 I'm James Millat. Welcome to this very special episode of Talk of the Town. Just even looking behind me you can see that we don't have our usual Talk of the Town backdrop because this is a map of the world because we are having a special interview today with one of our own here at ACMI. I think that knowing this young woman, a lot of people past, present and future would like to say that she's one of their own, but we here at ACMI can do so and we'll talk about that a little bit in the conversation. Anyway, let me introduce her. She is Gayatri Sundarajan who has been here in Arlington for a lot of her young life and is about to leave us for a while. The subtitle of this episode of Talk of the Town is Gayatri Sundarajan from Arlington or Arlington to Oxford because her journey in many ways began in Arlington or in this area and the next step on it is Oxford University. Yes, that Oxford. So first of all, Gayatri, hey. Hi. You and I have talked about having this conversation for a long time so I'm really glad that we're here. Absolutely. And I did just mention that you're soon off to Oxford so we should be clear or we should let people know what we're talking about. You are about to start a PhD program at Oxford. I'm curious. I know, I happen to know that you had a number of choices. You just graduated this past May from BU School of Engineering. We'll talk about that as well. But you had a bunch of choices including standard American programs. You're going to Oxford. How come? Yeah. So the University of Oxford is really exciting because of the engineering as well as the people. And so that's really what made the decision for me. I knew that I wanted to study a PhD. There it's called the DFIL, essentially the same program. And I knew that what I wanted to do was create new knowledge in the space of water desalination and specifically water production for low resource communities. But what I saw in traditional PhD programs is there's a lot of isolation specifically in that time where you're delving into a topic. But what I found at Oxford which was really interesting is based on the community as well as the environment that's constructed, people are just as important as the actual technology and the information that you're learning. And so I really kind of chose Oxford because of that community and because of the environment that I think I'll be a part of. I haven't visited yet. So that's kind of going to be the big reveal I guess once I go there. Right. Your foot is already firmly planted there but you have not actually seen the place yet. Fortunately I think you won't be disappointed probably. But I am interested a little bit to ask you a little bit more about what are the pedagogical differences between the way that you were going to learn what you learn and do what you do at Oxford versus what people would do in a like I said a more standard American PhD program. So I guess the biggest difference between the two programs in structure is that the Oxford program is three and a half years. And so essentially you go in and completely just do research. And so I'd be going in and that first year I'd have to understand what the problem is and propose essentially what I would be doing as my thesis at the end of that three and a half year. And I would be essentially having an exam, an oral examination at the end of each year to make sure that I'm meeting these milestones and that I'm publishing papers as that's going on. In the US system you traditionally have about two years if you're going from a bachelor's as I am to essentially do courses which is equivalent to a master's and then you'd go into your research. So the structure of the course is a little bit different. I'm able to finish it a little bit earlier. But in terms of the pedagogy I guess the reason for that is that in at the default stage in in Oxford I can't speak for all UK universities. The idea is that you're learning independently and that is kind of the hallmark of a PhD. The idea is that you're able to create new knowledge, you're able to take all the steps to say is this reasonable? Is this the next step I should be taking? What is really the gap? And it's less of the professor kind of telling you here's a project and guiding you every step of the way. So there's gonna be a lot of frustration and challenge in terms of figuring out what the real problem is. But I think what's really satisfying is that you really have to struggle and be frustrated to understand what is the right next step. And you have to convince yourself that you should be doing that and that skills that are gonna be useful much longer than the PhD itself. Yeah and really that plays right in that you know that's right in your wheelhouse, Gayatri, from our experience with you here at ACMI by which I mean what you're doing is putting yourself in a program as you said you're more or less skipping the master's part of what would be a traditional PhD approach here in the U.S. where you're taking courses, you're learning again in the way that you were just describing. Professors are explaining things to you and you are using them and other resources to better understand stuff. Sounds like here you both have to have a clearer formulation from the beginning of what your goal is and what projects you want to work on or what goals you know what the things are that you want to achieve and then you got to figure out how to do it more or less yourself. Is that right? So it's essentially what it is you still have an advisor in the same way that you would here but the sense is that everybody is doing their independent projects that are less connected to a specific lab and their own focus and this might be the case specifically with my lab versus all of the labs that are available because in a PhD still in the UK and the U.S. you find that it's very lab and department specific. Yeah so I think that what's really important to consider is that U.S. universities do have kind of the benefit in the sense that when you have a PhD in that field you really are an expert in that department. So for me if I did a PhD here I would be an expert in mechanical engineering I would