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| [Blog Entry 11/17/2009] - Tenets to live by
I’ve had a really difficult time moving on from a very comfortable and relaxed college life. It’s been especially difficult given the number of friends and connections I’ve made in Lloyd. 4 years being with the same people, hanging out all the time, laughing and joking together, going out and getting food, shopping trips… it’s all very hard to move on from.
I’m kind of in a “potential well”… it takes minimum energy to kinda sit here contently, hanging out with the same people, having the same routine, being comfortable with SoCal and knowing how things work around here (plus, knowing where everything is). And it definitely takes a lot of effort for me to do stuff like job hunt or apply to grad schools. I’ll be the first to admit it… part of me is afraid of all the things I have to get done; getting recommendations from teachers I’ve never really interacted with, having to prove myself at job interviews, speaking with potential employers when I myself feel like I haven’t done much and am pretty inadequate for a lot of positions. It’s pretty defeatist, and just one big vicious cycle of inaction and self-sabotage.
It sucks, but that’s how I am, and I’m the only one that can pull myself up out of this rut and get my life in order. The few little spurts of livelihood I’ve had this past summer and autumn (basically the last 2 or 3 months), I’ve managed by remembering 3 key ideas. These ideas came one by one, and each one helps a bit. I wish I’d realized their significance earlier, but there’s nothing I can do about that, just pick myself up and learn. (The story of my life. I could sum it up in one phrase: “I wish I’d done that earlier”. But no use wallowing in it… moving on)
1) What’s the worst that can happen? – I found this off a TED talk that Helen posted. I definitely had a spurt of productivity after watching that video. It was quite inspirational. http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_ferriss_smash_fear_learn_anything.html
What IS the worst that will happen? Rejection? Someone will say no? If I do something wrong, what’s the big deal? That’s what only way I’m going to figure out what to do. My dad always tells me this and it finally kinda came together after I watched that video. As he always so colorfully says, “Who gives a fucK?!” If I fuck up, apologize, do it right the next time. In the end, nothing is such a huge deal that I can’t do something about it.
2) You learn the most when you make mistakes. – Obvious, right? Along the same lines is the idea that you’ll never learn anything if you don’t do it. After all, what’s the worst that can happen, right? This one came about after I read an article about a study done that showed that people who performed an act incorrectly were much more likely to remember it than someone who merely read about it. I’m a reader… I like to sit and research things online, but I rarely go out and make mistakes. This is definitely one of the more difficult ideals for me to live by, but I’m working on it… just going out there and making mistakes.
3) Just do it. Not the Nike catchphrase… it’s what my mom always says to me in Chinese. “Jiu4 chu1 qu4 gan4!” – Just go out and do it! After all, you learn when you go out and do it wrong. This idea pushes me to stop worrying about the consequences, the details, and making everything perfect. I inherited a perfectionist personality from my mom, and combined with my lack of confidence in some of my abilities, it means that a lot of times I end not sitting on my ass and not doing anything at all. I like things done perfectly, and usually that means convincing myself that I can’t DO something unless I study it and know enough about it. But then i never find enough time to do that, so I end up not doing anything at all. So I need to go out there and just forget about making my emails perfect, forget about doing things the right way. As long as I do it, things will move along.
These 3 things are what drive my motivation these days. It’s easy to lose my way and my direction, and fall back into the low energy rut. While that’s happening more and more these days, that also means that I’m picking myself up and getting out of the rut more often, which is more than I can say about me in college. Of course, part of it is out of necessity, but sometimes that’s the driving force I need to get me out of this potential well.
I need to: Apply to grad school. Find recommendations. Study for and take my GRE’s. Apply to and find a job. Figure out if/when I’m going to move back to Jersey. All these things, so many things.
I just have to go out and do it. Just DO IT, and if I make mistakes, all the better because I’ll learn from them. After all, what’s the worst that can happen?
On Repeat: Third Eye Blind - Jumper, Semi-Charmed Life, Losing A Whole Year, Bonfire (GREAT SONG from their new album) | | |
| [Blog Entry 10/28/2009] - Not so Greek to Me
I was sitting in Chandler this morning eating my unhealthy breakfast buffet food (bacon, powdered eggs, bacon, potatoes, packaged pancakes which were actually really tasty, and bacon) and watching CNN on the televisions. By the way, Chandler has gotta be one of my favorite places to chill out on campus besides Lloyd. It's nice and clean, kinda feels like a hotel dining hall, has food, it's warm in the winter and cool in the summer, has 2 big plasma screens, and is just a super comfortable place to hang out. Anyway, I'm watching TV but I can barely hear what they're saying because the volume is too low. So I tried reading the lips of the anchors and the reporters, and boy was that difficult! Of course, I could catch a few words here and there, and then I could obviously tell what sound their mouth was making, but most of the time, it just looked like gibberish! I couldn't even tell individual SOUNDS apart, let alone the words they were saying.
