that enough? I am too autistic to offer an answer on a guess, so I did not. 🤷♀️ But I often talk to ADHD-curious autistics and autism-curious ADHDers about how we try - and fail - to disentangle stereotypes from the actual plausible manifestations of neurodivergent differences. Within ADHD there are subtypes that can make one ADHDer look very different from another. And while there are no "official" autism subtypes in DSM, there is an infinite variety of individual patterns that the "official" criteria do not account for. And that is before we get to differences in temperament, differences due to trauma, differences due to culture. These differences are the reason I refuse to give a simplistic answer to "how to manage [ insert diagnostic label ] people" and why participation and flexibility are among the foundational principles of my model for intersectional neuroinclusion, The Canary Code. Neurodivergent canaries come in many varieties and are not easily classified - but all deserve individual consideration. And non-toxic cultural air to breathe. Despite the "rocketing rates" headline, the article by Siân Boyle below is a compassionate account of AuDHD that supports clearing the cultural air and increasing understanding of different neurodivergent characteristics in all their complexity - and humanity. Psychological science has a long way to go in finding better "labels" and deepening understanding of neurodivergence. But we should not have to wait for better labels to support and honor each others' dignity and humanity. #autism #ADHD #inclusion #neurodiversity #psychology #dignity #humanity #culture #AuDHD #autistic #neurodivergent #management #trauma https://lnkd.in/gbFuxbsz

Let me show you how a #ChatGPT generated Statement of Purpose (SOP) can hurt your chances of admission to a #PhD or other #graduate program.   I gave ChatGPT4 a very specific prompt to write an SOP that would be relevant to my laboratory at Cornell Engineering.   It came back with a decent statement that would have likely lead to rejection. Why? Here are the top reasons. 🥽 The information was redundant and superficial. It lacked scientific depth and could not demonstrate knowledge of field.   🛑 The summary contained generally correct things (e.g. biofuels include biodiesel and biobutanol) but they did not align with the lab you’re applying to – my group does thermochemical conversion so we do not make these types of fuels. If you are applying to a biological engineering program to engineer microbes for biobutanol production than this would be relevant, but not to the chemical engineering program to do thermochemical fuel conversion. This demonstrates that the candidate would not have taken the time to understand the programs to which they are applying!   🎯 ChatGPT cannot identify a true knowledge gap. It basically summarizes review articles to give an outdated general picture of what research topics are “important” to the field.   🦠  It doesn’t tell me what, exactly, you want to research. You need to identify an area of the field and specific knowledge gaps that you want to tackle, then tell us how you want to tackle them, then how your prior experiences give you the tools you need to learn and grow as a PhD student.   🖍️ It talks generally about being at a prestigious institution – but does not give a real reason as to why this is the right place to do the work. What specific resources – faculty, equipment, courses, setting, contacts, etc – does the school have and how (specifically) will this support your research goals?   🧪  It focuses on you and you alone. The point is to develop a narrative that shows the admissions committee WHY they should take you – what you bring to the program, how you will contribute to the scholarly community. It’s not about what you want, but what you can bring to the table.   🐼 It lacks goals. It says you want a PhD, but it doesn’t tell us what you will contribute to science nor how you will use it to change the world. You can read my entire (line-by-line!) analysis of the ChatGPT-generated text and glean some key insights into writing your own SOP on my website (link in comments below).

I've switched jobs 3 times in the last 5 years, all within the data and AI field. I regret not doing this, especially as an international student. If you are an international student or planning to be one, this post is for you! Create detailed documentation of all your past and present projects and store it in your personal space. A bonus is if you organize it according to the project or company. Some of the pointers you can include to get started: 1. The overall goal of the project 2. How did you contribute 3. What was the impact (Keep it high level, 2X in revenue, 3X in client engagement, no need for actual numbers) 4. What were the challenges, and how did you overcome 5. Who were the key stakeholders (To get letters of recommendation in the future) 6. Attach media articles, links to YouTube videos, etc., as well When you are documenting, imagine applying for an award, extraordinary visa based on your contributions, or fellowship application where they ask about everything you have achieved in the past 5 to 10 years. I was struggling this weekend to document past work from 5 years ago. Learn from my experience and be proactive to avoid similar challenges. P.S.: I am not motivating anyone to store confidential information on their private laptop. Just store “your” contributions and impact. #data #womeninproduct #internationalstudents

Our schools teach us a lot, from maths to history. But how well do they teach us about diversity and the value of different cultures? Many educational programmes around the world still miss out on sharing the full spectrum of global histories and cultures. This gap doesn't just limit knowledge; it also limits understanding and acceptance. So, what steps can we take to make our classrooms more inclusive from the start? 1) Diversifying Reading Materials: Instead of confining reading lists to traditional Western authors, why not introduce students to literary gems from Africa, Asia, and Latin America? Exploring varied narratives allows students to appreciate the richness of global cultures. 2) Teacher Training: Before educators can impart values of diversity and inclusion, they themselves need to be equipped. Regular workshops addressing unconscious biases and strategies for fostering inclusive classrooms can be transformative. 3) Incorporate Global Histories: Instead of a Eurocentric approach, curriculums could weave in histories from different continents, highlighting achievements, struggles, and contributions that shaped the modern world. The benefits of such early D&I interventions are manifold. Students exposed to diverse perspectives tend to be more empathetic, open-minded, and adaptable. They're better equipped to navigate our increasingly interconnected world, fostering environments of mutual respect and collaboration. Imagine a world where every classroom becomes a vibrant tapestry of ideas, histories, and cultures. A place where every student sees a reflection of themselves and also learns to value the reflections of others. Isn't that a future worth striving for? How can we, as stakeholders in education, take actionable steps towards that vision today? For those keen on delving further into the intricacies of early D&I strategies in education, I've linked a seminal article that offers both insights and actionable steps. You'll find it in the comments below. Let's shape the future, one inclusive classroom at a time. #Education #Diversity

If there was a cure for autism, I wouldn't take it. Yes, there are challenges – communication can be tough, and sensory overload is real. But it also means I'm incredibly efficient because I recognize patterns that others miss and am an exceptional facilitator because I don't make assumptions. This week is autism acceptance week. One of the most difficult things for non-autistic people to accept? Many autistic people do not want to be fixed, cured, or solved. Instead, we want supportive policies like flexible work hours and remote working options. Or physical work environments that intentionally consider lighting, sound, smells, etc. Or education to build better relationships with our teams. As an autistic person, I navigate the world differently. Sometimes this feels like an overwhelming burden. Sometimes this feels like a remarkable strength. We have the choice to create more opportunities where the latter is true and the former is more understood. Do your managers have training on how to support autistic team members? Are your meetings and events autism friendly? Do you have policies that support multiple work and communication styles? Autism acceptance isn't just a nice gesture for autistic people, it's at the core of what every workplace and community needs to be successful; caring about the unique experiences of your people and ensuring they get what they need to thrive. (And for representation's sake, here's a picture of me on vacation because autistic travel, go on vacation, come back, go to work, etc. etc.) #ActuallyAutistic #Neurodivergence #AutismAcceptanceWeek #Inclusion