have to get some sort of expertise and knowledge in several key mechanical engineering areas. In Oxford the worry is that I could go down the path and only be a specialist in water desalination for low resource communities. So what that takes is it's using the resources and the people that I've met through engineering at BU as well as at who I will meet at Oxford and get a sense of what are the broader areas that I want to have exposure to to make sure that I'm not getting limited in the PhD process and I'm still aware of kind of new things that are coming about and still aware of kind of you know new ideas as well as techniques that are being used. So I love the idea there that you you know that the danger is that you go down too far down a rabbit hole and that you have to rely instead on your on who you are and the way that you know that you are in order to make sure that doesn't happen and you're in fact learning from others interacting with others figuring out again how to expand what you're learning when the danger would be that you know a contraction in that. So let's talk about that a little bit more because that's also refracted back I'd like to now go a kind of reverse chronology right we've just talked to you about where you're headed and you know very good luck to you part of this is really a celebration of this accomplishment as well as an exploration of what of what led to it. But we really want to talk about you as the kind of learner that you are in a lot of ways and we saw that happen as I said at ACMI. So let's talk about ACMI and your time in Arlington which you spent grade school, middle school, high school. Let's start with ACMI. When did you start at ACMI and how? Yeah so I started in ACMI when I was in sixth grade so I think I was about 11. I actually just came in by chance as an after school program from the Audison Middle School and essentially I was here about one day a week for a game show at the same time there was this National History Day competition and I decided okay I'm in this TV studio let me learn a little bit more and so I decided to create a documentary for that and so that was really like where I dived in I was taking out cameras that were like larger than I was and carrying that and I remember at the time we had actual like film that we had to like put through a reel in order to like get the video onto a computer and so I started at that point and then from there I was just I guess kind of hooked to it there's something about just coming here and being able to make anything that was super empowering but also I had people here who were encouraging me throughout the way when I didn't know something when I wanted to learn a little bit more about what somebody else was doing both staff as volunteers from you know even at that point we're super excited to talk about it so I would always spend maybe double the amount of time that I had expected in the studio. Well I remember you know meeting you first here at ACMI when a couple of years in I guess a couple years after that maybe you might have been 12 for 13 at that point and already you were kind of on the road towards becoming this prolific truly prolific producer here at ACMI such that you actually won an ACMI award for prolific producer meaning man you just created a whole bunch of content over time. Interestingly as I observed you were doing that in conjunction with and often supervising and organizing for sure the adults around you every once in a while the staff but certainly other members and volunteers etc. where you really were the producer from an early age I'm curious do you do you remember how it was how that was to you know be again supervising motivating helping educate in a lot of ways people who were twice as old as you three times as old as you how it was did that feel strange to you was it a natural thing it's funny because it was almost natural not in the way that I was just always talking to adults I think for me it was we were all working on a production together and if I had something that I thought I could do I wanted to do that and if there's something that needed to be organized I was like let me do that and whoever my team was it didn't really matter like I was one part of a team I was leading a team it was just I wanted to be as useful as possible and I think a part of that was I was held to the same standard as everybody else it wasn't like oh here's this 12 year old like let's let her do one thing it was like okay whatever you can do you can do that and we'll teach you anything you want to learn so I was really just like around and I think shadowing people talking to them sitting in on productions hearing things and so I almost naturally absorbed it and because I was here I actually had a lot of experience just by like by the nature of what I had learned along the way but also just by diving in and just saying okay I don't understand this thing but I need it for something else so let me figure out how to do that I think a lot of the time it's it was just taking the time to really dive deeper into whether it was editing a certain effect figuring out how to use a camera like I remember at the beginning I didn't know how to use any of the cameras so I read the entire manual and I like it was Walter who I was checking it out from at the time and I was like I don't know how to use this camera I'll bring it back to you I read the manual like I don't know what else I can tell you okay that's good enough I guess well obviously it was good enough in the end so that that idea I really feel like you've just kind of distilled in some ways the essence of working with you right down to the nub there in saying that hey there was a there was a message that you got that was hey if you you can do it go ahead and do it or if you can if you if you can figure out what it is that you need to know either learn it yourself or we're here to help but that you really thrived in kind of a situation where basically you're naturally expansive curiosity and your desire to get something done and your willingness to not be intimidated by what it would take to get something done all these things kind