Following a recent group meeting, Behzod Sirjani (our newest CSC Lab member) posted to his personal blog his thoughts on being an “intellectual child” of a valued mentor and what it means to be a scholar. The conversations one has with a mentor can plant seeds for ideas that can last a lifetime. The first few sentences are excerpted below to pique your interest, but the whole post is well worth reading.

“An idea is like a parasite. Resilient, highly contagious, and once an idea has taken hold of the brain, it’s almost impossible to eradicate.”

This quote from Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in the movie Inception is something that has rang true with me for most of my life. Ideas often start as seeds, planted somewhere amidst a conversation, and over time, they grow, finally budding. Often we don’t know when those seeds are planted, but later we can identify what it was that sparked the idea.

Each week gives me more reasons to be thankful for my current position at UW’s HCDE program, and this morning presented me with another moment to be truly thankful for…” Read the rest of the post.