The Student Spotlight Podcast

Welcome to the first episode of season 4! I hope you enjoy the podcast's fresh new look as I kick off my 4th year. There's no better way to start this season than with a thought-provoking conversation with one of my closest friends, Carol Magalhaes ! She is a Junior at Northwestern University who studies molecular biology, while researching ovarian aging at the Duncan lab. Prior to her cur...

Wow, it's been a year! A lot has changed as my 3rd year comes to an end and fourth year starts soon. In this episode, I fill you in on my updated mental models after I reflect along the last year and why I didn't podcast during that period. It was a challenging year and led to a breaking point but it's only up from here as I come to conclude this long episode with. If these topics resonate with yo...

Twitter! Medicine! Newborn Love! What do all 3 of these themes have in common? Lan! On this episode, the spotlight is on Lan Dao, a third-year medical student at the University of Montreal and a previous intern at the Mila - Quebec AI Institute. With her plethora of experiences, we talk all things health, philosophy, and happiness! There are tidbits for everyone to learn on this episode as we went...

Beep boop beep in this EP, I am joined by three computer science friends, Alex, Andriy, and Peter, where we discuss all things esports gaming (and its connection with math!), as well as a classic Anime exposé! Here's a little sneak peek about this fun-filled episode's guests:  Alex Teeter is a first-year Computer Science student at the University of Toronto, Scarborough. His hobbies/interests incl...

Long time, no see Spotlights! I have not fallen off the face of Earth in my absence over the last two months, just had a lot of big projects surface at the same time. In this episode, I update you on the various facets of this podcast as well as my invested endeavours in joining Twitter (and getting flagged lol), building artificial intelligence projects, doing lab research, writing a book, and ma...

Happy New Year! This episode features Alexander "Sasha" Skvortsov, a 2nd year computer science and math major at Pennsylvania State University! He first started programming through the International Youth Neuroscience Association (IYNA), a nonprofit that helps high school students explore their interests in neuroscience (where we met!). Sasha is currently working on Flarum, a free, open source for...

To celebrate the podcast's one year anniversary episode, Sana and I discuss very important topics that come up with our transition to young adulthood! Sana Al-Bahrani is a sophomore student studying Justice, Political Philosophy and Law at McMaster University and TAs several Innovation courses. She is also the Vice President of Operations at the Rescue Our Kids Charity and McMaster Women in Pre-La...

Cue the Spotlight to an episode full of laughs as I am joined by 2 classic late-night conversationalists, Alex and Ibby! Our 1st guest is Alexandra, a fourth year Computer Science Specialist and Teaching Assistant at the University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM) who also researches online classroom strategies and education in computer science as she hopes to go to graduate school, with the dream of...

Can you guess which OG guest is featured in this episode? Hint, in season 1, we primarily talked about problem solving with technology and the software engineering space in startups and big corporations. Ok ok enough teasing, it's Arsala Bangash! Staying true to his technological problem solving roots starting from interning at Google and Vida Health, he is now the founder of Grey Software. A...

In the 1st solo episode of season 2, I give an online school update and how I navigated the academic realization that “oh wow this is actually getting kinda hard now”. Proposed solutions and anecdotes include online lectures (skipping some of them :''D), life saving TAs, professor effort, and accountability partners. I also discuss being a fan of Discord to combat social isolation! Since it combin...

Cue the 1st episode of season 2 of The Student Spotlight, to kickstart this new season with a bang, today’s guest is Nameera Azim! She's a talented student studying statistics, computer science and business at the University of Toronto. Besides school, she is an artiste and paints scenic watercolour pieces that go for online auction. You can check out her art shop via instagram @warmregarts and or...

Welcome to Season 2 (sophomore year)!!! The Student Spotlight is a podcast that explores the highs and lows of student life with guests and the host, Yasmeen, a psychology/computer science student at the University of Toronto. This podcast aims to help the student community connect more through stories. By starting conversations with students about their lives so far, we can each test-trial a path...