of came together for you to just be be able to do this in what sounds like was a natural way I mean I would say that one thing I loved about it was that it was just natural autonomy like I never felt like I was getting like somebody was pulling rank on me and I felt like I was doing it out of my own agency but I was also saying that I want to do this as well as I can and I definitely don't know how to do it as well as some people here so let me just learn from everybody possible and I think being held to such a high standard I think was really key I was working with Sarah for such a long time from the Sarah Franco our former colleague who handled the news and public affairs etc and big influence for you absolutely I remember the first production I did with her I edited that for one month like every single day I mean about two times a week I'd go in for like four hours edit it and then she would write down feedback on time code specifically being like oh what did you think about this like I think you should change that and we went back and forth for a month and that's the time that I finally got to release my first piece and her whole thing was consistency as well as quality and so every single week I'd produce one or two segments and that's just how I got better but also that was how I constantly got feedback I think it was the sense of I had the the benefit of being super naive like I wasn't able to say okay this is my perception of myself as 13 this is what I should be able to do I was like well I'm here everybody else is doing this nobody like nobody said explicitly that I can't so why not try and so I think that just pushed me forward and I had no reason to doubt that I could do it it's just some things took longer than others and some things were quicker for me than other things were but it was all just part of that same learning process yeah it sounds like it was a really lovely marriage of you being a person who like you said was night like you just didn't think about what you couldn't do you just had to figure out how you could do whatever it was and an environment here a an atmosphere that like you said non-hierarchical you know just cuz you're 13 or 15 or whatever it was you were doesn't mean that you can't have this crew and have that idea and master that technology etc etc and so that combination really produced actually quite quite a bit of magic during your time here but I also think that that that's probably that's a you that you carry into a lot of different contexts right so there were other things in our other places you were spending time in Arlington while you were here mostly school I think but I know you made good use of the library etc so what you know what as you look back on your years here spent in Arlington what do you see as the impact of being in this particular community on you know you developing this this just all-encompassing both curiosity and ability to to act on that curiosity I guess I can go backward a little bit through each of the main levels of education because I think that might be the clearest way to do it so in high school I was just a part of a lot of different groups like I was a part of speech and debate mock trial chorus like all of these different groups where I was either one among many or I was leading the team so on mock trial it was a lot of figuring out how to dive into details and then putting that together in a case and presenting it so it was a lot of the same skills that I actually gained here the sense of how do you learn something really quickly how do you make sure that you can actually communicate your case and actually get up there and do that effectively and court cohesively and with the the right words for the situation and so that's something that I realized when I went into engineering later on that not everybody has that same ability even though I didn't have let's say the technical background based on the clubs that I had access to here at Arlington High School I did actually get something else that I wouldn't have gotten otherwise it was just this like willingness and ability to communicate and it was an ability to get the feedback early on in many different capacities in speech and debate I did an event called impromptu speaking where we had essentially three minutes to give a speech that you would have one minute to prep based on just like three different words and so it was just practicing over and over in settings where whether I failed or I succeeded didn't really matter it was just an opportunity to improve and then in middle school I was a part of similar other groups one of them was generation citizen where you learned about different kinds of ethics and worked on a project related to the community it was all about kind of like how do you plug yourself in among many other people and communicate your ideas and so I think it's always been a question for me of how do I kind of take something that I'm curious about dive a little bit deeper and present it what I do right now in mechanical engineering is a little bit different but I think at the core of it it's the same kind of set of skills and I think that Arlington is really exciting because of the people that you're surrounded by I've just found that even when we lived in Arlington we would walk around the neighborhood and we just get into conversations with people there's somebody building a plane in their garage there's somebody else who is a teacher here we like it was just really exciting to talk to people and I think being in that community really did help kind of say that there was no bounds on things I could do just because I saw people doing you know an assortment of things that they were genuinely passionate about because the question for me of finding what that thing was or what that area was that I wanted to kind of dive deeper into you so let me ask you as the last maybe the last question in this kind of part of this part of our conversation as again you're still young of course but you do have some years of education and both kind of like auto didactic education the education you gave yourself and the education you received through our