In which I am somehow still an MIT student by Alex M. '21

In broad strokes, my life in 2025 is not so different from my life in 2021. I’m a student at MIT studying aerospace engineering. I live in Somerville with my wife, whom I have lived with since January 2021, and whom I have dated since October 2017.⁠01 A cautionary note to the freshmen reading this: you should probably not expect to marry the person you broke the November rule with. And yet, in the last four years, I graduated from MIT, twice. I got engaged and then married. I got a dog. I moved, once, and now I’ve lived in the same apartment for 3.5 years, after moving 5 times in a single year. I won a big novelty check in a competition.⁠02 I won't say what the competition was, but it wasn't a game show I had many hiking and rock climbing⁠03 yes, I'm basic. but I'm also having fun and I've gotten way stronger adventures.

When I last wrote here in spring 2021, I was living off-campus in Winter Hill, and spent my time anxiously waiting to get vaccinated for COVID, doomscrolling, and trying to “make the most” of my last semester of college, despite not being on campus. I took four classes, and had one UROP, and hung out with my roommates and my girlfriend. 04 Fun fact: shortly after graduating, my roommates got married (to each other) and my wife and I made their wedding cake. Several years later, they essentially returned the favor by picking up our cake from the Flour commercial kitchen in Boston and driving it to our venue. I knew I was going to graduate school, and I expected to complete my PhD in STAR Lab, and to work on satellite controls.

As spring 2021 bled into summer, I graduated online. I didn’t watch, but my parents did. I started in the AeroAstro PhD program at MIT on June 1, 2021.⁠05 technically before I actually graduated undergrad I started grad school in STAR Lab, the same lab that I had UROP’ed in. That first year of grad school, I was funded to work on data validation for TROPICS, a weather satellite, and on efficiently co-locating data from different types of satellites. I also continued my UROP work on guidance, navigation, and control for BeaverCube, a student-built magnetically actuated satellite. I also worked on on-orbit cloud identification for small satellites, which eventually became my master’s thesis.⁠06 In my program, incoming students without a master's degree have to write a master's thesis and are awarded a non-terminal master's degree en route to the PhD. So although I didn't get to walk in 2021 for my SB, I did get to walk in 2023 for my SM. I also took classes. It was a very busy year.

In June 2022, my now-wife proposed while we were canoeing on Lake Washington on a very sunny day. I counter-proposed in August, at a picnic at a sculpture garden in Massachusetts. Even though we had already been engaged for months and she knew exactly what was happening, I was incredibly nervous — I wanted everything to be perfect. I kept waiting for a private moment, which never came because we were at a popular picnic spot on a sunny weekend day, so I eventually gave up and got down on one knee in front of a few random people. Even more embarrassingly, after hyping up the proposal for weeks, I forgot my entire speech. Luckily, she still said yes, and by the time we got married in 2024, my semi-botched proposal was just a sweet and funny memory.

shortly after engagement #2

My wife and I didn’t want to plan our wedding right away, so we decided to adopt a dog instead. 2023 is the year of the dog, we said; 2024 will be the year of the wedding. After using ChatGPT to write our landlord an email asking if we could get a dog and extensively discussing what potential problem behaviors we could and could not tolerate, I saw a dog on the internet with really big ears⁠07 His ears look slightly more proportional now that he's at a healthy body weight and “mild gastrointestinal issues”⁠08 his GI were caused by his penchant for swallowing random things whole. we've only been to the emergency vet for this twice. but once he swallowed a gigantic pinecone whole while off-leash, and we didn't know about it until he threw it up at 2 am that night. once we got over our shock and horror, we congratulated him for surviving the experience and saving us $200 at the vet. who needed a home. We named him Percy, which is short for Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover or for Perseus Jackson, depending on who you ask. Since April 2023, Percy has gone from severely underweight at 35 lb to healthy at 50 lb,⁠09 to be clear, we adopted him when he was 1.5, so he gained 15 lb without getting taller or longer or anything like that. we are very proud of our son. even though we wanted (and thought we were getting) a <40 lb dog, i can still carry him up and down the stairs so it's fine. and has also transitioned from prescription dog food to normal dog food. He is a very friendly and playful dog who has been described as “difficult to harness and leash” (because he gets too excited) and as having a “lust for life”.⁠10 Many people are saying this. He loves food, going outside, eating random stuff off the sidewalk, playing fetch, and interrupting Zoom meetings.

percy on the red line

me and percy when i was in my nose piercing era and he was in his acute malnourishment era

percy after a trail run

percy (big ears) and his best friend lily (black lab with normal ears) expressing their desire for peanut butter

although i am not pictured, i was also riding in the backseat with percy and lily

