Thoughts on the Past Four Years, Part 2

It's rare, I think, to encounter a person who recalls her college years with no regrets whatsoever. (Of course, it is often said that mistakes are learning experiences, that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, &c. I have no quarrel with such statements.) Most regrets, and certainly most of mine, are results of omission -- things I wish I'd done, or wish I'd done sooner, and didn't. I describe them here mostly to set my own thoughts in order, but also in hopes that it might prove instructive for readers, in any stage of life. To wit...

I wish I'd decided on the humanities earlier. I sometimes tell people that I "wasted" four quarters (that's about 1.3 academic years, for those of you more familiar with semester schools) on pre-med, that I wish I hadn't waited until the middle of my sophomore year to switch to a history major. I put the verb "waste" in quotation marks because I think, of course, that medicine as a profession or a field of study is itself eminently worthwhile -- and in general, science for its own sake is a wonderful thing. I only mean it in the most pragmatic of terms for myself; I had a finite number of quarters at university, and the sooner I chose my major(s), the sooner I could begin immersing myself in the classes and community that comes with them. There were quite a few humanities classes that I wish I could have taken, but I never had the time for, because I had to be very careful with intra-major distribution requirements and such (seeing as I knew it would be a very close call trying to essentially complete two majors in fewer than three years). Declaring my major as late in the game as I did -- I declared my first major literally a week before the absolute final deadline year -- led to a few other regrets...

I wish I'd made more friends in the humanities. My friend circle(s), in university, were populated largely by engineers and other techies. A majority of them are computer scientists, with somewhat overlapping swaths of mathematicians, physicists, and mechanical engineers. I was -- only somewhat jokingly, methinks -- designated the group's "token fuzzy." This was largely due to circumstance. Because I had been taking a lot of math and science as a freshman, I ended up meeting most of my friends in those classes, and through them meeting more engineers, and so on. (Another common source of college friends is one's freshman dorm, but the majority of my dorm enjoyed alcohol, parties in loud and dark rooms, and other social pursuits that didn't interest me.) By the time I'd "turned fuzzy" in the middle of sophomore year, most of my classmates already had established friend groups, as did I.

It's not that I wish I had a different group of friends, or that I would somehow "trade" them for others, if I could -- I am very glad of the friends I have made. It's merely that it got tiring, or isolating, sometimes, to be with people who talked mostly about the intricacies of computer science and such over dinner -- which would often fly right over my head, because my friends are incredible at what they do, and even if they weren't, I would have been hard-pressed tell. I occasionally got lonely for people who appreciated the beauty of not only well-written proofs and elegant code, but also particular turns of phrase or feats of argumentative brilliance. It sometimes seemed that we didn't have enough in common for me to converse with them as meaningfully as they did amongst themselves; I sometimes feared that I didn't -- couldn't -- know them in the way that they knew each other, and that perhaps the reverse was true as well. ("Sometimes" is the operative word, here; my social experience was by and large a happy one.)

I wish I'd stepped down my involvement in the debate team earlier. To be clear -- I really enjoy debate. As anyone who knows me can attest, I can be argumentative at the drop of a hat, often for the sheer fun of it. That's why I stayed with the team for so long. I'd been considering -- and waffling about -- quitting in part because I wasn't sure where else I could get the same quality of discussion of, and intellectual engagement with, the type of topics that debaters so love. (See the above point about divergent interests. Techies by and large don't consider political/legal theory good dinner conversation.) But by the end of junior year, I was quite burnt out. Travelling for debate tournaments meant that I was off-campus from Thursday evening to Sunday morning two or three times a quarter, which meant that I often forwent fun weekend activities (like dancing and films) with my largely non-debating friends. I'd been a debater since high school, and I'd felt the onset of debate fatigue since the beginning of junior year. I hung in there for another year more out of habit and sunk-cost syndrome (which is a psychological factor, as any economist can tell you) than out of true passion. In retrospect, if I hadn't done debate in college, or even if I had quit earlier, I would have been forced (by my own restlessness) to find other activities, and might have ended up involved in several that I rather wish I'd done more of while I had the chance. (Of course, debate wasn't the only reason for my not doing some of the things I wish I did; see below...)