institutions and as you look back on that how do you how do you see that balance between the stuff that you learned from being in classes and doing the reading and interacting with others around projects and stuff like that and the stuff that you learned outside of those contexts in the extra curriculars that you did in the various groups that you were involved in here at ACMI in the other again out of school out of academic spaces how do you see that that balance you know working for you was one or the other a more powerful influence or just talk about that a little bit that's a really interesting question I think that in school it's interesting because I spend a lot of time listening to other people spend a lot of time reading and then for assignments kind of not regurgitating it but you think a little bit and you have to kind of produce something and it's not necessarily what you want to focus on it's very much tailored to what the assignment is asking from you and so I think that through that way I was able to just learn a lot of different topics like I was really excited about like middle school and high school because you just learned so much you had about five different subjects a day that we're going from history all the way to like math and I just loved that it's very different than in college at least for me and so I just love the exposure to different topics but in one way or another there's a set curriculum and you're following it and you're meeting other people's expectations there's something you need to do for an assignment there's something that guarantees that you get like an A or B there's something that says that you haven't met what is expected of you but in all of these things that are outside of school there's a question of why are you doing this what is it that you really want from it and how do you shape that to really make that the best experience for you and I think that gave me in addition to just kind of an outlet for just saying okay I'm interested about interested in this thing let me dive in just an opportunity to define what it is that I wanted to output from it at ACMI that was videos in Boston University that was like rockets or other things so it was just saying that the output outcome is very different but you can negotiate what it looks like and it's something that is you know good for the organization that you're working with or for but it's also satisfying for you which is why for me why I chose to go down one route or the other yeah and obviously you have absolute ownership over whatever it is that happens in those spheres because obviously you're going along going with the flow in your your high school your middle school your high school even to some degree college curricula and you know somebody else is determining something about what it is that's important for you to know but then there are these other spaces where you define all of that and it does seem like you you know that's a particular power spot for you I definitely love it and I think that it also has just given me the practical side because I think that you can spend a lot of time just reading and consuming information in classes but you may not actually produce something that you can look at and that has you know brings you some sort of contentment I think the first time that I did that in schooling might have been building like a catapult in physics I was like oh my gosh I can actually do this and I felt a lot more of that in engineering when I was studying at Boston University and I also felt that in internships later on when I could say okay I'd learn this thing but now the actual mechanics of putting it together and building it is very different and you learn a lot in the process of it not working and troubleshooting that and I think a lot of people can relate to that regardless of what field they're in the theory of doing something is very different than doing it in practice and I find that I love the troubleshooting of actually making that into a reality I remember you doing an awful lot of that here at ACMI over the years that's for sure all right you know I know that the roots of everything that we've been talking about go back even further and so we're gonna continue this reverse chronology if you don't mind we're gonna take a break though first and then welcome a guest to join us who will be able to provide his own insight into Gayatri's earlier years so stay with us we'll take a short break and we'll be right back this is Talk of the Town and Gayatri Sunderarajan from Arlington to Oxford here and be able to speak with our fire chief Kevin Kelly so first of all I want to welcome you very much welcome here and thank you for welcoming us here it's been several years since we were last here and the place still looks sparkling clean and impressive welcome back we are joined for this next part of the conversation by somebody who knows a little bit about Gayatri himself Sunderajan Ramaswamy is here with us he is Gayatri's father Sundar thanks so much for joining us thank you so much for inviting me for this conversation James very very important that you be here in a lot of ways because we want to explore again as I mentioned before a little bit even further back from what Gayatri just took us through middle school and high school etc let's go back a little further and and I'd like for either of you and and feel free to you know talk to each other and talk through each other etc just to describe the you know describe the household that Gayatri was born into and has grown up with it I think I'll put it this way when we when we came to this country Gayatri was one year old in the year 2000 around December of 2000 and we at that point in time did not know what it means to bring up a family in United States practically no I mean I had a two and a half year old and a one year old and my wife had never traveled outside of United States never traveled outside of the state even the state that we both got married in back in India so when we walked in we said hmm how are we going to do this are we going to even stay here in this country forever or are we going to go back to India and