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I also switched research groups in 2023. After finishing my master’s thesis, I wanted to focus on controls and optimization for my PhD. I had actually been interested in controls since before starting grad school, and had even worked on satellite controls as an undergrad in STAR Lab. My advisor was also very supportive of me and was basically willing to let me research whatever I wanted. However, STAR Lab’s research focuses primarily on space optics and space systems, and I found it difficult to settle on a project and find collaborators. This wasn’t an issue with my previous UROP, because I had been working with Patrick, a senior grad student who shared my research interests. But Patrick was graduating soon,⁠11 he graduated in fall 2024! and I wanted to start a new project focused on planetary entry, descent, and landing, but I didn’t feel equipped to work entirely on my own. I felt (and still feel) that it’s not possible to do substantive original research in a vacuum. Successful researchers collaborate, and try to produce work which fits into and is in conversation with the broader scientific literature.

So, even though I felt perfectly welcome in STAR Lab, I switched into the Aerospace Controls Lab (ACL) towards the end of 2023. Switching labs is hard and humbling and I’m glad that I did it. I felt like I knew as much as a first-year student, but as a third-year, I also felt pressure to publish and to have a clearly defined research vision. I spent most of my third year reading papers and taking extra classes to try to catch up. My PhD research focuses on uncertainty-aware guidance algorithms for aerocapture, which is a maneuver where a spacecraft plunges through the atmosphere of a planet to slow itself down, in order to successfully enter into an orbit around the planet. So, I read about aerocapture, and uncertainty-aware path planning, and for good measure, I read a lot of recent papers from ACL and related groups at other institutions, and I read the papers that those papers cited, and I read the papers that those papers cited. At one point, I spent a weekend in New Hampshire taking a self-rescue course for rock climbers, and I brought a stack of papers to read in my sleeping bag at night.⁠12 cringe. but posting cringe is how we bloggers celebrate anniversaries.

In addition to reading and taking controls classes, I also spent a lot of time developing my own aerocapture simulation and re-implementing different algorithms from the literature. I was very busy, but I was also not publishing. My new advisor suggested that I defend my thesis proposal by the end of the semester, which he defined as “the end of May”, so I scheduled my thesis proposal defense for May 31. I passed, officially turning me into an ABD grad student.⁠13 all but dissertation However, the dissertation is the hard part and the whole point of the PhD, so I still felt very far away from graduation. Also, I was getting married at the end of June, and I still didn’t have a tie, and hadn’t written my vows. Also, even though my PhD committee approved my thesis proposal, they had fairly different ideas about what I should do next. ⁠14 I have since sort of solved this problem by deciding that whoever pays me gets final say, and I'm currently paying myself via fellowship funds, so *ron swanson voice* I do what I want Also, I had to get on a cross-country flight six hours later to attend my brother’s high school graduation,⁠15 When I started undergrad at MIT, he was starting middle school, and now he is a freshman in college; I am old and I hadn’t packed.

Luckily, I made my flight, and I wrote my vows, and my wife bought me a tie while I was at my brother’s graduation. The last two weeks of June were a blur of wedding planning. We went to the florist, and designed table numbers, and got a cashier’s check to send to the caterer, and made a shopping list for our rehearsal dinner. We learned our venue did not allow open flames and redesigned our ceremony to use artificial flowers instead of candles. My wife, who is a program manager and has project management skills that I do not have and greatly admire, took the lead on planning, so somehow I only experienced a fraction of the work, but we were both busy. Suddenly, it was June 30 and we were driving to the venue. The sky threatened thunderstorms, but the weather held, and soon we were taking photos, and then walking down the aisle. It was the best day of my life. I love being in love, and I loved celebrating with a small group of family and friends. Our wedding was officiated by a friend, and other friends signed our ketubah as witnesses, helped set up, designed floral table arrangements, and DJ’ed the reception. It was really special to see our community come together for us.

<3

After a brief mini-honeymoon in Providence, we returned to Somerville and I returned to my normal life, except with more name change paperwork.⁠16 my wife and I used to share a middle name, and now that is our shared last name. our previous last names are now our middle names. yes, this confused the people at the RMV. i also legally shortened my first name to Alex, which confused them even more. but when you get married in Massachusetts you can legally change any part of your name on your marriage certificate, so i guess a potential life hack for people who want to change their first names is to just get married in MA. I started working towards the first conference paper of my PhD, and climbed as much as I could. I was training for a trip to Goat Wall in Mazama, WA to climb Flyboys, an easy/moderate 18-pitch sport route, with my friend Collin. Towards the end of September, shortly after submitting my conference paper, we flew into Seattle, where I borrowed my dad’s SUV and some camping gear. Next, we drove to Bellingham, where Collin borrowed his friend’s SUV and some camping gear from his mom. Then, we drove in separate cars for about four hours on the very beautiful⁠17 North Cascades National Park is terminally underrated and fairly remote⁠18 As in, no towns for 70 miles near Washington Pass, because the pass closes for the entire winter North Cascades Highway, communicating by Rocky Talkie.⁠19 walkie-talkies for rugged mountain men. there was (probably obviously) no cell phone reception for most of the trip

