H: Variations on and Responses to Themes from a Different Blog
There is a lot of good writing out there, but it is hard to find time to commit to reading to it. (Remember when I planned on finishing a whole set of books at the end of the summer? Since then, I have finished basically zero non-required readings.) There is even less time to sit down and write and reflect on it. In general, I read what is assigned to me, a constant flood of emails from random MIT mailing lists, occasionally Twitter, two AoPS blogs (both of which post inconsistently), and the Guardian's live coverage of British politics.
Today (in whatever skewed definition of today I maintain), however, I got access to another blog and, in combination with the generally contemplative mood a cloudy day sets me in, it took my breath away and sucked my mind into its discussion as I walked alone in the dark across Killian Court and down Dorm Row after my evening class. There is so much content here that I yearn to intake, but unlike my writing, which is methodical and constant and quantity, this writing is creative and fluid and quality, and I need time to digest it, which is why this post will be fractured, limited in its scope of discussion, and unedited, while still being scarily overbroad. It will excerpt freely, but minimally, and move between topics ad lib; thus, the title. So! To begin.
I write a lot. Daily writing produces a lot of the same, and I often write using the same hackneyed mannerisms and phrases over and over again. That doesn't mean this daily posting isn't important—if it didn't exist, I would not have a record of my emotions and thoughts over periods of time, or a habit of writing anything at all. (Since sitting down and writing before going to bed is now deeply ingrained in my psyche, it always occurs.) It does, however, end up sacrificing content—simply summarizing activities in a day (which can often be quite detailed!) instead of being interesting or having any form of particularly novel thought. Practice makes perfect, but am I actually practicing writing, or am I practicing regurgitating the events of a day in an uninspired manner? What's the point?
To that end, I've been asking myself that question a lot about a whole set of things. What's the point? Why am I here; why am I studying <x> when there are so many people so much smarter than I am doing it—and still struggling with it? The answer, it seems, is obvious—to make myself a better person. This kind of self-focused answer always seems myopic, and yet I struggle to find a better justification. Yes, becoming a better person helps the people around me and helps me create greater change in the world, but I find it unconvincing that the probability of these things actually having a significant impact is high.
It's not as if I came into MIT with some expectation that I would be a star student. Some random kid from South Dakota with no Olympiads, no extended research background, no mountains but instead just deep holes and valleys in some attempt at building an overall "well-rounded" person—that person should not, and does not, expect to be good. I've been to enough national competitions and events to know that I am nowhere near good. What has frustrated me, however, is seeing the things I thought might be good opportunities fade away as well. Auditioning for six acapella groups having struggled on high notes in one, forgotten the warm-up notes in another, and been unable to sight-sing in the last—and still only getting one callback from the other three, reminded me that I am a) still susceptible to Dunning-Kruger effect in a variety of ways and b) still "not as competent as I think I am." I often lower my expectations, because I know I can be overconfident in my predictions, and yet sometimes I still miss.
Everyday, then, whether things have gone well, poorly, or, as most days tend to be, average, I return to Next House. To be sure, Next House is now a home in a way that no other building apart from my actual house has been. My mail is addressed here, and I will be here for the next n weeks, months, years. Yet I agree with the blog that "home is other people." I haven't had to reject my own home, fortunately, although for weeks I was scared I would have to, and I was prepared to leave at a moment's notice, but the worst did not come to pass. (We'll return to this theme later, but for now, focusing on home.) As I wrote in my Common App essay, I have been constantly trying to find home: the homogenous, white, conservative people of Rapid City are not quite home, the homogenous, study-from-the-same-textbooks, parents-are-rich-or-scientists-or-both people of NSB/Mathcounts are not quite home, the slightly homophobic, slightly dogmatic, striving-in-both-legitimate-and-crafty-ways people of China are not quite home.