then grow the entire family back in India we didn't know at that point in time so there was significant amount of uncertainty but one thing we knew was that no matter what we do we will invest in our kids that is something that I think both my wife and I we committed to that saying that no matter what happens we will make sure that they get a good solid family life which means that we will not have any difference of opinion openly in front of the kids simply not and we will not use any of the curse words swear words nothing in front of them much much later they started hearing it but when they were growing up they did not know any of those things if there was any layer of misunderstanding we will deal with it privately and never in front of the kids so they had I would call it as a normal period but at the same time it was something where they knew what it means to be peaceful and that I think played a significant role in how they both developed in their own way both Gayathri and a real resistor J they both developed over a period of time that layer of peace was hidden somewhere all it means is that over a period of time we'll need to kind of find our way to it but it was always there and that is one thing which I feel fortunate that that we were able to do it and so like you said you didn't you didn't know whether you would you know how long you would stay here you didn't know exactly how it would be to raise children here as it turned out you did you raised both Jay and Gayathri here what did you find in in terms of you know living this kind of bicultural life and this I throw out to both of you you know what what are some of the things that for somebody who's trying to doesn't this isn't been their experience but they're trying to understand it what what kind of light can you shed on what's particular about you know your guys experience at least yeah why don't why don't you start it yeah so I think what's interesting is that there's always there's more people it's I think that's the beginning part like I grew up for most of my childhood in a multi-generational family so I had my dad's parents also living with us my grandparents and so I had in they still are and they are yeah they live with us right now it's great but basically it's kind of two sets of parents who come from very different upbringings themselves and then my sister and I in the household for a given amount of time so that means essentially like you have even more kind of love and caring around you at all times at some times that can be like really smothering and overprotective like there's definitely that side of it but then I always grew up knowing that I was cared for and that like I could do literally anything and I knew I would have them like kind of in my corner I think the other side of it is that negotiation was just something that is natural it's the only way you get anything when you have to get a clear from four different people and also have to like somehow be okay with your older sister right like that means everything you do has to somehow be able to be explained and have to be something that you generally like really want to do to get it through all these hoops but you also need to think about how you're gonna make that happen like if I was gonna go somewhere I have to keep in mind that my grandmother comes from a time when women didn't leave the house alone because it was unsafe or like you know for her me crossing the street at any given time it's still something she worries about and so I have to keep in mind kind of what culture she came from and with my mom she has a certain thing that she's aware of and she's comfortable with my dad and my grandfather are you know had their own things as well so I had to keep in mind all of these things every time I wanted to do something so I always when I grew up would have to explain things and I have to say okay this is what I want to do and why like even if it's a basic thing that I wanted to buy or something that I wanted to like go out and try and so it just became a natural thing to kind of go through all that I guess rationalization and there was even points where I like learned research that way like my dad made me like make a spreadsheet every time I wanted a pet so I had this like lifetime of a dog spreadsheet because we really desperately wanted a dog so we had to think about what was it gonna eat where was it gonna live what would like who would take care of it what does that mean for time like where are we gonna get the food what kind of food how does that change over time metal conscience and this is like us at 10 being like police can we and then you know think about that and we ended up with like a Nintendo game right so like that is just the natural way that my family has worked and part of it is just the communication you need among six people and the other piece is just like my family just really cares about thinking about things and really answering the question of why and sometimes it's like debates that lead nowhere and sometimes it's things that mean like let's really deeply think about something that you want and really understand why that is and it's sure gave you plenty of practice in terms of like you said organizing negotiating and persuading adults you know that year that your point of view your idea your your desire was you know was based on something legitimate enough to convince them that's that's that is quite amazing so for you Sundar as as a person you know as one of the four kind of parental figures that needed to be negotiated with but also again as the as the father and the son at the same time how you know what kind of experience was that for you I think that's a that's a very interesting question James I will kind of flip it a little bit right they have to get used to me I have to get used to them because I've not lived with a very young kids at all right I mean when when I was growing up we three brothers were one and a half years apart okay right I mean and we never had girl children in our family her elder sister was the first first generation grandkid right and so we were getting used to what it means to actually