Gayducation
Posted: 13, May 2012 Filed under: Dreams (In and Out of Sleep), Everything Else/Life Field Notes, Happening Now, Hearts and Holes (Love and Sex) | Tags: Anecdote, Boy, Child, Children, Conversation, Education, Family, Funny, Gay, GLBT, Heterosexual, Heterosexuality, Homosexual, Homosexualty, Kid, Kids, Lesbian, LGBT, School, Straight Leave a comment »8-year old boy: “Why do boys and girls like each other?”
Me: “Actually, some boys like boys. And some girls like girls. And…”
8-year old boy: “Well, I like toys.”
This is why teaching children homosexuality is as harmless as assuming they understand heterosexuality.
I love my brother.
*Insert Shrug Here*
Posted: 12, April 2012 Filed under: Dreams (In and Out of Sleep), Everything Else/Life Field Notes, Happening Now, What If? (Theories & Storylines), Word Vomit (Confessions) | Tags: Admissions, Applications, College, Contradiction, Decision, Edu, Education, Employment, Grad, Ivy League, Lord of the Rings, LOTR, Pretentious, Real World, School, Silly, Stupid, University, Weird Leave a comment »Where have I been, you ask? Selling my soul to the devil, I tell you. Thanks for asking!
No, really, I was. Or at least, it feels like it. After at least one too many posts about my graduate school applications, I have made a decision – one decision to rule them all, one decision to find them, one…okay, I’m done dorking out to Lord of the Rings.
Anyways, I have wriggled my way into becoming a true American snob…a spot in the pretentious Ivy League. And the truth is, I’m a total braggart and the Ivy League isn’t even good enough for me. Wait! Let me use a bigger word from my handy dandy SAT vocabulary book - grandiloquent!
What has education come down to if lazy, sarcastic idiots like myself can claim the right to the academic elite (9.4% of Americans have a graduate degree)? And you wonder why you have people like Tucker Max on this planet…
Okay, let’s be real for a minute. I’ve got, simultaneously, the most flashy and the most ridiculous representation of myself on paper. (Most of) my friends tell me I deserve everything. My family tells me I suck. Who am I to believe? I guess I’m just confused because I feel like there are so many other people more deserving of being where I am, but just can’t get here and that there are so many people here that don’t belong, such as myself. I know I don’t have any power or right to judge, but I sure have a reason to ask why.
Yeah, I’m happy…ecstatic to actually be living the dream I had the last 6 years, but it’s just different when it comes true. It’s kind of like the day you’re going to marry the love of your life and you don’t know if you can actually do it even though it’s (mostly) obvious that you should/can. But what I don’t get is why I feel like I didn’t even try to deserve this happening and it has and that I want to just give it away.
I swear, somebody should just shoot me right now in the foot because what I just said was stupid on so many levels, but hey, I’m trying to make a honest writing here.
For all future employers and admission boards – I promise you this: I will thrill you with my abilities and disappoint you altogether. It’s all part of the package…what can I say?
Unpacked Suitcase Syndrome
Posted: 21, March 2012 Filed under: Everything Else/Life Field Notes, Happening Now, Where in the World? (Travel), Word Vomit (Confessions) | Tags: Adventure, backpack, bag, disappointing, finished, over, pack, Packing, Plan, Sad, Suitcase, Travel, Trip, unpack, unpacking Leave a comment »There’s not a lot of things I feel the need to hire somebody else to do, but unpacking after a trip may be one of them.
Coming back from any length of absence from my “home,” I’m a complete mess. And if you know me at least a little bit, I’m a pretty organized person…cluttered with a lot, but cluttered neatly.
Finally after two weeks of being home, I’ve unpacked my suitcases and opened all of my mail, although everything is spread all over the room. I can’t bring myself to clean up or to sort out anything.
I guess this behavior has reasons two-fold -
One of the most amazing things I discover about myself when I travel is my ability to not miss things at home (which can be both good and bad).
When I travel, it’s like all I have is enough.
I packed one big suitcase and a camera bag with my laptop for a 6-week trip and it felt plenty enough. It makes me understand what I really need to live and what it feels like to be free, or at least as close as possible, without tangible goods to weigh me down. Of course, I “love” everything I own…my record and CD collection, my books that I’ve read hundreds of times, my clothes that I get to express my mood with, my big comfortable bed, and everything else in my room…but I realize that I don’t need these things.