Thus, I think one thing I want to learn to do is to read lips. This would be SUPER useful for me because my hearing sucks. I think the second worst thing you can do at a social gathering is pretend you heard something that somebody said, when in actuality, you didn't. I think that's the easiest way to shoot yourself in the foot, especially when that person (or someone else) refers to whatever you missed, and it comes back to bite you in the ass. Then again, the worst thing you can do is go "What?" and ask someone to repeat what they've said 4 or 5 times. By that point, they don't even want to talk to you. Small talk? No way, it TOTALLY ruins the pacing of any conversation. And flirting? Forget about it. Flirting is almost always pointless and meaningless conversation meant to give you a quick impression of somebody... and there's nothing more annoying than having to repeat something meaningless. "This drink tastes terrific." What? "I said, this drink tastes terrific!" What'd you say? "This drink is great!!" Wait, what? "THIS DRINK SUCKS SHUT UP!"
Also, at today's JPL info session, there was a new hire who presented for about 10 minutes. At first, his English sounded normal enough, but then I noticed a slight twang to it, like he used to have an accent but gradually lost it. I said to myself that it must be Australian, because he would emphasize some syllables almost like a Texan, but it definitely didn't sound like a covered-up southern drawl. Turns out he's from New Zealand. And as much as I associate that New Zealand accent with crazy crocodile wrestling fools in hiking boots, I gotta say, the fact that he had only a slight accent but sounded like a normal "American" otherwise was very attractive (no, not in a gay way, in the sense that I'd totally want to have that accent.)
Basically, human speech is fascinating.
On Repeat: Rob Thomas - Her Diamonds | | |
| [Blog Entry 10/14/2009] - A Rainy night at Borders
Today was a very Jersey-esque day. First off, it rained, which never happens in SoCal. I got on the road kind of expecting drivers to be going 20 mph on the roads, peeking intently out of their fogged up windows, trying carefully to navigate around this odd shiny wet substance. And then I drove to Borders, a common destination of mine back at home (I probably also frequented Barnes and Nobles just as much... they're basically the same store haha). After sitting there for an hour sifting through GRE prep books and learning the meaning of "countenance" (verb form: to tolerate or sanction), I headed to the art/architecture section and picked up several books. I flipped through a few, mostly looking for pictures of cool building designs, but didn't find anything that hooked my attention. Then, I came across this book:
It was called Design School Confidential. It was a collection of Design projects proposed by teachers at a multitude of world renowned design schools (including Arts Center in Pasadena! whooo). Each section has a short description of the design project and then several projects or design solutions proposed by the students in that class. It was pretty amazing to see the amount of creativity some of these students had. The projects ranged from things like "Design a modular typeset given a basic set of shapes" to "Design and build a chair" to "Create a marketing campaign for a made-up product". The projects prompts were very vague and open-ended, and the showcased projects illustrated just how far some of the students ran with them. Not only were their projects amazing works of art and graphic design in their own right, they also showed incredible creativity in coming up with wild ideas, they created novel techniques to present these ideas, and even addressed a lot of world issues in their art and design. I gotta say, this collection was a pleasure to read. I pretty much sat there in awe for 45 minutes as I flipped through page after page of absurdly creative solutions to the problems posed by the professors.
In this time of soul searching and direction finding, I am rediscovering just exciting this world can be. And what better place to whet my appetite than the local (or in this case, 25 minutes from my apartment) bookstore. It's the perfect place to find interesting reading material on everything from cooking desserts to American military history, and everything in between and beyond.
When I left, it was still raining, and it was dark. Just like in the winter back in Jersey.
On a completely separate note, I was super excited today because I made a new Mix CD! I know, cheesy... but I'm always excited to have new music to listen to (on demand) in my car. This is definitely a side effect of not having a headphone jack connection or a tape deck (so that I can use the car adapter) to plug into. All I have is my trusty CD Player hehe. A few highlights on my "new" CD:
Foo Fighters - Wheels: Love it! Sounds pretty inspirational, kinda has a "moving on to better things" feel to it.