I wish I'd been more involved in the following activities:

(a) Wushu: For the uninitiated, Wushu is a Chinese martial art that, as practiced today, is a sport and an art form, much like karate, capoeira, or gymnastics. I started going to practices the beginning of my freshman year, having had some training in gymnastics when I was small, and some competitive swimming when I was slightly less small, and not much idea of what I was getting myself into, other than that I'd gone to a demonstration and it looked really cool. (Plus, weapons! Eventually. Weapons are generally a plus for me.)

The problem was, practices were twice a week in the evenings, with one practice falling on Friday. Because I would have to fly to debate tournaments on Thursday evenings, I would have to miss practices -- and as a complete newcomer to the activity where quite a few people had been doing it for years, skipping practice wasn't a good idea. It came to the point where I had to choose between debate and Wushu. As evidenced, I chose debate. (If I had chosen Wushu instead, my college lifestyle would undoubtedly have been healthier, come to think of it.)

(b) Social dance: I've written a few blog posts about this, I think. My friend group started dancing around the end of my freshman year and the beginning of sophomore year. I was one of the last people to get involved, because I was a bit shy about it (not in a gender-normative way, mind you -- social dance is less old-fashioned than one might expect). This in itself became a sticking point for me, as it quickly became apparent at dance events that I was somewhat less experienced, and I was always a tad concerned that my friends might get bored dancing with me.

Again, one of the problems that appeared was that there are weekly dance events (Friday Night Waltz), which, as the name suggests, occur on Friday nights. To be fair, the issue wasn't solely debate -- I often had assignments due on Fridays that I, for one reason or another, found myself finishing on Friday evenings, right before the deadline (yes, probably my own fault, I know). I tried to counteract the inevitable deadly silence of working in my room while my friends were out dancing with Midnight Pie, wherein I started baking an hour or two before midnight and invited everyone over for post-waltz pie. It was conceptually lovely, but practically dicey, because my dancer friends had their own conflicting ritual, namely post-waltz boba or burgers. Having leftover pie at the end of the night is not actually a good thing -- the first thought that comes to mind isn't "breakfast tomorrow will be awesome" so much as "it would have been nice if I'd had enough people over to finish the pie."

Ultimately, I think I enjoyed the dance community a little more than I did the actual activity itself (though I do like dancing quite a bit!). It's one of the things I'll miss most about Stanford, and like the below, I wish I'd had more time with it.

(c) Musical theatre: During my senior year, I was costume director for a musical that one of my friends co-wrote. I'd been recruited on the basis of a Tudor gown I'd made in junior year; my friend had seen me wearing it in the hallway of our dorm, and he immediately offered me the position. (Well, the real story is funnier: he wasn't quite ready to recruit his production crew at that point, so he said to me very excitedly, "Remind me to ask you something in six months!" without giving any indication of what it was he'd intended to ask. I knew about the musical at that point, but didn't quite connect the dots until he actually offered me the position months later.)

Anyhow, a number of people involved in the show asked my why I didn't try out -- these included one of the co-writers, some of the cast and crew, and a few of the adults working in the theatre housing the production. See, I have the occasional habit (an oxymoron?) of humming or singing as I sew and do other such repetitive tasks. Ergo, I was mistaken for a cast member several times, mostly while sitting on the edge of the stage before dress rehearsals, stitching under the stage lights and singing to myself. I ended up giving different reasons to different people; I alternately explained that (1) I had my hands full with costuming, and didn't think I could feasibly be in both cast and crew, (2) I didn't have stage-acting experience, (3) the musical is set in 1840s Nantucket and I would be visually unconvincing as a whaler's wife. (These appear to be listed in order of decreasing validity. Especially the last -- it's an excuse, and I know it.) But the question got me thinking -- I've been interested in musical theatre for most of my life. If I'd come to it earlier -- before I'd filled my extracurricular slate, at a time when I could reasonably expect to be involved in the community for two or three years -- would I have done it? Would my undergraduate years have been richer for it?