I wrote in my essays that I had found my home at RSI, in some way, shape or form (which mirrors the blog's contention about another summer camp). At RSI, people were unafraid to engage you in conversation about whatever—including both technical details and, perhaps more importantly, questions of perspective, identity, and the like. They were there for you at any time of the night and day, which was, perhaps, unhealthy, but it made for an amazing community nonetheless. It was a place that finally taught me that "there are people who will hug you and accept you and care about you", and not just you as you present yourself to them but you in your entirety, including all the things about yourself you barely knew or are just discovering and exploring, and they will do this to the most absolute extent possible. I found this at last year's RSI, at this year's RSI, and, for some reason, even Presidential Scholars, where I found myself able to be vulnerable and to develop in just 48 hours.
Such a feeling is strangely absent at MIT so far. Perhaps it is simply the group I am living and interacting with, but sometimes it feels like the discussion have go no deeper than the technical problems which they are working on, the superficial aspects of their day, and vaguely interesting questions and problems which have little connection to the world at large. I have scarcely had the deep emotional connection I have had when talking to people who actually seem to have emotional interiors that are not as deeply guarded, like when I sat in a sandwich shop at Presidential Scholars with two people I had met the night before and told them my entire life story, or when I laid on the steps of Killian Court and talked to some of my kids about their lives and perspectives and hopes and aspirations. In contrast with questions posed by the blog about choosing EC over Next, I question why I chose Next over all else. I love the culture here, but sometimes it feels like there I can find no human connection with the people I talk to, and it scares me. Friends abound, but my yearning to spill my words into a vessel other than the text on a screen bubbles up and struggles to contain itself in this vacuum.
It's easy living in Next. So many friends, and acquaintances who become friends, whose names you remember and who you wave at in the halls as you go by, rushing to your next class in whatever room that happens to be all the way across campus. I came to MIT to be challenged, to question myself and to grow upon meeting new people and having new experiences, and I honestly feel like I should be finding more diversity here. Yes, it is perhaps wrong to "attach this homogeneous label [of diversity] to a community of people I don’t know," but I contend that I feel its lack nonetheless. Maybe I just haven't met the right people yet, but sometimes it does feel kind of lonely, all the way where the sidewalk ends.
Perhaps that it's because of this loneliness, this feeling that I don't quite fit in this world that seems to have imposed on itself a shallow floor to a diving pool of possible discussions, that I've started to try to avoid being labeled a "math boy," because I'm not smart enough to deserve such a title, or an "RSI kid", because I feel like that title comes with expectations of pretention. I am so fortunate that I have not had to actually fight over labels, or identity, but who I am becomes a greater mystery as time goes on, because I see myself as not this, or not that. Who am I and what do I want to do with my life? I scream this into the abyss, and the abyss is silent.
One thing I know I am is Chinese-American, an exceptionally common class of people here at MIT. From when I remember, being Asian has always been something I've been aware of. Everyone else around me at home looks different from me. Existence as someone second-generation is so entirely different from first-generation. For example, as the blog claims (with words struck for identifying information), "I never really thought of myself as demonym until I had to speak to people from other countries, and defined myself...only in contrast." This demonstrates, perhaps, an interesting fact about existence for second-generation immigrants (an inherent oxymoron), which comes to mind now (although it is not something I am thinking about particularly now)—they do not fit in either place. That is enough of a digression, at least for now.
Another I know is that I am bisexual/pansexual/queer/whatever. I have been fortunate enough to not have to deal with a culture where "being gay is tantamount to original sin." I have been told to "carry on the family name", or "not tell your sister", but I have never been told that I need to leave the house, or been threatened physical violence. It always horrifies me to hear of situations, and part of me wonders how I would've coped. I've met a lot of resilient individuals, and I admire them a lot, but there is sampling bias. You see the resilient ones more than you see the ones who are not.