Joined by one of the funniest people I know, Jack Bennett! He's an environmental science specialist at the University of Toronto and is interested in streaming video games, exploring astronomy, and photography. You can check out his Twitch Video Game streaming channel at www. twitch.tv/Hosannah and you can follow him on Instagram @jack.asmr. With a bunch of hilarious personal stories, Jack and I d...

In collaboration with the WiSC Talks Podcast, In today's special episode, we are joined by the new Vice-President of the University of Toronto and Principal of UTM, Dr. Alexandra Gillespie! Alex (don't worry, we got permission ;D) is also an internationally renowned researcher, published author, and director of the UofT Old Books New Science Lab. She’s won many awards in recognition of her outstan...

Whether you’re woohoo or boohoo about online school, this episode plays on that duality with both pros and cons. As a summer online student, I share my two cents on remote learning strategies, realizations, and tips. I also discuss the pandemic's interesting consequences on the student space! From study app startups to selling art, the student community has honestly really shone through. Even if w...

At the Spotlight, we have Seeam! He’s a 2B Systems Design Engineering student at the University of Waterloo. Besides a ton of cool internships at companies like BlackBerry and RBC, he most recently finished a term where he spearheaded mobile product management at an early-stage health-tech startup in Rhode Island. Plus, he hosts his own podcast where he chats with other Product Managers from acros...

You know what, students face many personal obstacles besides obvious academic ones. Here, I attempt to tackle three of those in this episode. The first and main narrative is how to adopt effective sleep hygiene. I outline my strategies and things I've learnt from research! While explaining this, my brain naturally alludes to other fun topics along the way like, identity moratorium-ness and classic...

The committed period of student life comes with a lot of not-so-warranted experiences like you guessed it, burnout! In this episode, I start off by talking about my early morning essay crisis experience and how I handle the day onwards. That discussion extends beyond just surface-level "burnout" and delves into fundamental identity counterparts. The two main themes including SELF-rejection and sub...

✨The Student Spotlight is a podcast that explores the highs and lows of student life with your host, Yasmeen (Brain) Hmaidan, a psychology, computer science, math student at the University of Toronto. Because there's nothing better than starting conversations with students about their lives so far because through stories, we connect. Please follow, subscribe, and leave a review on whatever platfo...

"I'll just do it tomorrow", "Augh, why do I always leave this to the last minute??", "Will I ever change this habit?!". Joined by a special guest, today we tackle these classic questions to discuss the common perils of procrastination on academia. The Ender Dragon we must all face at one point or another. This episode will hopefully give you some food for thought on how to deal with procrastinatio...

The spotlight is on Teni! A 2nd year Brown university student, who studies liberal medical education with environmental health and inequality. The main theme of this episode is regarding black lives matter advocacy, especially from the under-represented student experience. Please listen to the end of this episode where we outline specific call to actions on what you can do as students during this...

Cue the Spotlight to Vaneezeh Siddiqui, a 3rd year UofT student majoring in statistics, and double minoring in computer science and business. She is the Founder and President of the up and coming WiSC (Women in Science and Computing) club. In this heartfelt conversation, Vaneezeh brings light to her passions about leadership, people management, and empowering female-identifying students in ST...

We are joined by Motasem Almasri, a Biopsych student at UofT. We discuss a whole slew of existentially-themed topics ranging from the classic human question "what do I want to do with my life?!" all the way to light-hearted memeology! This episode can give you a refreshing outlook on the counter-philosophy of the seemingly-exclusive/bubbled student life. If you want to follow up with Motasem, feel...

Ali Kuwajerwala, a graduating UofT student majoring in Robotics and Machine Learning makes a feature where we discuss a myriad of topics ranging from Covid-19's implications on our student lives, Elon Musk's new baby boy, to the beauty behind video games. If you're impressed by Ali's overall amazingness, please feel free to contact him on https://www.linkedin.com/in/alikuwajerwala/. Thanks for tun...

Bad grades, we all get them as students so it makes sense to talk about them. Why? Because too many of us get bogged down by a subpar number and treat it as a taboo. But so what? We’re just students in the Game of Academia. So like every game, let’s come up with a game plan! I really hope that students, after this EP, will be open to discussing their academic “failures” and help create a non-judge...