(d) Music: Speaking of music, as I'd mentioned months earlier, I got a ukulele over winter break, whereupon I basically spent the rest of my holiday learning to play it. Seeing as I sing, write poetry, and newly learned the ukulele, the next logical step was to start writing songs. I finished my first not long after I returned to school, and then wrote another, and another. Sometime soon thereafter, two of my friends were DJing a dance event and, seeing as they knew quite a few musicians, decided that it would be fun to have some live music. When we were rehearsing, I played one of the songs I wrote for some of these musician-friends, who thought it would be fun to play at the dance. (I didn't actually tell them I'd written it until halfway through the rehearsal.) That was the beginning.

We started meeting up semi-regularly to jam. There were also gigs -- I performed solo a few times at English department events and arts events around campus, and with the group (its number and composition changed a few times in the months we were active). We played with a volunteer organization a few times. Our largest audience was at Big Dance, which is, as the name implies, the major social dance event occurring annually in the spring; we played a half-hour set for a hundred or so dancers. Then one of our other friend approached us with his class project -- he wanted to record some of the songs I'd written, in a studio. And so we did.

This thing, this music thing -- which started out as a few lyrics and tunes on my uke, in my bedroom -- became so much more than I'd expected. I wish I'd had more time to play with this group, to actually get together for a composition session, to put a few years into it while I was in college. It feels like we got nipped in the bud by graduation, right as things were just getting going. It'll be much harder to start over in a "new" city, outside of a college environment, without the people I'd been playing with these few months.

I'll devote a separate post to music and songwriting and ukuleles one of these days. I have some videos from Big Dance, some audio tracks (as I'd mentioned). But this post is long enough as is, so I'll leave it here for now.

Abstruse Goose: In Cabin'd Ships at Sea

Whitman in the modern age (courtesy of Brett):

http://abstrusegoose.com/477
(You may have to click on the image to make the font a more legible size.)

It frustrates me to no end when people claim that poetry written long ago is irrelevant to life today. Part of the appeal of literature is its timelessness -- that while the specific time and place depicted might be past, human nature has not changed over the centuries. (I maintain that the Oedipus Cycle is one of the original family dramas. Would anything that messed up air on modern television? (Wait, A Game of Thrones is now on HBO. I take that back.))

Seriously, if you think poetry is outdated, quote your girlfriend some Yeats or Neruda or Shakespeare. Or, if you have a boyfriend, some Anne Bradstreet or Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Thoughts on the Past Four Years, Part 1

Our commencement was last month. Since then, I've been traveling -- visiting with friends and relatives in California -- and moving my possessions and the detritus of the past four years from California back to New York. I just got home on Tuesday, at some ungodly hour of morning. I've spent most of my time since unpacking and rearranging my room (and evicting my sister from it, as she's apparently taken up residence while I've been in school). It's more complicated that one might think, given that I have to consolidate/shift/toss a lot of my old stuff to make room for everything I've brought back. It's probably the most thorough cleaning my room's ever gotten. I got bored (of course) and consequently nostalgic, so I thought I'd take a break and begin setting down some of the mad whirlwind of thoughts that I have regarding my time at Stanford.

It was not an easy journey, both in terms of my pursuits and my direction. I had, at various points of these past four years, been tested on all fronts: academics, extra-curriculars, people, career. (The Stanford Duck Syndrome, if you will -- paddling furiously to stay afloat, while appearing mostly calm above the surface. The acronym, SDS, also somewhat ironically doubles for the Stanford Debate Society. Go figure.) Looking back, I'm not completely satisfied with my college experience -- there are things I would have done differently, things I wish I'd known going in -- but it was a tremendous period of personal growth.

