Allison Chen

Brain Dump

Brain Dump is a place for me to put my random thoughts and write about life experiences. Maybe this is more for me than it is for you, but nonetheless, enjoy! If you don’t get bored halfway…

Posts

First Year Reflection

July 2 2023

Every time someone asks me “how was your first year of grad school?” the honest answer is “fast”. I truly can’t believe that it’s been a full academic year; I half-jokingly tell my friends that a whole year has passed, and I have nothing to show for it. In a...
Algorithms to Live By

August 31 2020

Saying it’s been a while since I’ve posted on this blog is an understatement, but better late than never right? Recently, I’ve been reading the book Algorithms to Live By by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths with my good friend, Ash Nagarajan. We’ve been doing an informal sort of book...
Talk to Your Uber Driver

December 12 2019

Okay hello! It’s been a really long time since I’ve updated this, so I think we can safely say it’s been a busy quarter. I finished my finals yesterday (woo! freedom!) and today as I was on my way to LAX to fly back to Chicago, I was inspired to...
Best of Both Worlds

October 10 2019

Something I realized this year and last year when coming to college, I feel like there’s such a divide between my UCLA life and home life. I’m not sure if it’s because the environment is just completely different or because I myself am a different person too. When I come...
Understanding People (well, trying to)

September 12 2019

This topic has been something that really interested me this summer. I talked to my mom a lot about it and from her, realized that working effectively with people is probably one of the hardest things we have to learn to do. It’s not something you can only read from...