Dear reader,
This week I conducted my last interview of the semester with my friend and colleague Priyanka.
Alex Reineke:
You're ready to wrap up the year.
Priyanka Suresh:
Yeah!
AR:
What did you learn? What's the most important thing you learned? And it doesn't have to be like, “I learned how to cure cancer” or something.
PS:
Well, I did that, yeah, obviously, but a bigger accomplishment other than curing cancer… I feel like I learned about myself in terms of what types of environments I thrive in, and then how to seek those environments out and hack any system to work in my favor. What I'm learning is that for a lot of projects, if at the very beginning I can't get started right away, like right away, in that minute, if I don't already know what the first two steps are and they're not completely accessible to me, production is never going to happen. So making sure that when you decide to do something, it's something feasible, and you're not just reaching for the stars.
AR:
Can you give an anecdote of when that happened?
PS:
So, last semester I really wanted to start a dancing SIG, a special interest group. SIG is a “special interest group.” I wanted to start this little club within M5, but the problem was that a lot of things weren't clear to me, the structure of the SIG and what exactly would be happening. What wasn’t clear was what the product would be, what the dancers would be doing beyond just a simple sensor project. After talking to mentors, they wanted something bigger, but because it required going out of my way to figure out more about the field in a way that wasn’t already structured, in the sense that I didn’t know what I was looking for, I found it really, really hard to keep researching. And moreover, with the structural problems, it wasn’t something I could start right at the get‑go, just because I was away all summer, and then coming back and getting meetings set up and getting approvals, all the hurdles.
AR:
You're saying, “If I don't already know how to start it, it's hard for it to come to fruition,” yeah. For the dance SIG, an example would be: if you had a book or a database, or if you were just given a thing that pointed you in a direction, as opposed to just saying, “Oh, this is dance plus electronics.”
PS:
“Have at it,” yeah. Definitely. Like, currently we're starting a SWE (Society of Women Engineers) design team, and that's already up and running because it was completely on my own, I didn’t have to seek approval from anyone. I had a pretty solid vision. I could just get started right away. I think things get messed up if you don't really know exactly what you're gunning toward.
AR:
Yeah, you've realized that you can find places where that happens, like, “I'm not going to go into a room and agree to do something if I don't already kind of understand how to do the first step.” That's so interesting. You're looking for clarity. I think that's admirable, because a lot of people don’t do that. And in order to seem intelligent or whatever, they just make up a bunch of crap. You're kind of done with that, yeah.
PS:
Because I feel like as a sophomore, I was very “I'll just commit and then figure it out.” Like, put yourself in the ocean, you'll learn how to swim. But I drowned many times. So now it's like, okay, let's start in the kiddie pool. Let's make sure we know what we're doing, and then we'll start getting deeper and deeper.
AR:
Yeah, you're just trying to build a good foundation for yourself. You're just trying to make sure that you have a good foundation.
PS:
It's definitely shown in terms of the Rocket Team and SWE with the design team I talked about. But also with the Rocket Team, the current project I'm working on is something I knew I could do end‑to‑end when I said yes to it, and it's coming along, and it's set to fly in June.
AR:
That sounds awesome. Good luck for the launch. Thank you so much.
PS:
All right, thank you.