After dropping off one of the cars at the top of Goat Wall,⁠20 You can get off the top of Flyboys by rappelling 18 pitches (slow and very hard to do safely in the dark), or hiking 20 minutes to a pitted gravel road, and then driving or walking (also slow and hard to do safely in the dark) 10 miles down the road. It took us about 1 hour to drive 10 miles on the road because it was in such bad condition, but I'm still *really* glad we had two cars. We actually ended up giving other climbers a ride down so that they didn't have to rappel, and they took photos of us climbing in exchange! we had a taste of the Wild West at BJ’s Branding Iron Saloon⁠21 truly indescribable, but definitely a saloon of all time, and also it was the only place open after 8 pm for at least 70 miles in Twisp, WA, and set up camp in the dark. We woke up before sunrise, broke camp, and headed to the base of Goat Wall. It was cold, but the climbing was fun and surprisingly easy, and the rock quality was very good. Several hours and 14 pitches later, it started to rain. We felt ready to be done, but we were not done. Climbing 18 pitches is sort of like being an MIT student for 18 consecutive semesters.⁠22 not that I would know anything about that! it's only my 16th semester We kept going. We topped out a little after 5 pm, after about ten hours of climbing, and the sun broke through the clouds, and it felt incredible.

The next day, we set out to Washington Pass⁠23 yes, the creatively named Washington Pass is a mountain pass in Washington state to summit Liberty Bell via the Beckey Route. We did not succeed. After two hours of hiking, including a spicy scramble up a class 4 gully,⁠24 Some say terrain class corresponds to the number of points of contact required to safely move. Class 1 = basically paved, class 2= hike, class 3 = rock scrambling with one hand on the rocks, class 4 = hard rock scrambling with two hands on the rocks, class 5 = rock climbing with a rope, protected by bolts or trad gear we reached the base of the climb in an exposed notch between Liberty Bell and Concord Tower.⁠25 Liberty Bell is about 7700 ft and this notch was at about 7300 feet, so not particularly high but notably about 1000 ft higher than the summit of Mt. Washington. however there is no cog railway on Liberty Bell. still crazy to me though that it's higher than every US mountain east of the Mississippi but is barely half the height of Mt Rainier, and is not considered prominent enough to bother listing in any ranked list of WA summits While waiting for another climbing party to start moving, we got very cold, and then we got cold feet. We slowly inched our way out of the gully, and the wind died down and the sun came out as we exited the gully onto a marked climber’s trail, ⁠26 generally a climber's trail is just a bad, short-ish, and very steep version of a hiking trail, usually with some bushwhacking or gully scrambling required and sometimes very difficult pathfinding. it's unusual for them to be marked, but this was a popular climbing area in a fragile alpine environment, so the trail was marked and maintained and then continued downhill to a hiking trail to Blue Lake. We ditched our packs just off the trail and decided to check out Blue Lake. We talked about bringing a bothy bag on future alpine trips to protect against the cold, and we took photos. Then, we picked up our bags, hiked out, drove west for hours on the North Cascades Highway, and finally ate some well-deserved pizza.

me leading the last pitch of flyboys (picture taken by scott and gary, who kindly took photos of us in exchange for a ride off the mountain). we started by the dry riverbed 2000ft below where i'm about to top out

me belaying collin up the last pitch of flyboys. he was a champ with the giant backpack. picture taken by scott and gary

me and collin at the notch between liberty bell and concord tower. i look pained because i was very cold

blue lake is blue as advertised

random cool pic i took on a mitoc hike

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Now it’s January 2025. I’m participating in MITOC Winter School, and trying to extend the conference paper I submitted last fall into a journal paper, while also starting what will hopefully become the second contribution of my PhD. I also spend a lot of time playing video games⁠27 recent hits include plate up and all the zelda games available on switch with and cooking with my wife. Yesterday, we took Percy to Middlesex Fells and he had a blast running around in the mud. The day before that, I hiked Liberty and Flume with MITOC and had a blast walking around in the snow. Tomorrow, I’ll take the T to MIT, and I’ll code and read and write and return some gear to the MITOC office. I don’t know where I’ll be in four years, but I like my life now, and for that I am very grateful.