Paving my path
- During the military screening process in 12th grade, I was accepted into two prestigious intelligence courses. Despite knowing almost nothing about either, I had a preference. However, the military system decided for me, as some courses have priority over others. Unhappy with this decision, I called the recruitment office to complain. Though they were not initially impressed, the next day, I received a call from someone who offered to meet me at the Herzliya train station to explain more about the course. A few days later, I met an officer (I believe he was a Captain) at the station. We sat on the pavement outside and talked for about an hour. I don't remember the specifics of what he said, but I was so impressed by his effort to convince me that I left the station happy about attending the course. A year later, I found out he was the recruitment officer for our class year.
- After my military service, and before my journey at the Technion began, I spent my time reading several books. One of them was "Thinking strategically" by Prof. Avinash Dixit (Princeton) and Prof. Barry Nalebuff (Yale), an introductory book on Game Theory. Later that year I was selected to participate in the screening exam of a newly founded excellence program of the Technion CS department, and the entire exam was on game theory! The idea was to test students on subjects completely new to them. I thought I had an unfair advantage, having read the book so recently. Years later, after I was accepted to the excellence program called "Lapidim", Prof. Irad Yavneh, who headed the program in its early years, told us they were aware that some students might have previous knowledge of the subject, and this was considered fair game.
- I encountered the famous impostor syndrome early in my B.Sc. program. One of the excellence program's requirements was to maintain an 86-grade average. Anyone who has studied in the Technion CS department knows this is especially challenging in the first two years, as course averages tend to hover around the 60s. At the end of my 1st semester I was struggling still with Calculus and ended up with a slightly above passing grade. Initially, I sank into despair, thinking the Technion was not the right place for me and that I should seek an easier path. Then I decided to fight back. I spent about a month studying for the second term of Calculus, which was due just after Passover. I missed another exam, skipped the first two weeks of the second semester, and stayed home to study on a rigorous schedule. My grade improved from 60 to 92 in Calculus Term B (exam average was below passing-grade), and I made the Dean's list for excellent students in my first semester. This experience taught me how to succeed at the Technion, and (luckily) most other courses required less effort after that.
- How did I end up writing so many summaries for Technion courses? Well, this was my way of preparing for exams. During exam periods, I usually found a favorite spot for that semester in one of the quiet libraries—not the one in Computer Science, which was way too loud. My favorites were Electrical Engineering (the area with the desks inside) and Chemical Engineering because of the large window. I would go in the early morning and leave in the evening, and the bustle of students around me kept me focused more than sitting at home alone. For biology courses, making the summary was my only preparation—it was 100% of the preparation. For CS/math courses, I made more effort if the exam allowed "open books," but usually, after creating a summary, I still had to practice with many past exams. So, the summary was about 50% of the preparation. I didn't have time during the semester to make summaries, but I usually chose my courses carefully by exam dates, allowing myself at least one full week for each. This strategy worked well because I typically attended all my biology exams only in term-B, as they were easier, giving me ample time to study for the more spaced-out CS/math courses. At first, I uploaded my summaries to websites such as "The Purple Note", which were old and not very active. Then, the year I applied to PhD programs, I decided to build a personal/professional website. To increase traffic to my site, I gathered all my summaries and uploaded them, organized by subject. For many years, my website experiences increased traffic before every exam period in Israeli universities.
- The year after my B.Sc., I worked on two major projects of my life: applying to the best PhD programs in the US and becoming a mother. I wasn't sure about the timeline or how it would all work out, but I had a strong internal feeling that it would somehow come together and I’d manage both. April 15th is the national deadline for all US PhD programs, and on April 15th, 2014, both my husband and I accepted our PhD offers from Princeton University. At the end of April, I got a positive pregnancy test. At the end of May, just a week before leaving my job at Qualcomm, we found out we were expecting twins! At the beginning of June, I informed the professors chairing the QCB PhD program at Princeton, who supported me wholeheartedly. On July 28th of that year, we were on a plane, moving from Israel to Princeton, NJ. This was the start of our craziest year ever. Little did we know what it meant to have kids, let alone twins! Moreover, we were in a foreign country (which I now call home, though it didn't feel like home during the first year) while starting a PhD. There were so many unknowns and new beginnings. Even now, I’m not sure how we jumped into this adventure the way we did, but we were lucky to have many good people along the way who helped us during the early years with our twins and our doctoral programs.