make a child grow we were learning as much as they were getting used to us so which means good amount of our experiments in parenting guess who was the target they were the target right so we were learning how to be a good parent through them right and so one of the things that we decided I don't know whether it's good bad or ugly is that we said we will invest in them being what is called both Indian and American at the same time no matter where it goes right which means that there is a layer of Indianness in in how they look at things but there is a very distinctly American way of doing things which is a layer of argumentation there is a layer of irreverence there is a layer of negotiation persuasion every other thing that an individual a person has to do in order to make something happen they have that in good measure so we said bicultural is going to be the norm but we don't know what bicultural means because how does that work given that you know you're not the only one making the decision right yeah so then what we said was there are certain things that we will let we will discuss with our parents to just make sure that they are in the loop but the veto was something that we were carefully negotiating to say certain things the veto doesn't rest with my parents so which means that we had to talk it through and make sure that they are comfortable because their primary concern is being girl children in a country that we don't know much about seeing all the news that we see how safety of the kids and safety of young women is in jeopardy in various news that they see we have to make sure that they will be physically safe and psychologically safe if that can be guaranteed then the decision about what they do is something that can be autonomous so every step of the way we negotiated that distinctly with my parents and that helped us in a variety of ways but in certain cases it's related to challenges and that's that's to be expected so I guess in many ways it was a negotiation for them it is a negotiation for them as much as it is for us because there's some things when like I was going to be living in an apartment even though I you know lived 30 minutes from home in going to college that was a negotiation that my parents had to have with my grandparents because the choice that is ultimately mine and it should be mine but at the end of the day living in a multi-generational household and respecting everybody in the family means that you want to explain it to everybody in a way that resonates with them and makes sense and doesn't make anybody feel like they're less important because that's really hard like becoming elderly in any society and when you're in a family and you feel like you're becoming less and less relevant or you feel like you're not part of the decisions like that is a feeling of you know a loss of importance that we don't want my grandparents to have but it's hard because that's balanced off with the autonomy that my sister and I want and that my parents want to have and how they make decisions so I think it's all a negotiation but at the end of the day there are decisions that each one of us is going to make that not everybody agrees with and I think doing that in a way that's respectful but also is just firm enough I think is the key how do you do that and we kind of managed to strike some level of balance in that so that decisions that get made even though they are autonomous they have the broadest layer of support so that things can move forward in a how do we call it I mean Gayathri put it very well respectful way because you're absolutely true that their life experience my life experience Gayathri and Jay's life experience they are all very very distinct and her life experience has been the most diverse among among among both my two kids right and so the way they will look at things may not be identical but at the same time if we cannot talk about our difference of opinion in a respectful way there's no fun I would say Ranjani has had her diverse life experience exactly they're just very different than they are very different than they are referring to Jay and her they both have had fairly very very diverse experiences but but they both grew very differently from the same household to be brutally honest with you so but that's that's a fun part of being a parent you know absolutely well I think you guys have done a great job in a relatively short amount of time of of of describing both the you know the opportunities and the and the growth that can happen within these constraints but also the challenges of just negotiating like you said between cultures represented differently from you and your grandparents generation and your generation kind of caught in between in a sense and in yours really growing up in this country even within a household where the Indian heritage in that household highly respected and and and with a clear impact but just that and then the multi-generational part too so really lots and lots of lessons learned more or less by osmosis for you I guess simply by you know living in that household and and growing up as a child in that household and wanting to get some certain things pets or otherwise at different times let me ask you Sundar if you don't mind just two more things I want to ask you guys one is what were the challenges of bringing this one up I mean I don't you know I think people might have the impression ah she just she's got she's got gifted you know sales right through everything tell us what what some of the hard parts were I would say one of the things that is is remarkable about her but also at the same time a little bit challenging is that she is high intensity which means that making her chill and take anything saying that okay there are sometimes you have to let life happen and it happens the way it happens you can't script everything I mean you cannot show that high intensity everywhere and that is a constant struggle okay right sometimes it it kind of goes in one way but then there are times where it becomes a headbutting moment okay I mean for instance we were coming down from there to from our home to here we were delayed