Academics were challenging throughout, much more so than high school. It seems like a no-brainer, but as one of my grade school friends likes to point out, college is often easier than high school for the specialist and harder than high school for the generalist. I was a jack-of-all-trades in grade school, equally comfortable in the humanities and the sciences (I was, for example, simultaneously captain of the math and debate teams). If only because my high school had more of a humanities bent -- it ran a bit like a small liberal arts college -- I was considered quite good at the sciences among my peers (big fish in a small pond, as it were). I actually got to Stanford thinking that I would be pre-med -- mostly because my parents thought that it suited me -- and considered majoring in math or biology. The best example: I remember taking -- and then dropping -- the hard freshman math class (the H in 51H variously stood for "honors" and "hard" and "hellish," I'm told). It was very interesting material and I met some of my closest friends there, but I just didn't have the time and energy necessary to really do well, what with the other courses I was taking (yes, even as a first-quarter freshman I insisted on maxing out my course load) and the world-class calibre of students in the class (several of them math campers, including a few who did SUMaC, both my year and other years). Dropping the class was a surprisingly difficult choice to make. It was the first time I'd really encountered what I considered to be massive failure, and I felt as though I were giving up -- that completing the class could simply have been a matter of will. Accepting personal limits was never something I've done well, or gracefully, so that in itself was a learning experience.

For most of my freshman year, my courseload consisted of techie classes punctuated with the one series of humanities classes that all of us were required to take, known as IHUM (Introduction to the Humanities). My IHUM sequence was called "Ancient Empires," covering the civilizations of antiquity and taught by the wonderful archaeologist and professor Ian Morris. I quickly discovered that IHUM was my favorite course of the year, my sanity break from all the maths and chemistry and such. I should have realized then that I wasn't doing what I really wanted to be doing -- but I didn't know what it was that I actually wanted out of my college career, and for my future beyond.

My sophomore year consisted of change -- lots of it. I was learning myself, learning my strengths and weaknesses, figuring out what it was I wanted to do with the rest of my time at Stanford and my life thereafter. I had something of a personal crisis in the middle of my sophomore year, after having already taken four quarters of pre-med classes: I realized that pre-med just wasn't for me. By then, I'd tried all of the so-called "Asian" professions at least once; I'd interned over the past few summers at a hospital, on Wall Street, and at a law firm. While I enjoyed each of the internships (more as learning experiences than as career options), I couldn't quite see myself in any of the above industries for the rest of my life. Learning what I didn't want was important -- I'm just glad that I figured out what I did want, just in time (see this post from the end of sophomore year).

I'd begun taking history and creative writing classes for fun. I wanted to do more of it, but wasn't quite ready to give up premed and dash all my parents' hopes for me. But over the summer, I found myself working at Penguin as an editorial intern, and really absolutely loving it. It was something of a coincidence -- I'd applied because I liked the idea of working with books, but I didn't know anything about the industry going into the job. By the end of the summer, I didn't want to leave.

And so I went back for seconds in 2011. In the interim, I declared my history major at the last possible moment in my junior year -- I asked Prof. Morris to be my advisor, because he's awesome and because it was fitting. His class was what first made me consider majoring in history, after all. I began taking more English classes and wanting to do that as well. It wasn't a creative writing course, but ultimately a short story class (which I may have mentioned here), that sold me on the English major. (It seems that there is a recurring trope in my life where I am convinced to declare a major after taking an amazing class in the department, and end up asking the instructor to be my advisor. Elizabeth Tallent became my English faculty advisor.)

If all of that hadn't convinced me that publishing was right for me, one particular episode of my second Penguin summer did. One day towards the end of my internship, I was very casually handed a shiny new hardcover of Those Across the River -- a book I'd first read as a submission the previous summer, which I'd really liked and talked up to a few editors I worked with. I reread it that very night. The incredible rush that comes from holding in my hands a book that I, in some tiny way, had a part in bringing to fruition -- it's a pretty heady feeling.

That's how I ended up where I am, now. A job (and hopefully a career) in publishing, a degree in history and English, and back in New York City, my hometown. It's been a wild ride, to be sure -- not all of it went as smoothly or as well as I would have liked, but I survived, and am a more complete human being for it.

More to come. (Perhaps that ending was a little too... conclusive. There's more, really.)