Pursuing a PhD in engineering requires perseverance, and having a purpose helps when you have a rough day. I delayed graduate school because the statement of purpose portion of the application made me realize that I wasn’t sure of my purpose. So I took the risk to wait on a PhD as I began an…

Though we shared a similar reaction, Jim Quinlan and I responded differently to filing our graduate school applications. When we met during our Ph.D studies at Carnegie Mellon University, the topic arose as we started the “how did you get here” conversation. We attended different schools for our bachelors’ degrees in electrical engineering. He graduated…