Growing Interest in NYC
I’ve met many great mentors/new friends over the past few months. There’s something really interesting about this extremely crowded city (I now live in NYC). People here are generally friendly and they love hearing about people’s experiences and sharing their own. I have probably made the most number of friends here in New York since I left college (and note that I don’t consider acquaintances as friends).
I’ve gotten great advices from senior people even though I don’t work with them (i.e., we are not collaborators). They love spending time mentoring students in general! I have had a lot of interpersonal connections here. This really surprises me because I grew up in a city like NYC (Hong Kong) which even more densely populated; however, we are always minding our own business –nobody would bother to learn about another person as a person nor understand the feeling when you can connect with others in conversations and experiences.
I think I am beginning to like NYC… It somehow brings together a group of people who are different but similar in some ways, in ways deeper than saying many people are white collars, in ways I don’t have a word for it now.
Mentorship: my fear of uncertainties
One of my latest goals in life is to become a better person by learning from people’s attributes that I admire.
Today, I had a chat with Viviana Acquaviva, a professor at CUNY, after our last machine learning x galaxy formation “class/hackathon” workshop. Viviana is a great person to talk to –she’s always supportive, encouraging, and cheerful. She’s also a great teacher. I enjoyed all the lectures, coding, and hacking sessions. I just really enjoy the fact that while we all work on our own projects, we work in a “semi-group” setting and discuss our problems and what we’ve learned twice a week.
Viviana asked pointy questions when I feel uncertain about my career and helped me see through where I was stuck. She asked pointy questions e.g., what would I choose or want to do if fear and uncertainties are out of the question? It struck me, and I realized whenever I feel lost, it’s often because of fear in taking risks and the fear of uncertainties.
I don’t know what is it, I already knew exactly what actions I should take for planning my career ahead, it’s just that she somehow cleared the fog ahead of my thoughts.