Shakira - She Wolf: omg this is a weird/hot video. And she sounds so damn cute when she howls haha.
Infected Mushroom - Smashing the Opponent: THANKS JULIA for the download! From their new album, this song rocks. It features Jonathan Davis from Korn... a throwback to the death metal phase I had in High School haha.
Owl City - Umbrella Beach: Happy and upbeat song. Most Owl City songs sound the same, but they're still good hehe.
50 Cent vs Bee Gee's - Staying Alive In Da Club: Haha the mashup I posted a few months ago. Good stuff.
Britney Spears - Blur: This song so reminds me of first term last year, hanging out with Michelle and Kimchi so much. Good times yo...
Kanye West - Gold Digger: TonTon got me hooked on this song when she went all gangsta' on me and started singing this a few weeks ago haha.
Third Eye Blind - Jumper, Semi-Charmed Life: fucking awesome 90's music. 'nuff said.
Now time for bed. Career fair tmrw =x! | | |
| [Blog Entry 10/4/2009] - Weather the Storm
I was driving back from lunch today, waiting at a traffic light with my windows open, when a brisk breeze blew in from outside. Now most of my friends know that I’m overly-nostalgic quite frequently, and today was no exception. The weather always has a way of reminding me of home and simpler times. Today felt like autumn right before winter, Halloween, the beginning of the school year back in my primary school days. The sun was beating down on the car, and it was warm and comfortable, while outside it was chilly, the leaves turning brown and about to fall. It made me miss home a little, since I haven’t been back in about a year, but it also gave me this odd lonely feeling.
Winter is cold, desolate, and lonely, punctuated by the warmth and personal connections of the Holidays. But for as long as I can remember, I’ve always found winter to have a very soothing effect on me. When you’re standing outside as the soft snowflakes slowly drift past you, the world around you is totally muffled and peaceful. The ground is pristine and beautiful, covered in this white velvety blanket. The nights are bright, as if the clouds and snow dimly light up the heavens. And I’ve always loved the peaceful solace that first snowfall afforded to me, a calm escape from the complications of everyday life, from school, work, and sometimes my own misgivings.
But that was a time when being on my own was a small part of every year. I lived at home with my parents and sister, 15 minutes from my friends, and school was only interrupted by a 1 or 2 week winter vacation. Now, I’m living on my own after having been spoiled by 4 years of living in a tight knit college dorm. True, since moving out 2 weeks ago, I’ve only spent 1 or 2 nights at the apartment… the rest of the time, I’ve spent in Lloyd hanging out with people. I haven’t officially moved on yet. But when that breeze hit my arm this afternoon, I couldn’t help but feel lonely, and sad that life is going in such a different direction from what it used to be.
I gotta grow up, move on from the constant socializing and closeness of friends that was high school and college life. I gotta start focusing more on myself, which is not something I do very often. My career, my passions, my path in life. Somehow, I’ve gotten to 22 years of age without putting too much effort into myself. I breezed through elementary and middle school, bullshitted my way through a lot of high school. I applied to Caltech at my dad’s bidding, wanting to see if I could get in, and even when I got accepted, I didn’t even consider attending until my dad pushed me to go (thank goodness he did). I dedicated so much of my time at Caltech into Lloyd and the people there, and spent very little time really focusing on academics; I went through all the motions, but I never seriously got into the work I was doing. Even over the summer, while I was bumming in Lloyd looking for jobs, I didn’t really want to get a job. Yeah, I wanted that stability of having income, of finding a place to stay, and having a permanent place to call home, but in all honesty, I was content spending my summer hanging out with people and not worrying about having to move on.
Of course, this is just me being extra sensitive and pathetic (as some might see it). I’m affected easily by this kind of stuff… my very preliminary personal psychoanalysis conclusion is that I’m just deeply and subconsciously afraid of change and losing touch with people. But as I’ve gone with the flow since I was little, I’ll continue going with the flow. It’ll be much more difficult for things to just work out, like finding a job, but as I always tell my mom when she calls me asking for updates, I’ll manage.
I leave you with an Indonesian song from imeem that my friend posted. I can’t understand a word of it, but I get the feeling that this song is appropriate for this post.
D'Masiv - Jangan Menyerah | | |
| In response to Chris and Desiree, here is where I post. Still bumming around at my dorm room the summer after graduation.
Temporary, but still cozy ^_^
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