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What happens when you splice an extrovert with a budding neurologist with a writer? You get Can ’29, whose eagerness to share his ideas on life, the universe, and everything keeps him up at night—quite literally. Keep reading to learn more about this first-year student from Boston, including his writing practice (he invokes everyone from Ray Bradbury to Bob Dylan), favorite Turkish foods, research interests (from CRISPR gene therapy to the head injuries depicted in Home Alone), and much more.

Commonwealth students love a good mental exercise, which is why we ask them to share the paradoxes that stretch their minds and challenge their assumptions. Tease your brain with the sampling below and enjoy pondering everything from time travel to extraterrestrial life to Pinocchio…

The day of the last conversation for this article marked five days until an odd-year Election Day, thirty days of the soon-to-be longest federal government shutdown in American history, 1,344 days of the Russo-Ukrainian war—and found six Commonwealth alumni/ae with a lot on their minds.

In Government Center, a mile’s walk from his old high school, Matt Costas ’14, Chief of Staff to City Councilor Liz Breadon, kept tabs on grassroots efforts to feed residents in the face of impending cuts to food benefits. At the Massachusetts State House, Senator Will Brownsberger ’74 worked to pass limits on the eviction of federal workers affected by the shutdown. Across the Charles River, Kevin Ballen ’16—current Harvard Law student, former White House staffer—was already anticipating the 2026 midterms. (“Elections are long,” he notes.) In New York, Camille Simoneau ’10 joined a State Department delegation at the United Nations General Assembly; in Michigan, State Senator Erika (Swanson) Geiss ’89 moderated a session of complex procedural discussions as president pro tempore. And overseas, longtime diplomat Peter Galbraith ’69 delivered a speech in Croatia, where he was once ambassador, while observing signs of weakness in American institutions that alarmed him.

It was a turbulent denouement to a year variously described by these six in government and politics as “uncertain,” “a roller coaster,” and “a constant inferno.” But in their careers and study, they had to continue to address what Peter calls the “first question about any proposed policy or law”: “Will it work? If it won’t work, you don’t need to consider whether it is the right thing to do.”

If you’ve been pondering that question around something you care about, you’re at the same starting point as the alumni/ae you’ll meet here: several never thought they’d enter their roles until they ran up against a problem they wanted to tackle. They all attest that one critical step in finding any solution is listening deeply to others’ experiences. Start now by hearing theirs.