Why is this important to me? It's important because it took me a long time to figure out I was bi. It's easy to assume you're straight in a heteronormative environment, especially when hormones are running and you have all sorts of straight crushes. It's hard to discover yourself and to then proceed to respect yourself and change your labels. It's hard to feel safe when one of the first people you tell and one of your most liberal best friends still accidentally outs you to people you didn't expect.
Because these tasks are so difficult, if you still find yourself free after overcoming them, then part of you yearns to give back. To demonstrate yourself fully is liberating, but to show to others that such a thing is possible is just as important. A lot of how I think about this comes from this TEDxGeorgetown video, which contends that we who have the privilege have an obligation to be out because of the work people in the past have done to give us that right (think Stonewall), because of the people right now around us who need to have it demonstrated that we exist, and because of the future generations of people who need to know that they are safe and they are valid. As the blog goes, "I can afford to be loud." That doesn't mean to be LGBTQ+ implies a necessity to fit every stereotype, because that is not every person, nor is that in every person's power—by identifying as x, you are enough. I find myself viscerally agreeing with the rest of this post—sometimes we ask if we are "gay enough", am I "bi enough" (am I actually pan? do I experience relatively even attraction distributions or not?), but to identify as something and to label yourself what you want is enough.
I forget this sometimes, and we all struggle. The reason I talk about this a lot though, and the reason I wear an NSDA pin that has a pride flag on it and a bi pride pin on my backpack, the reason my lanyard has a button that is pride flag colored and says "Love trumps hate", the reason my laptop has a sticker that says "yep!" in rainbow, (part of ) the reason I dyed a portion of my hair, and the reason I have a shirt that says pride on it is because I care. I am able to represent myself freely, and therefore I do to present solidarity to those who cannot. I seek to be genuine to myself, which perhaps, drawing back to earlier, is what is lacking here. I once claimed in a college essay that "[boxes] confine things, and when that which they confine is people or is identity, then these boxes become stifling." (I cringe a bit at the sentence structure now.) Perhaps it is fitting that the post ends with a call to the reader (and to the author themself) to "fit yourself into these boxes but refuse to squeeze into them."
Is this coherent? I'm not sure. It's 2:30 AM. It is, however, me (who might be the slightest bit incoherent at times), and that is perhaps what matters most.
Today (in whatever skewed definition of today I maintain), however, I got access to another blog and, in combination with the generally contemplative mood a cloudy day sets me in, it took my breath away and sucked my mind into its discussion as I walked alone in the dark across Killian Court and down Dorm Row after my evening class. There is so much content here that I yearn to intake, but unlike my writing, which is methodical and constant and quantity, this writing is creative and fluid and quality, and I need time to digest it, which is why this post will be fractured, limited in its scope of discussion, and unedited, while still being scarily overbroad. It will excerpt freely, but minimally, and move between topics ad lib; thus, the title. So! To begin.
I write a lot. Daily writing produces a lot of the same, and I often write using the same hackneyed mannerisms and phrases over and over again. That doesn't mean this daily posting isn't important—if it didn't exist, I would not have a record of my emotions and thoughts over periods of time, or a habit of writing anything at all. (Since sitting down and writing before going to bed is now deeply ingrained in my psyche, it always occurs.) It does, however, end up sacrificing content—simply summarizing activities in a day (which can often be quite detailed!) instead of being interesting or having any form of particularly novel thought. Practice makes perfect, but am I actually practicing writing, or am I practicing regurgitating the events of a day in an uninspired manner? What's the point?
To that end, I've been asking myself that question a lot about a whole set of things. What's the point? Why am I here; why am I studying <x> when there are so many people so much smarter than I am doing it—and still struggling with it? The answer, it seems, is obvious—to make myself a better person. This kind of self-focused answer always seems myopic, and yet I struggle to find a better justification. Yes, becoming a better person helps the people around me and helps me create greater change in the world, but I find it unconvincing that the probability of these things actually having a significant impact is high.