The other side to my unwillingness to unpack is the fact that it’s acknowledgement that an adventure is over.
When you finally put all your dirty clothes in the laundry and hand out all the knick-knack gifts you got and upload all your photos, it’s feels like its officially over. Of course, I can tell myself that I can (cheesily) hold an experience close to my heart in my memories, the truth of the matter is that I’m just not there anymore and it’s just not the same.
So, after taken this road many times, I realize that there is only one true cure…
Plan the next adventure.
One Step Forward, Two Steps Back
Posted: 16, March 2012 Filed under: Dreams (In and Out of Sleep), Everything Else/Life Field Notes, Happening Now, Word Vomit (Confessions) | Tags: Acceptance, Applications, Cal, College, Confession, Denial, Ed, Edu, Education, Frightened, Further, Graduate, Nervous, Scared, School, UCBerkeley, University Leave a comment »After months of applications, worry, and then an ill-timed escape to Southeast Asia (had to fly back early for an interview), I received my first “yes” a couple of days ago and my second one today (three declines though).
Of course, I’m thrilled to get accepted (and will definitely accept one offer), but why don’t I remember feeling this jittery and nervous before, even when going across the country to attend UC Berkeley for undergrad?
Scrolling through the Admitted Students page causes the butterflies birds in my stomach to flap around. And it sounds stupid because I’ve had the amazing opportunity to continue my education, but all of it feels just too quick.
I have a few guesses – I’m 21…hardly out of college, barely have had a year of legal drinking, and even though I’ve worked for more than 6 years of my life, I feel inadequately experienced to attend graduate school.
I feel like the runt of the litter, quite frankly. And this says the girl who travels through Vietnam and Thailand by herself for a month…
So what does it mean to be mature enough to go to graduate school? Does it mean that I have actually decided what I want to do for the rest of my life (sort of) and to fully trust in that decision? Perhaps it is because I’m immature, but the actual pressures of society to commit to something the way going to graduate school requires is definitely floating around.
There’s not a lot of place to screw around, and sometimes that’s all I feel like doing.
Travel as My Religion
Posted: 12, February 2012 Filed under: Where in the World? (Travel) | Tags: Adventure, Asia, Beautiful, Belief, Body, Cleansing, Compare, Comparison, Contrast, Enjoy, Experience, Good, Growing Up, Life, Medicine, Mind, North America, Spiritual, Taiwan, The World, Travel, Trip, United States of America Leave a comment »I just wanted to take the time out to say something about what travel does for my mind and body.
When I am working the 9-5 shift (more like on call 16 hours a day) at home, it’s the worst waking up. Even in my comfortable $1,000 bed (to make a point of it’s supposed value), I wake up groggy and my head pounding. My room is either too cold or too hot, and the alarm clock is just too loud and unforgiving. Food hardly tastes good and I often skip breakfast because all I want to do is puke. And thus, my day begins.
However, even a 14-hour flight from San Francisco to Taipei couldn’t knock me off my feet. I slept through half of the flight and prepped myself to avoid jet lag all together. Arriving at 5am (local time Taipei), I was awake and alert, ready to take in everything I possibly could. I wake up every morning feeling refreshed, ready to eat a full breakfast, and to carry my 25-pound camera backpack up mountains and down beaches. I’m even ready to wake up for sunrises at 6am and sit outside to read and watch the sunset…sleeping when I want, rather than out of exhaustion. I could swear, I’m radiating inner smiles.
In just one week, I’ve had my breath taken away multiple times and eaten some food I would have never touched in the United States (including my choice to eat meat while travelling). It feels so much different to be traveling now that I feel like I can really, really appreciate it as an adult (or as much of an adult I can be).
The only drawback of all of this is that I’m doing it alone, but as un-cynically and un-melodramatic as possible, it’s like carrying a lot less baggage.
I’m not a religious (or anti-religious) person, though maybe a little spiritual and into nature, but if I had to have faith in anything – it’d most certainly be travel.
