When I think back on my time in Washington, D.C., for the 2026 CASE Workshop, what returns to me first is not a talking point, or a statistic, or even a room. It is motion. It is the feeling of walking being surrounded by students from across the country who had come for the same reason: to understand how science survives in public life.
When I went to Hawai‘i with the Caltech Y, I thought I was signing up for a meaningful spring break experience, a chance to see beautiful places, learn something new, and meet people. What I did not expect was that Hawai‘i would touch a wound in me I had carried for years — one I had almost stopped trying to name.
By the time the doors opened at Scott Brown Gym on March 10, the students of Caltech’s ME 72 capstone course had already spent months living inside the problem. For roughly 15 weeks, teams of mechanical and civil engineering undergraduates had designed, machined, wired, coded, tested, broken, repaired, and rebuilt robots for one public reckoning: the 41st Annual ME 72 Engineering Design Competition. When the machines finally rolled onto the floor, the question was no longer whether the ideas were clever. It was whether they would work under pressure.
Okay, so I’ve thrown a lot of philosophy at you. But here’s the thing: this isn’t meant to be intellectual trivia for impressing people at parties. The ancient Greeks called philosophy a “way of life” — not an academic subject, but a set of practices for living well.
When you see an event titled “Communicating The Climate Crisis,” you might expect another earnest lecture about melting ice caps accompanied by guilt-inducing polar bear photos. But Wändi Bruine de Bruin — Provost Professor of Public Policy, Psychology and Behavioral Science at USC — had a different message for the Student Activism Speaker Series crowd: You’re doing it wrong.
7:09 PM. The Walk Home. The heat hits me like a wall when I step outside. The medical center is still busy, but I feel like I’m moving through a different dimension than everyone else.
All names and identifying details in this narrative have been altered to protect privacy. The scenes represent composite experiences and reflections from critical care shadowing, not specific individuals or cases. Dialogue is paraphrased and not verbatim.
Here’s something that’s going to blow your mind: you can’t become happy by chasing happiness. It’s like trying to fall asleep by trying really hard to fall asleep — the trying IS the problem. Philosophers call this “the paradox of hedonism,” and John Stuart Mill learned it the hard way.
I had to excuse myself to the bathroom after this one. Just sat there in the stall crying, trying to be quiet. It felt embarrassing, but also, I couldn’t stop because it felt like something inside me was finally breaking open.
It sounds counterintuitive, but trying to avoid all suffering can make you more miserable. If your life is organized around avoiding discomfort—skipping hard classes, avoiding difficult conversations, numbing out with Netflix and social media—it’s not working, is it?