It's not as if I came into MIT with some expectation that I would be a star student. Some random kid from South Dakota with no Olympiads, no extended research background, no mountains but instead just deep holes and valleys in some attempt at building an overall "well-rounded" person—that person should not, and does not, expect to be good. I've been to enough national competitions and events to know that I am nowhere near good. What has frustrated me, however, is seeing the things I thought might be good opportunities fade away as well. Auditioning for six acapella groups having struggled on high notes in one, forgotten the warm-up notes in another, and been unable to sight-sing in the last—and still only getting one callback from the other three, reminded me that I am a) still susceptible to Dunning-Kruger effect in a variety of ways and b) still "not as competent as I think I am." I often lower my expectations, because I know I can be overconfident in my predictions, and yet sometimes I still miss.
Everyday, then, whether things have gone well, poorly, or, as most days tend to be, average, I return to Next House. To be sure, Next House is now a home in a way that no other building apart from my actual house has been. My mail is addressed here, and I will be here for the next n weeks, months, years. Yet I agree with the blog that "home is other people." I haven't had to reject my own home, fortunately, although for weeks I was scared I would have to, and I was prepared to leave at a moment's notice, but the worst did not come to pass. (We'll return to this theme later, but for now, focusing on home.) As I wrote in my Common App essay, I have been constantly trying to find home: the homogenous, white, conservative people of Rapid City are not quite home, the homogenous, study-from-the-same-textbooks, parents-are-rich-or-scientists-or-both people of NSB/Mathcounts are not quite home, the slightly homophobic, slightly dogmatic, striving-in-both-legitimate-and-crafty-ways people of China are not quite home.
I wrote in my essays that I had found my home at RSI, in some way, shape or form (which mirrors the blog's contention about another summer camp). At RSI, people were unafraid to engage you in conversation about whatever—including both technical details and, perhaps more importantly, questions of perspective, identity, and the like. They were there for you at any time of the night and day, which was, perhaps, unhealthy, but it made for an amazing community nonetheless. It was a place that finally taught me that "there are people who will hug you and accept you and care about you", and not just you as you present yourself to them but you in your entirety, including all the things about yourself you barely knew or are just discovering and exploring, and they will do this to the most absolute extent possible. I found this at last year's RSI, at this year's RSI, and, for some reason, even Presidential Scholars, where I found myself able to be vulnerable and to develop in just 48 hours.
Such a feeling is strangely absent at MIT so far. Perhaps it is simply the group I am living and interacting with, but sometimes it feels like the discussion have go no deeper than the technical problems which they are working on, the superficial aspects of their day, and vaguely interesting questions and problems which have little connection to the world at large. I have scarcely had the deep emotional connection I have had when talking to people who actually seem to have emotional interiors that are not as deeply guarded, like when I sat in a sandwich shop at Presidential Scholars with two people I had met the night before and told them my entire life story, or when I laid on the steps of Killian Court and talked to some of my kids about their lives and perspectives and hopes and aspirations. In contrast with questions posed by the blog about choosing EC over Next, I question why I chose Next over all else. I love the culture here, but sometimes it feels like there I can find no human connection with the people I talk to, and it scares me. Friends abound, but my yearning to spill my words into a vessel other than the text on a screen bubbles up and struggles to contain itself in this vacuum.
It's easy living in Next. So many friends, and acquaintances who become friends, whose names you remember and who you wave at in the halls as you go by, rushing to your next class in whatever room that happens to be all the way across campus. I came to MIT to be challenged, to question myself and to grow upon meeting new people and having new experiences, and I honestly feel like I should be finding more diversity here. Yes, it is perhaps wrong to "attach this homogeneous label [of diversity] to a community of people I don’t know," but I contend that I feel its lack nonetheless. Maybe I just haven't met the right people yet, but sometimes it does feel kind of lonely, all the way where the sidewalk ends.
