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.

BBC: Vaccine Developed Against Ebola

This is news:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16011748

I remember reading Richard Preston's The Hot Zone when I was in middle school, shortly after taking a summer course on epidemiology. It was probably one of the scarier experiences of my childhood. I've always had a rather active imagination, and I was busy identifying symptoms, thinking that I had come down with bubonic plague, or leprosy, or some such disease every other day. Ebola took it to a whole new level; I think I had about a week when I was convinced I was about to die. I wish this vaccine had existed back then -- if only for my own peace of mind.

BBC: Ten Strange Ways Tudors Died

Not so much royal Tudors, but Englishmen and women who lived (and died) during the Tudor dynasty:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13762313

Lifespans were significantly shorter back then (the most common culprit being disease, and probably childbirth) but these are some more interesting, historically accurate ways to go. For a fair number of them, I would say they brought it upon themselves. Can you imagine what their families might have had inscribed on their tombstones?

Stanford Themedical Dorms

This is what Frank, Wendy, and I stayed up until 4:00am doing... (It probably won't make much sense unless you attend Stanford/are familiar with our campus.)

BBC: The Case for Genetically Modified Food

This is a very interesting, very well-written take on the GM food debate:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8789279.stm

It is indisputable that there exists a global food problem. There are many ways towards solving it, many of which can be implemented alongside others. Genetically modified produce is one such solution. While it has its problems, it is, as the article suggests, one of the best solutions available. There is no magical cure-all -- GM foods may be the best we can do with the technology we have.

To the people who are concerned about personal health: it's not perfect. It's far from perfect. That's what the FDA is for. If you're going to let doctors play with things like human stem cell regeneration, which is an accepted scientific practice nowadays, have a little faith in GM foods, too. It's progress. The risk factor is the price we've paid for technology and advancement of civilization ever since we first became Homo sapiens.

I'd eat some GM foods. Not all of them -- I'm not stupid (I don't think) -- but certainly the more widely available and well-regulated ones.

NYTimes: Genetic Testing for Incoming Freshmen at UC Berkeley

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/19/education/19dna.html?hpw

They call it "nutritional genomics".

On the one hand, I can understand the university's practical concerns. They want to be able to keep tabs on high-risk students; maintaining that level of vigilance for the entire student body would be impossible. To the extent that the school operates in loco parentis, it makes sense for the school to have a comparable level of information to a guardian or personal physician.

On the other hand, the concept of requiring students to submit to genetic testing sits uneasily with me. This is Big Brother at work at one of the most passionately liberal campuses in the country. There is always the possibility, however remote, that it could spill over into other aspects of student life. Administrators intend to use genetic information to advise certain students about drinking, eating habits, and the like. What if it grows to encompass access to athletic teams, for instance, or academic course load? What if the very human elements influencing these processes cannot help their subconscious biases?

The slippery slope argument is, in many cases, a fallacy. I hope that it remains so, in this case.