When Professor Bryant Lin got cancer, he taught a class about it

Ms. Chan said she had been overwhelmed at first, buried in medical terminology she didn’t understand. Wanting to give her husband the best chance at continued health, she tried cutting out sausages and red meat from his diet — but felt disappointed when he turned down some of the new foods she made. While she encouraged caregivers to lean on friends and family, she warned that coordinating well-meaning offers of help could become a task in itself. An M.I.T. graduate and program manager at Google DeepMind, she acknowledged that letting go of her instinct to plan for the future had been difficult. “We just have to go through it one day at a time,” she said. Dr. Lin nodded in agreement. A Job Not Quite Finished Watching Dr. Lin teach, I often wondered what his students, many in their late teens and early 20s, were thinking. What was it like for them to become attached to him as a professor, knowing his prognosis was so dire? When I asked, some used the phrase “once-in-a-lifetime oppo ... Read full article.