- After graduating from Technion I worked as a full time software engineer in Qualcomm, an international corporate. There are many advantages to working in a big global company, but the other side of the coin is that your entire project can get shut down out of the blue due to higher-up managerial decisions. That year I was already planning to hopefully study abroad the next year, and exactly during my interviews travel to the US, my direct manager called me. It was morning in San Diego and I was there for my interviews with UCSD. He called me so that I'd hear it directly from him that the company decided to shut-down our entire project (smart Tvs) and that no one is getting laid-off. Still, there was a lot of uncertainty in the air. I came back from the interviews trip and was lucky to receive an opportunity to join a new team. Had my manager said anything about my potential plans to leave the company I might have been laid off at that time. But he didn't, and I'm forever gratful to him. I ended up working a couple of months in the new team before my relocation to the US.
Childhood writing
3rd Grade: In the same year that Israel's Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated due to his political views (1995), I won 1st place in a national writing contest with a poem called "A Dream Without Violence." I was invited to the Prime Minister's Office to read my poem and receive a diploma. I was 9 years old, and it was a great honor. This marked the beginning of my brief writing career. That same year, my school submitted another poem I wrote to a contest in Belgium, where I also won 1st place, surprisingly! However, I never traveled to Belgium to receive the award.
4th grade: A year after Rabin's assassination, I wrote and performed a long rhyming poem at my school's commemorative ceremony.
5th grade: I moved to a new school and wrote a poem celebrating Israel's 50th anniversary of independence (May 1998). During a school ceremony, I had the honor of handing my printed poem to the visiting mayor. I was very excited. That year, our teacher asked us to create a notebook cover for the jubilee celebrations. I designed mine with many funny Office 97 images, and the teacher decided to photocopy my cover for the entire class! Mine was the only notebook with a colorful cover—the original one.
Still in 5th grade, I helped a 6th-grade class with their entry for a kids' book writing contest. I can't remember the context, but I ended up almost entirely rewriting the book because I thought the original version was pretty bad. Unfortunately, I can't find my copy of that book.
6th Grade: I contributed rhyming fun facts about my classmates for our yearbook.
As I got older, I published a few songs and stories on a popular website at the time called "stage.co.il." Most of my friends didn't know I had a page there because I didn't share it with many of them. Apparently, it's still there.
After high school, I stopped creative writing, but writing, especially in Hebrew, remains one of my easiest and strongest forms of communication. Over the past decade, I've mostly improved my English writing skills, particularly in a professional setting. I think it will still take some time before ChatGPT surpasses me in Hebrew writing.
3rd Grade: In the same year that Israel's Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated due to his political views (1995), I won 1st place in a national writing contest with a poem called "A Dream Without Violence." I was invited to the Prime Minister's Office to read my poem and receive a diploma. I was 9 years old, and it was a great honor. This marked the beginning of my brief writing career. That same year, my school submitted another poem I wrote to a contest in Belgium, where I also won 1st place, surprisingly! However, I never traveled to Belgium to receive the award.
4th grade: A year after Rabin's assassination, I wrote and performed a long rhyming poem at my school's commemorative ceremony.
5th grade: I moved to a new school and wrote a poem celebrating Israel's 50th anniversary of independence (May 1998). During a school ceremony, I had the honor of handing my printed poem to the visiting mayor. I was very excited. That year, our teacher asked us to create a notebook cover for the jubilee celebrations. I designed mine with many funny Office 97 images, and the teacher decided to photocopy my cover for the entire class! Mine was the only notebook with a colorful cover—the original one.
Still in 5th grade, I helped a 6th-grade class with their entry for a kids' book writing contest. I can't remember the context, but I ended up almost entirely rewriting the book because I thought the original version was pretty bad. Unfortunately, I can't find my copy of that book.
6th Grade: I contributed rhyming fun facts about my classmates for our yearbook.
As I got older, I published a few songs and stories on a popular website at the time called "stage.co.il." Most of my friends didn't know I had a page there because I didn't share it with many of them. Apparently, it's still there.
After high school, I stopped creative writing, but writing, especially in Hebrew, remains one of my easiest and strongest forms of communication. Over the past decade, I've mostly improved my English writing skills, particularly in a professional setting. I think it will still take some time before ChatGPT surpasses me in Hebrew writing.
Names games
I named all my daughters with a "goddess" motif:
The names for my daughters were also chosen such that they have the same number of syllables (two), and equal distances from one another (Equilateral triangle).
All our names have meaning in Hebrew.
Unfortunately, my husband's name, Adi, does not share any relation to the goddess motif (it means "jewel" in Hebrew)
I named all my daughters with a "goddess" motif:
- Ella - means goddess in Hebrew.
- Gaia - the goddess of earth in the Greek mythology.
- Noga - it's also the Hebrew name of the second star in our solar system, also known as Venus, which is the Roman name for Aphrodite, goddess of love in the Greek mythology.
The names for my daughters were also chosen such that they have the same number of syllables (two), and equal distances from one another (Equilateral triangle).
All our names have meaning in Hebrew.
Unfortunately, my husband's name, Adi, does not share any relation to the goddess motif (it means "jewel" in Hebrew)