Graduates: Lessons from MIT Alumni (2025 Edition)
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On May 29, the Class of 2025 will graduate from MIT and join the more than 148,000 alumni already making a positive difference in the nation and the world. As graduates gather to celebrate this important milestone, Slice of MIT reached into the past year’s archives to share these tips for the Institute’s newest grads who are beginning the next chapter of their lives.
After 24 years of service as a helicopter pilot in the US Coast Guard, Eugene McGuinness SM ’19 decided it was time to explore new professional territory. In 2023, he retired and enrolled in the MIT Alumni Career Design Fellowship, an online career development program. “It was fantastic because [the program] was a forcing function to really critically think about what does Gene really like to do and not do?” he says. Now the head of flight test at Zipline, an autonomous drone delivery service, McGuiness finds a renewed sense of purpose in striving to make the global supply chain more equitable and sustainable.
2. Work hard—but make time for music.
Kelvin Frazier PhD ’15 is not only an assistant tenure-track professor of chemistry, a sixth-grade math teacher, and an AI consultant—he’s an R&B recording artist who has made the Billboard charts twice. In addition to providing background vocals for a Netflix special, he earned his degree online from the Berklee College of Music during the pandemic. “I am not a naturally gifted person, but I am a hard worker,” says Frazier, reflecting on how he channels his lifelong passion for music into the many rhythms of his career.
3. Answer the door when opportunity knocks.
When her friends started to have babies, Amrita Saigal '10 saw a huge market opportunity for clean and sustainable diapers. After three years of research and development to perfect 100-percent cotton-lined disposable diapers, Saigal launched her company, Kudos. Four months after having her first child, she pitched Kudos on Shark Tank and earned two deals. It was a life-changing step toward accomplishing Saigal’s ultimate goal: a world where sustainable products are the mainstream options.
As a Google software engineer and past MIT fencer, Kristen Palmer ’23 is something of an expert problem solver, a skill she nurtured during her time studying electrical engineering and computer science at MIT. Balancing rigorous schoolwork with a demanding sport, Palmer immediately came to understand the importance of collaboration. “At MIT, you quickly learn you can’t solve every problem on your own. You need to be comfortable asking for help, offering help, and to ask questions that might seem trivial. These were very good habits for all of us to develop.”
When Larry Kahn ’75, SM ’76, David Lockwood ’75, and Rick Tucker ’80 joined the Tiddlywinks Club at MIT, it marked the beginning of a lifelong friendship. Despite the fierce competition involved in the tabletop game—of which MIT alumni have been at the highest ranks for decades, Kahn says that he still meets his friends at tiddlywinks events several times a year. “This winks community over the last 54 years has been one of the greatest experiences of my life.”
“I didn’t plan to be a professor. And I didn’t study electrical engineering,” says Johanna Mathieu ’04, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Michigan. Mathieu, who took a course in almost every department during her time at MIT, says she has always had an open-minded approach to learning. “I simply decided to make the best of any opportunity that came my way.”
Photo (top): Gretchen Ertl.