[Here's the video of the sunrise this morning, my first timelapse video ever, with the sunrise from Taiwan's East Coast: http://www.facebook.com/v/2632898305813]
Déjà vu/Jamais vu/Presque vu?
Posted: 1, February 2012 Filed under: Dreams (In and Out of Sleep), Everything Else/Life Field Notes, Happening Now, Where in the World? (Travel), Word Vomit (Confessions) | Tags: Adventure, Childhood, College, Confession, Crazy, Deja vu, Dreams, Growing Up, History, Jamais vu, Life, Memory, Moving, Past, Presque vu, Sad, Strange, Travel, University, Visit, Weird Leave a comment »Most people don’t travel to the same place twice for vacations.
But it’s completely different when you return to the city where you went to school, or grew up in, or settled in for several years.
Sometimes, things change dramatically and sometimes hardly at all. Some of your relationships you’ve left behind are gone forever and some pick up where you’ve left off. New stores and restaurants have opened and the old ones you used to wander in have disappeared.
Through these kinds of experience, you can feel lost in time. You are neither in the past nor the present, and of course, equally unsure of the future.
It’s only been half a year since I’ve graduated college and my first time back to the area. I want to feel like it’s home, like somewhere familiar, and don’t get me wrong, it does, but at the same time, it feels like I’ve been asleep – like the world has continued spinning when I’ve put a halt to that chapter of my life.
And you can also wonder, “How much have I changed?” Has the world as I knew it been asleep and I’ve been the one moving forward?
This is not a discovery, having moved more than several times during my childhood, but rather a significant point of confusion that doesn’t go away.
Hardly any of it makes sense, except that I think people can only be truly aware of what’s physically around/in front of them. “Out of sight, out of mind” may be a little extreme, but it’s hard to ignore what is immediately present and focus on anything beyond that in the same way.
I want to believe (however naively) that things stay the same as much as I want them to and change as much as I want them to, but the reality is that you just cannot control any of it. Some things and some people and some experiences are worth hanging on to, while others are not.
To move forward, there are a variety of ways to do so. Do you just focus on your past happy experiences and try your best to maintain it or do you remember all your past disappointments and try your best to better it all? (Or neither/both?)
However, all I know is that while these things are on my mind, my present time is fleeting, and perhaps the best way to deal is to just float with the current.
OverUnderCover
Posted: 30, January 2012 Filed under: Everything Else/Life Field Notes, Where in the World? (Travel) | Tags: Airline, Airport, Culture, Middle Eastern, Muslim, Safety, Security, Society, Travel, TSA Leave a comment »The security policies are quite standard internationally when it comes to flying.
There are limits on liquids, baggage sizes and weights, potential weapons, and even on how much you can move about. But, the lines between international cultures and customs are hardly standard.
With a melting pot or tossed salad (however you look at it) of people readily available to be analyzed at airports, the questions and curiosities that are derived are countless. Here’s one:
Women wearing hijabs, jibabs, and/or burqas cannot remove their covering garments to even expose their face to have their ID’s checked, let alone be properly checked for hidden objects. International flying laws dictate that passengers must show and match their ID’s. Several times on the news have people been angered by security officers allowing concealed women to pass without looking at their faces. Technically, they are required to be escorted to a private room by a female security officer and verified, but more than once from personal experience has that not occurred.
I can’t seem to decide which trumps the other – security or culture, but it seems either way, somebody’s angry.
Hopeless for the Hopeless
Posted: 23, January 2012 Filed under: Everything Else/Life Field Notes, Happening Now | Tags: America, Applications, College, Crazy, Economy, Education, Grad, Graduate, Money, School, Stupid, United States, US, World Leave a comment »About $3000 later, I am pretty much finished with my graduate school applications. Only to be told today that I probably won’t get in by a former Columbia professor since the average graduate student is 29 years old.
But you know, since I don’t get carded that often for alcohol, maybe it’ll be okay.
I’ve reached several conclusions through this process, but there is only one I feel like sharing right now:
Forget affording school itself, applying will bankrupt you – your bank account, your head full of hair, and most of all, your hope.
But you know, it’s kind of okay anyways because in the long run, I’ve saved several ten thousands of dollars from NOT returning to school. And after all, I’ve already reached more education than the majority of the world.
