This is a perpetually standing invitation :D
Hey, I’m Kevin! I’m from Dallas and an upcoming junior at MIT. Here are some things about me:
I really like doggos. I have one of those ubiquitous small white rat dogs. His name is Hooshabang, and he’s a mean little guy. He sits on the ground whenever another dog or human walks by to try to ambush them. He only has one other dog “friend,” and whenever the dog has a sleepover at our house, Hooshabang will push him under the bed and block his exit out. Also, whenever the other dog tries to climb up the stairs, my dog will race to the stair right above him and lie down, so the dog can’t get up the stairs. Here’s a picture:
I really like nature and stargazing (the Perseid meteor shower is coming up which I’m incredibly excited for!) My favorite place in Boston is Mount Auburn cemetery of which I’m a very frequent visitor.
I also like being active! I enjoy running, climbing, skating, swimming, dance, and tennis, but I love to do all sorts of things that involve my body. Here’s a climb from a while ago I was proud of:
Recently I’ve been trying to learn more about the physical world! Things like machining, FPGAs, and physics. Both from the engineering side, like the ability to make things that feel like magic to me, like drones and other things that fly, and the science side, like understanding the entire stack of how things work, from the atoms to the user interfaces. Something I hope to contribute to is HCI in the physical world!
I love history, especially Chinese history. One of my favorite stories from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms is when Zhu-Ge-Liang, the wizard-genius of the story, defeating Zhou Yu, the top general from an enemy kingdom, by rage-baiting him three times so hard that he died from anger.
I also enjoy writing! I write a newsletter to friends about my life (because obviously the epitome of humility is writing about myself), and also fictional short stories or novellas. The most recent one I wrote was about a girl who grew up with a single mother and whose Dad moved to China to chase his dreams, and how that upbringing has slowly shifted her views on ambition over time as she goes to college and sees the world. Before that, I wrote a story about a girl who possesses a one-time-use camera with magical abilities, but once all of the shots are taken, the girl disappears, and how her belief in sacrificing herself for others shapes how she uses the camera. There’s also a pretty dark one I want to write about an immigrant to the United States and the hopelessness of the American dream.
I enjoy games and puzzles. Some of my favorites are: Dance Dance Revolution, Just Dance, Baba is You, Road to Empress, puzzle hunts of any kind, and I probably have a thousand hours on VALORANT, oops.
I’m generally interested in spirituality and all sorts of religions—I think there’s a ton of wisdom in each. I’m going to go on a Vipassana retreat later this month, which I’m excited and terrified for!
I tend to have a pretty kid-like personality; I laugh a lot and say a lot of silly things. People generally find me optimistic and open, and also easy to be vulnerable with. That being said, I also occasionally get overwhelmed by life, and then I can get a bit judgy or insecure—this is something I’m owning up to and working through!
I’m a fairly emotional person. I was very in-my-head for most of my life, but last winter I committed to practicing crying and those were some of the most beautiful moments in my life. Now, I cry a lot, almost always when I feel really moved or grateful—and I really enjoy things that inspire emotional experiences.
Here are some things I plan on spending at least ten hours doing over the next semester:
Puzzles
Building an MRI
Traveling with my parents
Learning to draw
Learning physics
Learning makeup design >.<
Learning to fire-spin
Learning to machine
Doing cool things with friends! I’ve wanted to start a writing club for seniors in Boston for a while now, but the timing has just never worked out. I hope to do it this semester.
Learning to cook interesting things
Playing violin
Climbing
Swimming
Skating
Playing go
Writing fiction
Writing about myself, did I mention I was humble?
Meeting new people (like you!)
Here are some other things about me:
I want to be motivated by beauty and life-affirmation. Close synonyms in my heart are growth, bravery, and compassion.
A big part of this, for me, is running into fear: meeting people or tackling projects that would terrify me and being honest about the parts of myself that I'm afraid of. I believe in openness and reflection because I think that it becomes really difficult to grow if we still let old patterns hold power over us by being afraid of accepting those parts of ourselves as they are.
Another aspect of growth that I’m big on is world-expanding experiences. I have a mostly theoretical background (having studied math and computer science for my first two years of college), but I’m excited to take a bunch of experimental, project-based classes like J-Lab and Power Electronics and more next semester! I’m also excited for Vipassana meditation for a similar reason.
I’m also pretty big on meeting people outside of my bubble. I’m interested in getting to know, learn from, and empathize with people from all sorts of backgrounds, and I hope to have more compassion for people who do things that I disagree with.
In the next semester, the main non-technical way I want to grow is finding more harmony between joy and awareness. Reflecting back on this year, I noticeably skew towards one state or another (in Hong Kong and most of the spring semester I was pretty joyful, and at the end of the spring semester and over the summer I felt more aware and purposeful.) I feel that since I started working (in late April), I grew a lot, both technically and non-technically, but at the cost of experiencing less spontaneous joy and being more cynical than I was before. Ideally I’d like to lead a life with both—and hopefully these two sides of me can grow each other. That’s also a big reason why I’m posting this: it’s a cool way to be intentional about experiencing more joy, which is a nice lens :)
Also, when I feel more aware, I also notice more parts of myself that I instinctively like less, like a fear of wasting my time. In the long term, I think it’s good to admit and work with these parts of myself, but in the short term it can be tricky to handle, and I make a lot of mistakes. I hope to continue exploring how these two sides of myself can harmonize more!
That’s a lot of words about me! For even more words, I copied a few past newsletter updates that I wrote for friends.
I’m excited to get to know you, too! Generally I connect easiest with people who are reflective, kind, excited about new experiences, and open. I’m also particularly interested in friendships where we can mutually support each other to chase our dreams! For me, the ways I tend to give and hope to receive support are:
Overcoming fears together! Earlier this year I hosted a couple of events and felt really grateful to have had friends to do this with, since it was something we were both too scared to do alone.
It means a lot when friends tell me I inspire them, and I’ve learned a ton from friends and try to tell them when they inspire me!
Sharing new sides of ourselves! In general I really like learning more about people and more about myself, and some of my favorite conversations are non-standard: where we deliberately only express gratitude for some amount of time, or talk about something we normally wouldn’t. I also feel the most connected to people when we can share a new experience together, like working together or traveling.
Giving grace and patience when I make mistakes—and for me, trying to empathize with where something hurtful is coming from.
Also, selfishly, I’d extra-love to be friends if you can teach me things or better yet, learn things together! I’m pretty activities-oriented, and here are some things I want to learn:
Making mochi and ceviche.
Drawing, sketching, and painting. I want to work on a couple of small art projects with rough ideas and it’d be cool to do them with others!
Using all of the Makerspace machines (I’ve wanted to make a robot since early this year but have never had enough time to finish, sad.)
Climb (I’m V4-V5 right now, would love tips!) In general, I like to exercise with other people. I like anything dynamic!
I’m not interested in having more conversations about startups, j*bs, or other prestige-oriented things. I’m also not interested in making more friendships that become a game of catching up, and where an ice of politeness is never dropped. Nothing against these things—I just think they aren’t in the direction of more spontaneity and joy :(.
Feel free to fill out the form here or send me an email at kevinhw [at] mit [dot] edu. (Although form responses may get a delayed response.) Excited to be friends! :-)