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+---
+layout: post
+title:  "Spending winter break alone (not lonely)"
+date:   2024-06-16 10:01:30 -0500
+categories: [Reflections, research]
+---
+# The understated struggles of international students
+Last August 2023, I started applying for software engineering internships around the US—apparently, I was already late to the “game”. My peers have already been applying since the start of the summer. I got demoralized—it was not the best news to receive. But I continued since I’ve already set my mind. They said it was normal to apply to more than 50 companies—so I did. However, chances were so slim, rejections piled up, as expected. What was unusual was that my rejection email was sent 5 minutes after I submitted my application. It turns out that the company was unable to sponsor me a working visa.
+
+It was an unfortunate pattern of rejection after rejection until finally, I got into the next round. They wanted to interview me. As the company asked the basic “why” questions, my responses did not come naturally to me. I needed to dig deeper. It turns out that the simple question pushed me to see that I’ve gone astray from the college freshman who wanted to have a purposeful and impactful career.
+
+Unfortunately, the reason that first went to my mind when asked was financial stability. I did not want to get kicked out of the US after graduation since my student visa would only let me work if I had a job. It didn’t help that I came from a middle-class family in the Philippines. I wanted to give back as soon as possible to my parents who never got the chance to further their education and experience the world. On the contrary, I did not want to be performative and lie about why I wanted to get the job.
+
+The Fall semester was about to end, and what made it worse was that it felt like everybody was ahead, and there I was, jobless for the next summer.
+
+> Others: “Have you interviewed for a SWE internship?”
+Ed: “I haven’t. Have you?”
+Others: “Yeah, I have three interviews on Friday.”
+Others: “Yeah, I already accepted my offer at [*insert a big tech company’s name]”
+
+# Intentionally listening to my voice and mine alone
+Realizing that the external pressure prevented me from planning my next steps, I had to step back and think about what I actually wanted.
+
+Winter break was the best time to reflect and listen to my thoughts–Duke’s campus was pretty empty and quiet. It was a long three weeks. During this period of silence, I remembered the questions I brought with me when I first set foot on US soil.
+
+> How can we use satellite technology to narrow social inequalities and address the climate change phenomenon? How can we implement such existing methods in under-resourced communities?
+
+These are questions that have been lingering in my thoughts since back in the Philippines. For some reason, I, for a short while forgot about them. I took some time to listen to my voice, and to be fair, not a lot of my peers within the ECE department asked these questions. Certainly, a software engineering internship with the big tech companies was not going to help me answer them.
+
+As we all know, climate change has impacted the world in so many ways but more importantly, it has disproportionately affected those communities that contribute the least to the global carbon emissions. [^1] Coming from these communities who can now access state-of-the-art resources, I felt compelled to pursue such an impactful research career. From then on, I started getting serious about planning to go to graduate school to be more involved with the relevant research.
+
+Unfortunately, only a few institutions in the US ask the same questions as myself. Looking through various labs, I have come to notice that only the top universities like MIT and Stanford have labs that work on this niche topic due to their overwhelming amounts of funding and their interdisciplinary and technical nature. Luckily, both universities offer a summer research program for college students.[^2],[^3]
+
+# Quality over quantity
+Coming from a mindset of shooting my shot to as many places as possible, I attempted to apply to both. Writing my essays for the MIT Summer Research Program (MSRP) was a breeze as unlike those from my internship interview, I almost immediately came up with answers. I particularly liked my discussion of the community which strongly resonates with MIT’s strong tradition of “making a better world”. Said community is my hometown where I spent 18 years of my life. Spending time outside of it made me realize things that I would not have thought of had I stayed. These queries eventually materialized into a long-term [project](https://planet-tales.org/) that aims to reveal narratives of disadvantaged communities to those who have the means to initiate change.
+
+On the other hand, Stanford’s questions did not come as easy to answer as MIT’s, and more importantly, they had an explicitly mentioned preference toward US citizens which unfortunately is the case for almost all REU programs funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). So I ended up applying to only a single research program.
+
+I would once have thought it was insane to have only applied to a single summer research program—what a gamble my mind intuitively took! But deep inside, I somehow knew that the fit was almost perfect, seeing that the program strongly encourages “students with research interests focusing on underserved populations and understanding issues of inequalities”.
+
+On March 4th, while I was reading some lecture slides before my class started at 10:05 am, I received the acceptance email, a letter that not only gave me the calm from constantly worrying about my summer but also validated my interests not exhibited by a majority of my peers.
+
+# Take it slow, be intentional!
+If there is one piece of life lesson that I would bring with me forward, it would be the merits of taking things slow. It was the change of pace and intentional silencing of the environment that ultimately led me to pursue something that I wanted. Instead of matching others’ frequencies, I’ve learned that there is a sweet range where I can hear myself and a select group of people who acknowledges my potential.
