chasing starlight

runner/climber, PhD candidate @ MIT, EDM girlie. just trying to be the best me i can be.

[angel-flowers]

i want someone who will see my worth and not be intimidated. i truly want someone who is better than me. smarter. more whole. full of more light. so that they can contribute to mine rather than steal from it. i want a person who is so full and so good that it makes me want to be better.

[aliciaruns]

long time no post… things have changed soooo much and so much happened in 2025 hahah… I passed my full quals and am set to defend my thesis by the end of 2026! the guy from my last post is long gone, moved in with my best friend and have been thriving! there was another guy who came and went, my lab catastrophically flooded then miraculously recovered, then a colleague was murdered, went a lil crazy with men for a while, picked up a hot straight man at a gay club a couple weeks ago, and now there are a couple of new men in the picture… hahah. i shall post more soon but i miss yall friends and hope you’re all well 🫶

oh and i started glassblowing!!

also been watching sex and the city with my roomie and man is it nostalgic and also we have the same convos regularly… early 30s are universal apparently and that makes me feel a lot of ways 🥹

[aliciaruns]

little life update:

1. i passed my oral quals!! (i still have to defend my prospectus to fully achieve candidacy but that’s all set and i am ready for that!!)

2. i met someone new… we’ve been dating a couple months now, he is absolutely fantastic so far. it just feels so easy, calm, and so right. taking things relatively slow has been very rewarding and i am SO excited to see where this goes.

i didn’t think i could feel this way again for a long time… i am so, so glad he’s proving that wrong. ☺️

anyway, i will post more over the holidays but ahhhh!!!!

[aliciaruns]

absolutely obsessed w this fit i wore to a party this weekend with good friends & my crush (not pictured; this is my cohort bestie and wingman! however i drunkenly confessed my crush to another friend while sitting on the floor right in front of my crush and totally gestured to him while telling her about my crush 😂 there’s much more to the party story but tldr i was on the hot mess express this weekend 😂)

also just booked my flights to Singapore for a conference in a few weeks!!!!!!! ahhhh!!!!!!!! i am so freaking excited. (aforementioned crush also attending conference… 😈)

life is so good rn (well, except quals studying bc quals is in 2.5 months… but hey it’s fine we are drinking like healthy grad students do to socialize and distract ourselves from the quals depression black hole 😅😅)

[theambitiouswoman]

When it’s time to make a change, the universe will make it so uncomfortable for you that you will have no choice but to leave. When you are not happy in a situation, don’t stay in denial and try to make it work. The world has better plans for you, trust in the process and do your part by aligning yourself with the things you want. The rest will be history.

[aliciaruns]

“An authentic and genuine life grows like a sturdy tree. And like a tree, it grows slowly. Every time you make a different and better decision, it grows a little. Every time you choose to do the right thing, even when nobody would find out otherwise, it grows a little. Every time you act with compassion, relinquish your right to strike back, take a courageous stand, admit fault or accept responsibility, it grows a little.”

— Steve Goodier

[aliciaruns]

“Sometimes you have to push yourself, and it can be uncomfortable. You will want to quit. But if you can find your edge and embrace the discomfort even for a little bit, you’ll find a new level of fitness, skill, and knowledge. And there’s no better feeling than growth.”

— Roisin McGettigan-Dumas

[aliciaruns]

This resonates so hard rn as I’m preparing for my PhD qualifying exams. Is it hard? Hell yeah. Is it freaking awesome because it’s hard? Hell freaking yeah.

[aliciaruns]

“We don’t have the power to change an experience—an experience is what it is. But we do have the power to change how we experience that experience. You can let those dark voices [in your head] overwhelm you and have a bad day, or you can make the voices focus on all the good stuff, and it turns out to be a pretty amazing day. And the thing is, it’s the same damn day.”

— Tim Catalano (Runner’s World)

[mountain-flannel-loving]

“You have to meet people where they are, and sometimes you have to leave them there.”

— Iyanla Vanzant (via internal-acceptance-movement)

[aliciaruns]

“When you’re a dreamer, heartbreak and failure come with the territory. But I can tell you it’s worth it because it’s a way of living that is both moving and memorable.”

— Lauren Fleshman 

[permanenthistorydamage]

a weighted blanket is not enough please compress me into a .zip file

[pastelparrotlet]

Try stuff. Put plants in your room even if you aren’t the best at caring for them. Attempt that dessert recipe even if it turns out ugly. Listen to that music you’ve been meaning to try for a while. The world is full of infinite sources of goodness and the best thing to do it to try and find as many as possible.

[aliciaruns]

Also a note to self on posting the insanely serendipitous story of what happened with my career development plans!!!

[aliciaruns]

hey hi hello pals! life is weird but in a good way and i need to post some super nerdy cool stuff soon bc like… i literally look at atoms all the time!!! Atoms!!! It’s insane!!

Anyway in the meantime I am back to being a menace on tinder and hinge 😂

Came across a guy I went out with literally 7 years ago and stopped seeing bc he was very obsessed with circumcision??? Like that is a story I need to share in more depth later but omg, I fucking died when I came across him this morning 😂

the Boston dating scene at 31 seems more promising than it was at 24, but man I can’t believe I’m already seeing the same contenders as I did in 2017!

Anyway enjoy my trollness 😂

[aliciaruns]

I need to actually get my shit together now. I need to get into MIT or Harvard for my Ph.D. Holy crap. I am going to have one hell of a year.

[aliciaruns]

I posted this one year and one day ago. I got my shit together. I got into MIT for my PhD, and I certainly had one hell of a year to accomplish it.

Sometimes I forget what I went through to get to this point and how hard I worked to accomplish this goal/dream of mine. I could’ve had a really easy junior/senior year, but I opted to bust my ass for 10 months straight instead, so that I could say I gave the grad school application process my all, 1000%. And I did. And because of that, no matter what the outcome would’ve been, I am proud. 

And I did get in, just less than one year later! And I’m moving to Boston to be with my love this August! I got in to MIT, the best university in the world, for my PhD. And that is just.plain.crazy.

You can achieve anything if you put your mind, heart, soul, and every single joule of energy you have into it, friends.

It has been exhausting. I am still recovering from this crazy past 12 months. But I learned so much about myself in the process, and damn, was it worth it.  

[aliciaruns]

this is even more insane now, just 2 months shy of 10 years since the original post, and I've now gotten into MIT for PhD not once, but twice, 8 years apart. life is so wild sometimes.

[sleepingpigeon]

no one wants to hear it but love is earned after the initial infatuation. commitment is something u both mutually agree to and then from there it’s work. it’s not work like it’s a chore it’s jus work like it takes effort. to get good at these things takes practice. it takes practice to learn to communicate better and it takes practice to learn to love each other in the ways u need to be loved.

[championsaremade]

feel and do not resist those feelings. lean into your emotions…not so much that they overpower you and cause you to stop living, but enough that it helps you grow and get out of your comfort zone. we know the answers and we know the advice even when it’s hard to follow…the most magnificent breakthroughs occur when shit gets really tough. the most meaningful lessons arise when the most confusing, heart shattering events make no sense. they may never make sense…have faith that what is gone needed to go, have faith that what is coming is better than what has left.