by ten minutes she would absolutely go berserk saying that we should not have been delayed said it is what it is you're going to be ten minutes delayed it is what it is and they're gonna forgive us guy they are going to be okay about it dad a little bit of color to that I think the thing is that most things are preventable and when he made the measures to prevent them they don't eat them the point is it's preventable until it is not it happened is no way what's it's done right once it is has happened then you need to accept and say how am I going to live with it and and move on yeah right so we would have that kind of intensity is something which I love about guy three but at the same time I say you have to chill down okay I mean that's one one category of things I think the second list this the second category is is how do you cherish time right I mean you can cherish time just saying that there is time in front of me I am either doing something or I am not doing something or I am thinking about something and I'm not going to do anything at all I'm going to keep this time totally unscripted right guy three and unscripted they both don't fit in the same sentence you know I mean it simply doesn't fit I mean she has to have structure all the way through I say structure is good until structure becomes your own enemy it just makes you not enjoy the moment as much as you would because that structure will say what's coming next it makes you anticipate it makes you expect it and then if that expectation is not met then it results in a frustration if that frustration leads to a little bit more then it becomes a big negative vortex I always say chill right okay that's that's I would say the second category of things okay I mean those are the two two things that kind of are pretty pretty exciting kind of challenges to kind of discuss with guy three right occasionally and we do talk about it on a very regular basis I think the unscripted one has come up a lot I think it's just the idea that you know the way that everybody wants to spend their time is different and so my dad's perspective is spending time is different than my perspective and so this is an ongoing I think debate back and I think we can tell that yeah you can tell kind of the points back and forth but there's and it makes a lot of sense and actually it segues very nicely into the last thing that I want to ask you about or talk to you about and that is and here I need to do some full disclosure I former teacher myself and a college advisor for a number of years and because I've known Gayatri for good long while as well I also had a kind of a role of that sort as she was looking at colleges some years ago you might very well be able to tell what I think of Gayatri and why and so I figured she was going to sail absolutely sail through the application process so no I said that to send I said that to Gayatri I told her to chill in my own way in a lot of ways and to apply to the most prestigious and selective schools because that's where she belonged in a lot of ways for the opportunities that they offered etc so then the results came in and just again I think this is an object lesson Gayatri has enormous talents and is no doubt going to be changing the world in her way and yet it has not been smooth sailing all along those results came in and it was rejection after rejection after rejection talk to us about that in the end really you want to be you school of engineering because that was the place that accepted you right so I really interested to hear again with some years of removed from that and with the great outcome that we celebrated at the top of this what was that like for both of you for you as a parents and are in that situation knowing how special your daughter is and for you you know who you know I've been reassured assured and had an expectation perhaps I don't know talk to us a little bit I can start off on that you want to start off on that I mean if you want to why don't I start off on this one for it right I think James you you you said it really well which is that it was probably the most how do you call it disappointing would be an understatement I think we were pretty much blown away when we looked at how pretty much all of the schools that we thought we had a fair shake at it they said no we are not willing to offer either an early admission or a regular admission some of them they put us on wait list right but at the end of the day we we one of the things we realized is that it is almost jackpot or a it's it's it's it's a game right sometimes the people who got accepted and who were left out right the gap could be pretty minimal but then we kind of reflected on that and we said we got into a good school and the experience of what it means to graduate from there is completely up to you and therefore it's not that failures don't occur it is what you do and what you pick up from that failure and you grow from there determines who you are and I'll tell you I mean I'm I'm like I'm very proud of how Gayathri handled that rejection at such an engage when the hopes were built up to be this high and then she came crashing down that only one out of the schools that she applied gave her admission and that school turned out be the one that shaped her into who she is today so I would say don't be afraid of failures make something good come out of it okay that's that's exactly way how I would I would frame it James it's interesting because I would say it was definitely disappointing in the moment like essentially the way that the applications come in or they did at the time was that you would essentially have different dates that you're expected to hear back and so every week it's basically getting a no we're getting yeah essentially and so you've spent months doing applications and you get months of basically people saying yeah you're you're good like everybody else but you're not good enough so that was definitely disappointing it was definitely upsetting but I think the the key there was that there are a ton of really great students out there there's a there's a lot of really great people all of these schools can fill