+
+I guess the next challenge for us is figuring out how to guide one’s self into finding such frequencies. This becomes more crucial in the next few weeks as I start my internship with the other 97 undergraduates participating in MSRP.
+
+
+Yesterday, I met one of my heroes: [Maria Ressa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Ressa). Before then, I failed to mentally and emotionally prepare myself for such a moment. She entered the room where we were about to have a discussion group and the way she smiled at me when she was approaching her seat was nerve-racking. When she started to talk, all her lectures and symposiums I had watched on YouTube suddenly came to life, appeared two (physical) meters from me. [^1] 
+
+We then started, introducing ourselves to her. I didn’t know what to say; I didn’t want to be pretentious in my introduction. I wanted to be authentic, so I did not prepare anything. Words came out of my mouth. It was enough to explain the purpose of my presence in the meeting, but it was not enough to express my high due to her presence. So I interjected, _“Sorry, I’m so starstruck right now. I’ve watched all your lectures and your Nobel Prize lecture probably three times now.”_ To which she responded, _“I’m sorry if I bored you.”_ _“Not at all,”_ I reaffirmed. 
+
+The attention span I exuded was unbelievably unwavering. Her eloquence and stature fueled my full attentiveness. Her talking about her work back at Rappler and her current responsibilities made me feel more special as she was able to squeeze time for us in her Nobel-Laureate-like schedule. Throughout the meeting, I was silently mesmerized until she stopped talking and invited us to ask her questions. I was hesitant at first because that was just me–being afraid that my question was not worthy enough to answer. But she looked at me and invited me to ask my question as if she knew that I wanted to ask something. Maybe it was obvious in my facial expression. I asked her the question without my usual fear. I said, not in the exact words,
+
+> “Growing up in the rural areas in the Philippines, I always have been apolitical in the sense that my parents don’t want me to risk my life speaking up and standing up for the truth. As someone who has multiple criminal cases that could lead to a total of 103 years of being incarcerated, where do you find your courage to hold the line?”
+
+
+> “That’s a great question.”
+
+She then went on and on about the stories of her being arrested in the middle of her usual workday. It was a long response to a seemingly difficult question requiring an intense deep personal reflection. But in between these lines, I picked up, _“It’s the little moments that decide the course of actions I pursue. I’m not sure if it’s courage, but I only do my work and in journalism, our work is to share with everyone the untarnished truth.”_ I believe she is referring to the harsh truth that some people in power may dislike and may express aversion to it being publicized. 
+
+Although she explicitly stated that she was not answering my question, I thought the message she wanted to come across the void I was able to pick up. Her message was admirable, I thought it was the best response I could have gotten from her. 
+
+Summing up her morals and knowing what is right, she has held the line from the personal attacks of the government. [^2] The misuse of political power being displayed in front of her drove her to define the lines of not only her human rights but of society. We hold the line because we chose to address the injustices right in front of us. We hold the line because the very essence of our humanity is being compromised. We hold the line because the moment we choose silence, we misexpress consent. In her book, I remembered reading the letter one of her dying co-founders in Rappler sent her. [^3]
+
+> “Because not fighting would ignore the very real option that still exists: the handful of brave, honorable souls putting their lives on the line on the firm belief that Filipinos can get better; can choose to get better; deserve better. They represent, if not a cure, the lone path to cure too late for my benefit, perhaps, but for the next generation.”
+
+My question for a very long time of where my heroes get their courage to fight knowing the stakes are their lives is now answered by one of them. What’s only left to decide is the choice whether to take on the risk or not. This is the decision my parents have been shielding me from, but unfortunately, due to my stubbornness, I have managed to get out of the cover area to explore what they’re protecting me from.
+
+My lack of preparation, I realized, became necessary to my unfiltered queries and thoughts and her reinforcing responses.  In my own way, I also want to hold the line with and for the Filipinos. _“In the long term, the most important thing is education…”_ [^4] I believe it is, and my deep connection to the art of teaching is something I would hold on to for a long time. _“In the medium term, it’s policy and legislation, to restore the rule of law in the virtual world…”_ Thus, it will be a supplement to my path to being a technologist. Finally, _“In the short term, now, it’s just collaborate, collaborate, collaborate…”_ We, the youth, will work together as we have been and as we prepare to lead broken yet worthy-to-fix systems.
+
+[^1]: I recommend watching her [Nobel lecture](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsWVb2AUl5Y)
+[^2]: [Maria Ressa: Fighting an Onslaught of Online Violence](https://www.icfj.org/our-work/maria-ressa-big-data-analysis)
+[^3]: One of her co-founders who Maria refers to as _Manangs_  which is a term given to older sisters in Iloko (Filipino language)
+[^4]: Striking sentences and passages from Maria Ressa's book entitled 'How to Stand Up to a Dictator"