Grand Challenges Impact Lab

2024 Student Blog


February 22, 2024

Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright

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I just had a meeting with my group at 11:00 at night, and I need to be up at 6:30 am. Let’s do this. My expectations for GCIL had been culminating for four years. I first heard about it as an admitted freshman, and while I hadn’t a clue what I was doing in life,…


GCIL is Mario Kart

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Grand Challenges Impact Lab (GCIL) is a lot like Mario Kart. Right off the bat, you may be thinking to yourself, “Ridgely, how could a program designed to tackle grand challenges and foster social entrepreneurship possibly be compared to the classic Nintendo game Mario Kart?” Well, I’m about to make a boat load of analogies…


February 21, 2024

Tick Tock, Tick Tock, Tick Tock, Tick

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Tick Tock, Tick Tock, Tick Tock, Tick How do I think another day on so many problems? Who are all these problems affecting… It seems like so many, But how can I not contain my excitement about so many solutions Who is willing to hear us out? With our long list of questionnaires? Who wants…


Homesick

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Homesickness is a universal emotion; it tugs at the heartstrings of anyone who has ventured far from the familiar comforts of home. Whether you find yourself just a few towns away or halfway across the world, the ache of missing home is a consistent pain that plays in the background of life. Lately, this emotion…


February 20, 2024

My Ideal Day

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My Sunday began at 6 in the morning in the streets of White Town, Punducherry, following Monika and Kiara as we looked for a rickshaw driver to take us to Serenity Beach to watch the sunrise. After Monika successfully flagged one down, we all loaded into the auto and clenched tightly to our belongings as…


The Beginning of the End

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Alright, here we go. We are in the last stretch of the quarter. As the sun rose this morning, half-asleep students of GCIL got off the train from Pondicherry, stumbled into cars and rickshaws, and made our way back to UTC. Home sweet home. I was disorientated in the morning and only managed to unpack…


February 19, 2024

I had so much fun!

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Honestly, it’s been a rough two weeks since my last blog post. I’ve been sick, from coughing to mysterious bug bites to rashes, I really thought it could be the end of the line. I feel differently after one of the top 20 weekends I have had in my life. That’s top 1.8% of weekends…


My Favorite City in India (so far)

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This weekend was a whole lot of random. I came into Pondicherry with no expectations and no plans besides just figuring stuff out as I go. Upon our arrival on Saturday, I took a dip into the ocean and set out for a long day. On Saturday, I just walked around and stumbled into odd…


February 16, 2024

The past few weeks

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With a terrible sickness moving its way through my GCIL peers over the last few weeks, and a lot, good and bad, happening in Seattle since my last blog, it has been a strange few weeks. To focus on the positive, despite a persistent cough that I have apparently been blissfully sleeping through each night,…


Rinse and Repeat

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Week seven has been never ending talks about our GCIL projects with our teams and peers. Most of us are spending too much time at the UTC dorms this week designing, prototyping, and scrapping projects. Our final presentations and flights out of Bangalore only a few weeks away, I have started to wonder what I…



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