their classes with you know five different variations of a cohort and they'll have a great class and so when I look at it it's not to say that I'm better than everybody else and I should have gotten in it's to say that there are a ton of really great students and I'm one of them but I didn't get into those schools and so yes it's disappointing in the moment but it's to say that it was just one thing that happened and it's very hard to evaluate people on paper like I think that I remember when I was writing my application something that I was really struggling with was how do I stay really true to how I felt about each of the questions that they were asking and who I felt I was at that time and how do I really market that market myself to a school given that they have to accept you for that application and the route that I chose was let me be as myself as possible let me just put exactly what I think on the page it doesn't really matter what they expect from me and at the end of the day I think that's something I learned a lot from the experience it's not to say that you shouldn't be original or as creative as you can be but it's very important to say that you need to understand this the environment in the situation that you're in in a college application process that you are required to market yourself to the college knowing that everybody is looking for certain things even if somebody says they're unbiased at the end of the day there's certain buzzwords a certain parts of your experiences that really resonate with them because you're connecting on a human level and there's some experiences I have that just don't resonate or there's ways that I can say that that do so it just became an effort for me of saying that in the future yes I can hear from other people that yes I'm special I have these things that I've done that I think are really unique but if I can't communicate that or if I can't put that into a package that makes sense or really will resonate with the people that are receiving it it doesn't have that same power and so it was disappointing but then once I decided to go to BU I wanted to say okay this is the choice that I'm making but I can essentially make of it whatever it is that I want there are all of these resources available at all of these schools there's for me when I was going to engineering there's maker spaces there's labs there's research there's essentially the same coursework it becomes an effort of saying how are you going to use those resources to get where you want to go and that's an individualized path and you can do that regardless of what school you're in I think that at the age of like 17 or 18 when you're looking at colleges it seems like the biggest decision you're gonna make you choose that college and then you're kind of done but I think like any milestone it's a starting point it's something that sets the opportunities you have in front of you but you can always reach out beyond that to then secure what you want to do so it became almost the best timing for a lesson on just being independent and saying that setting setting that I can set my own goals and figuring out how to get there and that gave me the good understanding of the risk involved with you know applying to a certain set of schools in that case or you know it could be applying to a certain set of jobs you might think that you're perfect you might think that you have all the skill set but you have that final step of fitting with the people there the community as well as the people who are hiring you so becomes an effort for me of like applying to different kinds of jobs of speaking to people before them seeing if I have the right skill set how I can improve it became kind of this good opportunity for me to reevaluate how I then present myself and then figure out how do I go out and look for opportunities in the future so it was really devastating at the time but I think that you know learning that kind of lesson at 18 is better than learning it at 30 so I was able to kind of pick that up from that moment and then put that into my applications and my time at BU and then what I'm doing going forward I think that is one of the things which is truly remarkable about how guy three processed that event at that engage which is you could say that all the schools except BU rejected me right or she could say BU accepted me let me get the best experience out of it and learn all of the things that can make my experience here shine and make me into make me into somebody you know right I have a opportunity here let me go and grab it and that maturity is something which I'm really very very proud of how she processed it and because I was president at the time I can I can corroborate that that was indeed the case and I was flabbergasted that it could be given how it had the whole thing affected me you know so really couldn't be better said thank you both so much for addressing that and and really kind of talking through it in a in a in a very real but also inspiring way and in the end it was a different experience with graduate programs and you had a number to choose from and in the end I would say as I'm sure you would agree and maybe you would as well Oxford got lucky so we look forward so much to continuing to chart your progress even as you move across the ocean we know that you'll stay in touch we know that we'll even get you back into the studio sometime in the next in the next few years and we we fully expect like I said that you are going to continue to do just what you've done so far which is figure out what you want to learn learn it really well turn it into practice and make a difference so with that I want to thank you both so much for joining us for this very special talk of the town it's really been a pleasure thanks James thank you very much James for the opportunity I will wrap we will wrap up there it's really been a pleasure I hope you've enjoyed it as well there's been a special episode of talk of the town featuring Gayatri Sundarajan and her route from Arlington to Oxford we will catch up with her later and you as well thanks so much for joining us James Milan see you next time