New Year’s SymSys Plates!

Over winter break, we kicked off the New Year by organizing virtual ~plates~ aka platonic dates! Twenty-six students signed up, and 13 matches were made! Below are some thoughts from two plate-goers: 

Regina Ta, ‘23:

My plate and I chatted about our shared interest in Webtoon comics, and swapped reading recommendations. We also bonded over our experiences in language classes, and I learned about the initiative to save the Cantonese program at Stanford! We discussed how our respective SymSys concentrations (Natural Language and HCI) intersected, and I came away with great classes to take next.

Spontaneous convos with new faces are hard to come by on Zoom, so I’m glad to have met another fellow SymSys-er! 

Cooper, ‘21:

My plate and I had an incredible conversation covering music, digital art, and our different inspirations to begin working with the psychology of design! We also shared our experiences around CS147: Intro to Human-Computer Interaction Design, a touchstone course for many SymSys students which we happened to both be in, despite my plate being in her first year at Stanford and me being in a Flex term during a gap year from Stanford. We’ve shared our inspirations for choosing concentrations, mine in HCI and hers in HCAI, and she swung me toward her side - I may change course when I return to Stanford because of the conversation we had together. Until then we’ll both be working toward tech for social good.

We had a great time playing matchmaker and we hope you made new friends along the way. Thanks for the conversation & community--until next time! :)