Hello!
I am Lydia Andreyevna Krasilnikova, a rising sophomore at MIT majoring in 6-7 (computer science and molecular biology) and 21W (science writing). I live in Random Hall and am a member of the coed service fraternity ΑΦΩ (a bro!).
This summer I am helping sequence sex chromosomes through my dream UROP at the Page lab. Hopefully when we finish we can get new glimpses into the evolution of sex chromosomes, especially the Y chromosome. I am also teaching a genetics class for middle schoolers for HSSP.
During the school year I hope to continue spending as much time as possible in the lab, as well as volunteering through APO and teaching for ESP through Splash, Spark, and HSSP; I also hope to spend more weekends with the Outing Club, the Russian Club, and the Assassins’ Guild.
Portfolio
You can access my new current blog by clicking here. Unfortunately my new blog is new and doesn’t have much material. To help you grasp my writing style, here are also three recent writing samples— and my less recent blog from high school.
Quick-Answer
It might not be useful for you to know that I can move my ears independently of each other; I trained myself in fourth grade.More useful: the human genome, about two meters long when unwound, fits in its entirety into each of the trillions of tiny cells in the human body. Isn’t life clever?
Short-Answer
On Blogging
When I realized in seventh grade that I wanted to go to MIT, the witty, friendly nerdiness of the admissions blogs gave me a glimpse into the enthusiasm and love for science, progress, and living behind MIT’s personality. Even though I’m here I still read the blogs and post on College Confidential (496 posts and counting). I’m excited for the opportunity to more actively help on the journey that was so defining for me.The split, sometimes discordant immigrant culture I grew up with has led me to see everything since as slightly strange; I hope that the ability to be a foreigner in my own world will allow me to better communicate about MIT to people who have not necessarily been here. I expect to include photographs and surveys to give my posts a sense of place, and drawings to break up longer posts in a more rewarding way than whitespace. I am also interested in experimenting with video.
My experiences blogging so far have unfortunately been more low-priority exercises in self-improvement than a method of communication; I have a lot I want to share with prospective students and I am excited to make writing, photography, and surveying random people in Stata a much bigger part of my daily routine. I promise that if hired I will post at least once a week on average and gladly punt work for replying to emails. My first post will be about my UROP and how my first year at MIT has prepared me for the tribulations of PCR, with a time-lapse video of a melting agarose gel.
Reputations
“С ума сойти,” I said to my mom at the bus stop, commenting on passersby’s fashionable clothes. “Люди тут на много больше наряжаться чем в Америке. Ну, например—”An old man passing us stopped and turned toward us. He angled his face at mine, inches away. He squinted and his wide, wrinkled face scrunched inward toward the nose and eyes.
The encounter lasted several seconds. He scrutinized my expression, jerked his head away, and lurched on from the bus stop.
The Russian language in America has always been a bond equal to the shared struggles and loneliness of immigration, a warm, unspoken “I understand you.” When we visited Tel Aviv this summer the Russian language instead evoked distrust—the old man’s and, to my horror, my own. Where in America Russian has always been reserved for family, Israel opened our private brotherhood to strangers, reducing a culture to which I felt I belonged to a reputation for crooks and sluts. Suggestions of hiking, songs at the campfire, and crepes for lunch dissolved into hawkers snatching us into their tent-shops: “Двадцать шекелей! Bсего двадцать шекелей!”
We spent the next evening at the Mediterranean Sea with my visibly ill grandfather, whom we had followed to Israel and Israel’s free health care. A built, middle-aged man walked up the beach to where we were sitting, followed by a second, smaller man. The first turned to my father.
“Шесть шекелей,” he said. Six shekels for using the chairs.
My grandmother squinted up at him. “My husband has cancer,” she responded. “Are you really going to make him get up if we don’t have six shekels?”
“Шесть шекелей,” the man repeated, with no change in his expression.
So we left, bewildered at the sudden cold.
Live-Action Mafia
charlaur was not murdered, as the reports claimed. He was assassinated—cleanly, painlessly, with none of the chaos of murder.It was a cold evening, even for November. By five the whole of MIT huddled at 77 Mass Ave, and by six Massachusetts Avenue was empty. Charlie McLauren had shut his laptop by six thirty and rushed home, hands pressed into his pockets, tightly packaged feet anchored against the bitter wind. The sun turned red for a moment, throwing jagged shadows across the snow, and disappeared.
A door slammed and a figure appeared on Vassar Street. It crossed the corner to Mass Ave, slowly, paused, and wandered back. Finally it stopped, intercepting Charlie as he approached the intersection.
“Oh hi!” Charlie waved, stepping into the light from the street.
“Shhh!” the figure responded, pulling Charlie back into the shadows.
“Oh, sorry,” Charlie said, quieter now. His whisper was just audible above the wind. “I haven’t heard anything. Have the mafia killed yet today?”
A yellow speck flickered in the shadows as the figure lit a cigarette. For a moment he was illuminated, and his features danced in and out of existence with the flickering light. Then it was gone, and the only lights were the faint red of the cigarette and the glowing white smoke swirling out of it. A bus turned the corner, barely illuminating the couple.
The figure leaned toward Charlie, resting his hand on his shoulder.
“Bang,” he whispered.
The wind screamed, scattering the smoke.
