On burnout

Hesitancy

It was November 13th, and I was staring down the big, scary “December 1st” deadline on the MIT EECS program website. I’d just recovered from planning MakeCU, and I hadn’t asked a single one of my professors for a letter of recommendation.

Why was it so hard to send the email?

• I kept telling myself I had to do more work on the research project before daring to ask them for a letter.
• But with leading MakeCU and the Robotics Club in general, on top of my normal schoolwork deadlines… I felt at a standstill with my responsibilities, and desperately wanted a break from life.

Locking in with Dan

I text Dan McKeen, a recent doctoral defendee and resident super-senior of the Gang Lab, asking if he was still in the office. If I could do work with him. He said sure, and I paused my Balatro game, threw a jacket on top my PJs, and crawled over to the 3rd floor of Mudd.

I sat down next to his office cubicle, and Dan asks, double checking that I’ve “surely asked professors for letters of recommendation by now, right?” I buried my face into my hands and avoid eye contact. He tells me “Sarah. There’s two weeks left until your first deadline. Lock in.”

We spend the rest of the night sending out all three emails to my professors. I make accounts for the application portals at each of the schools I’m thinking of applying to, and start drafting outlines for my personal statement and research statement of intent. I left that 2 hour work session having made more progress on my PhD. applications than I had made in the entire semester preceding it.

I slept that night, feeling uneasy still.

RE: Letter of recommendation

I wake up the next morning to three emails.

1. Dr. Gang agrees, asking me to send a writeup detailing what I’ve done for the Gang Lab.
2. Professor Tony Dear notes that it’s a little late, but that we could try to make it work.
3. My NYU professor and super-mentor, Dennis Shasha, shoots me a brutally honest response.

Dear Sarah,

In principle, I’m happy to write a letter for you. However, I would have been so much happier if this project were done as we planned to have it done for this summer, because then my letter could attest to its usefulness for people and the paper we would have published.

Also, to me, you look to be a little burned out as a student. I would really want you to wait a year not being a student. There is life outside, even if you are in a lab helping with research.

Nevertheless, if you feel strongly that you want to do this, then I will write a letter. What I need from you is a word document written in the third person (e.g. Sarah did X) with

when Sarah started

Sarah’s main accomplishments in our work together

Warmly,
Dennis

After reading his email, in some way, I felt relieved. Because I knew I had been blowing off my research deadlines to Dennis for the entire summer and fall semester, be it through preparing for MakeCU or otherwise. It was his sentiment of disappointment which I was dreading; now that I’d heard it, my gut could stop catastrophizing over it.

I told him I was open to the idea of waiting a year, but that I would appreciate guidance on how to move forward—asking if we could talk more on this the next time we met. He warmly agreed, offering we meet at 4pm the same day.

I sent over screenshots of our emails to Dan, and asked him if he had time before the meeting to chat. He said sure.

A lunch with Dan

Over a green chipotle chicken wrap, we talk in the cafe inside the Philosophy Building. Dan tells me that a gap year is not a bad idea, “smart even.” and explains that he’s never been convinced I actually wanted to go to grad school, given that I started preparing an application I should have started three months ago, three days ago.

I tell him that research is the end goal for me. That I love the creative process of long-form problem solving, and how it ultimately ties into my goals of doing industry ML / robotics research at a company. And that research and robotics (and math, in hindsight) have been the only things during my time at Columbia which have felt “real.”

He says fine, but that my GPA’s on the edge for the schools I’m wanting to apply to, and that I simply don’t have enough time to put together a compelling application this year. And that my letter writers don’t either. I leave the conversation with my head hung low, silent and resigned.

Dennis’s advice

4pm arrives sooner than I’m able to catch my breath. I log onto Zoom to see Dennis’s familiar, smiling face. “Sarah, sweetie. How are you?”

I explain to him my situation and motivation for applying to grad school—the same reasons I told Dan over lunch.

Dennis tells me that the first time he met me, he saw I was full of vigor and enthusiasm. In contrast, he says that these days, I just look tired.

He explains that he felt the same in his senior year of undergrad. He was sick of school and took three years off to work at IBM, with the intention of never coming back. However, during his time there, he developed a clearer understanding of the world, and grew a burning hunger to go back to school.

I ask him, “what’s the harm in applying this cycle?”

He tells me that my application will be much stronger next year—with our project wrapped up, he will be able to write a much more compelling letter of recommendation. Moreover, he explains that admissions committees will be more wary to accept someone who has already applied and been rejected.

With that, I resigned myself to his wisdom. I tell him that I’ll take his advice. Slapping my face into shape, I say: “Time to find a job.”