Perhaps that it's because of this loneliness, this feeling that I don't quite fit in this world that seems to have imposed on itself a shallow floor to a diving pool of possible discussions, that I've started to try to avoid being labeled a "math boy," because I'm not smart enough to deserve such a title, or an "RSI kid", because I feel like that title comes with expectations of pretention. I am so fortunate that I have not had to actually fight over labels, or identity, but who I am becomes a greater mystery as time goes on, because I see myself as not this, or not that. Who am I and what do I want to do with my life? I scream this into the abyss, and the abyss is silent.
One thing I know I am is Chinese-American, an exceptionally common class of people here at MIT. From when I remember, being Asian has always been something I've been aware of. Everyone else around me at home looks different from me. Existence as someone second-generation is so entirely different from first-generation. For example, as the blog claims (with words struck for identifying information), "I never really thought of myself as demonym until I had to speak to people from other countries, and defined myself...only in contrast." This demonstrates, perhaps, an interesting fact about existence for second-generation immigrants (an inherent oxymoron), which comes to mind now (although it is not something I am thinking about particularly now)—they do not fit in either place. That is enough of a digression, at least for now.
Another I know is that I am bisexual/pansexual/queer/whatever. I have been fortunate enough to not have to deal with a culture where "being gay is tantamount to original sin." I have been told to "carry on the family name", or "not tell your sister", but I have never been told that I need to leave the house, or been threatened physical violence. It always horrifies me to hear of situations, and part of me wonders how I would've coped. I've met a lot of resilient individuals, and I admire them a lot, but there is sampling bias. You see the resilient ones more than you see the ones who are not.
Why is this important to me? It's important because it took me a long time to figure out I was bi. It's easy to assume you're straight in a heteronormative environment, especially when hormones are running and you have all sorts of straight crushes. It's hard to discover yourself and to then proceed to respect yourself and change your labels. It's hard to feel safe when one of the first people you tell and one of your most liberal best friends still accidentally outs you to people you didn't expect.
Because these tasks are so difficult, if you still find yourself free after overcoming them, then part of you yearns to give back. To demonstrate yourself fully is liberating, but to show to others that such a thing is possible is just as important. A lot of how I think about this comes from this TEDxGeorgetown video, which contends that we who have the privilege have an obligation to be out because of the work people in the past have done to give us that right (think Stonewall), because of the people right now around us who need to have it demonstrated that we exist, and because of the future generations of people who need to know that they are safe and they are valid. As the blog goes, "I can afford to be loud." That doesn't mean to be LGBTQ+ implies a necessity to fit every stereotype, because that is not every person, nor is that in every person's power—by identifying as x, you are enough. I find myself viscerally agreeing with the rest of this post—sometimes we ask if we are "gay enough", am I "bi enough" (am I actually pan? do I experience relatively even attraction distributions or not?), but to identify as something and to label yourself what you want is enough.
I forget this sometimes, and we all struggle. The reason I talk about this a lot though, and the reason I wear an NSDA pin that has a pride flag on it and a bi pride pin on my backpack, the reason my lanyard has a button that is pride flag colored and says "Love trumps hate", the reason my laptop has a sticker that says "yep!" in rainbow, (part of ) the reason I dyed a portion of my hair, and the reason I have a shirt that says pride on it is because I care. I am able to represent myself freely, and therefore I do to present solidarity to those who cannot. I seek to be genuine to myself, which perhaps, drawing back to earlier, is what is lacking here. I once claimed in a college essay that "[boxes] confine things, and when that which they confine is people or is identity, then these boxes become stifling." (I cringe a bit at the sentence structure now.) Perhaps it is fitting that the post ends with a call to the reader (and to the author themself) to "fit yourself into these boxes but refuse to squeeze into them."
Is this coherent? I'm not sure. It's 2:30 AM. It is, however, me (who might be the slightest bit incoherent at times), and that is perhaps what matters most.
interesting that youve chosen to interpret it as a call to the reader at the end :o i think it was more of a reminder to myself
ReplyDeletea lot going on here lmao would love to comment but too tired tty soon i guess