How Chasing a Childhood Dream gave me a New Direction

by Hector Vazquez, 11.04.2019
My second day in Switzerland, I stumbled upon the Polyterrasse right behind ETH-Zurich’s main building.
From here, I was able to see the entire city I was about to call my home for the following 7 months. (photo credit: Hector Vazquez/ETH Zurich)

I told myself early on in my learning journey that, if I was ever to become an effective educator in a globalized world, I must understand and experience new cultures and landscapes abroad. So I decided to fly to Switzerland, a place I had only dreamed of visiting as a child, and discovered a new research direction, learned a new language and met friends that gave me a second family there.

As I sat on a plane over the Atlantic Ocean, I wondered how I was going to make the most of the once in a lifetime opportunity I’d been given to study at ETH Zurich. My initial thought was to rely on the sport I consider the purest form of teamwork, rowing, in order to experience the city from a different perspective and begin making friends there.

At first, I had doubts about committing to such a sport in a new place, because I also wanted to have enough time to experience the rest of the country. However, all my worries had quickly vanished by the time I saw the sunrise on my first day at the rowing club. I began to make good friends there, and soon had established a regular language (German/Spanish) and cultural exchange (Swiss/Puerto Rican) with the person I consider to be one of my best friends in Switzerland.
I went out to one of the rowing clubs along Lake Zurich on my third day in Switzerland and contemplated the sunrise framed by the city’s lights and reflected on the glass water. (photo credit: Hector Vazquez/ETH Zurich)
My rowing team (photo credit: Hector Vazquez/ETH Zurich)
With the sport and social aspects sorted, the time came to begin my studies at ETH. My favorite course quickly becamse Signals and Systems 2 because it was a follow up to my favorite electrical engineering course at MIT on a similar topic. The differences in the teaching style had a profound effect on me: at MIT, I had learnt Signals and Systems using only differential equations and calculus. Now, I was in a harder version of the class where it was assumed I already knew both circuits and linear algebra. Moreover, there were no office hours, no multiple lectures and no recitation sections every week where I would be practically forced to stay on top of the course material. Failing the first midterm was just the reality check I needed to learn one of the most important lessons I took away from ETH: I the responsibility and quality of my education falls entirely on my own shoulders.
Another key takeaway was one I gained during a Semester Project at the Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering (D-ITET). It was at this department that I was able to begin a research project at the Institute for Neuroinformatics in a joint partnership between ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich (UZH). Throughout the course of my studies, I had become extremely interested in understanding our own human behavior and intelligence, but nearly all the opportunities I encountered to participate in research within my Computer Science department had been in Machine Learning (ML). I soon discovered that this ML research focused on engineering a solution to a real-world problem: results over explanations. As soon as I saw that the Institute for Neuroinformatics attempted to apply the findings of Brain and Cognitive Science research to Artificial Intelligence, I knew I had found the right lab, and a new research direction.
Picture from Jungfraujoch, the top of Europe, during my visit to Interlaken. (photo credit: Hector Vazquez/ETH Zurich)
Leaving Switzerland after my exchange, I appreciated the wealth of new experiences this opportunity gave me: a new research direction, a new language, and, most importantly, very dear friends whom I long to see again. I now dream of seeing the sunrise over the waters of Lake Zurich again before long. I aspire coming back to ETH Zurich either as a Masters or PhD student, in order to continue learning from the institute and people that inspired me so much. And I want to once again be immersed in the Swiss culture that made me feel at home during those 7 unforgettable months, which I would relive again without a second thought.
Speaking of takeaways: life lessons are great… but they are easily outweighed by approximately 11kg of Swiss chocolate I brought back to my house. (photo credit: Hector Vazquez/ETH Zurich)

About the author

Born and raised in Puerto Rico, I moved to the United States to study Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). I was the first of my close family to leave Puerto Rico, so it has taken many sacrifices on behalf of my parents to allow me to study there. Because of this, I wanted to make the most of every learning opportunity I encountered. Outside of classes and research, I rowed with MIT’s Lightweight Rowing Division 1 team, and danced with MIT’s Casino Rueda. As I was beginning the third year of my bachelor’s degree, my department opened the MIT-ETH exchange, which I quickly signed up for in order to follow my childhood dream of someday visiting Switzerland.