My life has been a blur of acceleration: graduating middle school early, AP classes in high school, a dual degree program in college etc. I graduated with my masters at 23, more credentialed than most people my age but more lost than most people wirth my credentials. Living in the…

Last year, I did an end of year reflection with a friend group. It was very convergent eg. asking us to select a couple values and a couple priorities in each area of our lives. …

Once upon a time, there was a naive woman named Tara. She had internalized toxic ideas about suicidality from her Midwestern American environment. …

I went to my first Chicago tech networking event this week after spending two months in San Francisco and it was a breath of fresh air! I’m not saying that not only because of the great conversations but also because of the average ones! I appreciated how the conversations that…

While I appreciate it when founders ask what I’d do for their startup rather than extrapolating based on my past work, I noticed that it only turned into a healthy working relationship when these unpaid discussions took less than an hour before transitioning to paid agreements to go deeper. Early…

It’s no secret that side projects give us an edge as coders, but sometimes staring at a screen alone debugging for hours on end is the last thing we want to do after a job of just that. In my experiences with mentorship, homework help, and interview practice meetups, hackathons…

I never found that one partner or best friend who could meet my every need. Every time I came close was heartbreaking. …

When discussing challenges that affect the ingroup too (eg. distractions, overwhelm, lack of clarity, or being put on the spot,) bringing up identity can frame them as personal rather than situational issues and lead people to insist that we change ourselves rather than working together to change the situation. Focusing…

I grew up in an immigrant family. We didn’t have cable TV, seasonal decor, or the latest fashions. Their example of ignoring fads and prioritizing what was important to them empowered me to finish grad school while working full-time, move every year or two for work, and become a part-time…