As someone who has gone through psychotherapy and counselling for the past 8 years, working through depression, anxiety and trauma, I can attest mental health is an urgent, yet difficult and highly nuanced conversation for our society today. I'm thrilled to see people are more willing to talk, unlearn and seek support now than they … Continue reading I Have Been in Psychotherapy for 8 Years. This Is What I Learnt.
Losing Our Guardian Angel to COVID-19
In the fall of 1998, Niloufer Manzur sent a letter to her students in Sunbeams. Dhaka, along with the rest of the country, was completely flooded. Millions were homeless. Schools were cancelled. In her letter, Mrs. Manzur asked her students to be patient and give to charity. She was optimistic we will emerge out of … Continue reading Losing Our Guardian Angel to COVID-19
Applying to Grad Schools in the U.S.
I go to the Goldman School of Public Policy at University of California, Berkeley, and I get tons of emails requesting for information on the application process. I thought it's best to put everything in a blog post. Between working at One Degree Initiative Foundation, the countless coaching centers and the numerous Facebook groups, I … Continue reading Applying to Grad Schools in the U.S.
A Non-Engineer’s Year in Silicon Valley
In April 2011, my organization from Bangladesh signed a contract with Khan Academy and their partners, Agami from the U.S. to translate and localize their education content in Bangladesh. It took nearly seven months to finalize the deal, meticulously reviewing the requirements, capacity to execute and leadership of the contract. A social enterprise working in … Continue reading A Non-Engineer’s Year in Silicon Valley
Musings #1
To this day, I have had 6 near-death experiences. The funny thing about nearly dying is that you don't feel like it's about to happen -- it feels uneventful and can be summed up in the sensation of a microsecond. I had often felt I was dying when I had a migraine pain or a … Continue reading Musings #1
#4
I discovered that my obsession for having each thing in the right place, each subject at the right time, each word in the right style, was not the well-deserved reward of an ordered mind but just the opposite: a complete system of pretense invented by me to hide the disorder of my nature. I discovered … Continue reading #4
#3
He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves. -- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera
Why I Took a Break from My One True Calling
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” I looked at Thomas with surprise. He is unreasonably tall, so every time I look at him, I actually have to look up. He is wearing a lemon cotton shirt, his legs uncomfortably folded underneath the low dinner table. His company has just signed a … Continue reading Why I Took a Break from My One True Calling
#2
But the subject of war never came up until Billy brought it up himself. Somebody in the zoo crowd asked him through the lecturer what the most valuable thing he had learned on Tralfamadore was so far, and Billy replied, “How the inhabitants of a whole planet can live in peace! As you know, I … Continue reading #2
#1
Each clump of symbol is a brief, urgent message -- describing a situation, a scene. We Tralfamadorians read them all once, not one after the other. There isn't a particular relationship between all the messages, except that the author has chosen them carefully, so that when seen all at once, they produce an image of … Continue reading #1
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