Thursday, April 29, 2004
Do It For The Kids
It's a sad truth that as I've "grown older" I've learned to care less for myself. In high school I loaded myself with all the honors classes every semester and complemented that with a good dose of extracurriculars and plenty of volunteer work. My drive to succeed and accomplish as much as possible made me forget a little bit about who I should be caring for--myself.
This year in college, things got even more out of hand. The average courseload is 15 credits, but my notorious itch to do do do caused me to load up 18 credits in my first semester and 21 credits this semester. Coupled to a new independent life away from home and the burden of trying to make new friends, I think that would be enough to drive anyone into insanity (or complete burn-out), but I didn't stop there. I continued to hold my leadership position with the Sierra Student Coalition, trying to run a national student/teen campaign focusing on clean energy issues. And as if that weren't enough, I also got myself a day job to help foot the horrific $40,000 annual education costs.
For pretty much all of the first semester, and a good chunk of this semester I would overwork myself into extreme exhaustion, despair, anger, and depression. I hated the situation I got myself into, but I didn't see anyway of getting out. I wouldn't quite call myself the happy customer now, but I've learned a little bit about coping and remembering what really matters.
See, for my "day job" I teach. I have my own class of fourth graders whom I teach twice a week. I think this job and these kids might have been one of the best things that happened to me recently. It has reminded me of something pretty important. Knowing that if I don't have my act together, my "kids" surely won't, has reminded me how to stay grounded and take care of myself again. For the sake of trying to make new friends, I used to sacrifice some of my rare spare time to that pursuit.
One notorious case is my lunches with a guy in my linguistics class who lives in my dorm. We used to go have lunch during our hour break between lecture and discussion. It was nice to fill my belly with some food, but other than that it wasn't too fulfilling. I would try to converse with him, but he'd hardly give me more than one word answers. If you want to make me feel worthless or unwanted--do that to me. Sometimes we'd spend the hour in utter silence because I'd be sick of asking him questions to which he would hardly respond. Other times, one of his hypercritical girl-friends would come along and babble, pass judgment and mouth off at me or random people for the whole hour. I guess you could say it was not a happy union.
One day I asked him if he likes my company for lunch. After a prolonged pause, he shrugged and said, "It doesn't really make a difference to me."
"Oh?" I sighed. I guess that wasn't much of a revelation anyway, and I left it at that. After a couple minutes of processing that, he blurted out something of a clarification, "Well, I guess I'd be going to lunch anyway, with or without you, so it doesn't really make much of a difference."
"Oh?"
Another round of silence fell upon us till he gave it another try. "I mean, you don't see my complain, so I guess I don't mind spending it with you."
"Oh..." All of a sudden I felt like turning back the clock and wishing I could reclaim all the time I had wasted trying to foster our "friendship." For months, I would go to work the same day after eating lunch with him, and not surprisingly I would go to work sleep deprived and not particularly happy. But the kids didn't give up on me. We had our ups and downs this year, but mostly ups. The kids still were nice to me. They still told me they liked me as a teacher. They still participated in class, raised great questions, behaved well, and made me feel so proud. They were holding up their end of the bargain, but was I?
The next week, I ran straight out of lecture without saying a word to my "lunch-buddy." In a hurried spree, I rushed back to my dorm, took off my jacket and shoes as fast as I could and plopped into bed. That's right, I napped. It wasn't much--40 minutes at most--but I woke up much more refreshed, and it gave me just the extra energy I needed to give "my kids" the attention they rightly deserved. When I left my dorm to get back to class, one of my neighbors say me and asked what I was doing around here at this time of the day. "I took a nap, I'm working later today, and I just had to do it for the kids," I said, and I smiled.
Though I'm the fourth grade teacher, my students taught me one of the most important lessons I could learn at this point in my life. I need to treat myself well, first. So if that means sacrificing my sad attempts at being social so I can get some extra shut-eye to complement my usually short 5-hour nights of sleep, then so be it. Treating myself well makes me feel so much better about myself. And maybe, once I start learning how to treat myself the way I deserve to be treated, maybe then I'll have an easier time making friends in the first place.
This year in college, things got even more out of hand. The average courseload is 15 credits, but my notorious itch to do do do caused me to load up 18 credits in my first semester and 21 credits this semester. Coupled to a new independent life away from home and the burden of trying to make new friends, I think that would be enough to drive anyone into insanity (or complete burn-out), but I didn't stop there. I continued to hold my leadership position with the Sierra Student Coalition, trying to run a national student/teen campaign focusing on clean energy issues. And as if that weren't enough, I also got myself a day job to help foot the horrific $40,000 annual education costs.
For pretty much all of the first semester, and a good chunk of this semester I would overwork myself into extreme exhaustion, despair, anger, and depression. I hated the situation I got myself into, but I didn't see anyway of getting out. I wouldn't quite call myself the happy customer now, but I've learned a little bit about coping and remembering what really matters.
See, for my "day job" I teach. I have my own class of fourth graders whom I teach twice a week. I think this job and these kids might have been one of the best things that happened to me recently. It has reminded me of something pretty important. Knowing that if I don't have my act together, my "kids" surely won't, has reminded me how to stay grounded and take care of myself again. For the sake of trying to make new friends, I used to sacrifice some of my rare spare time to that pursuit.
One notorious case is my lunches with a guy in my linguistics class who lives in my dorm. We used to go have lunch during our hour break between lecture and discussion. It was nice to fill my belly with some food, but other than that it wasn't too fulfilling. I would try to converse with him, but he'd hardly give me more than one word answers. If you want to make me feel worthless or unwanted--do that to me. Sometimes we'd spend the hour in utter silence because I'd be sick of asking him questions to which he would hardly respond. Other times, one of his hypercritical girl-friends would come along and babble, pass judgment and mouth off at me or random people for the whole hour. I guess you could say it was not a happy union.
One day I asked him if he likes my company for lunch. After a prolonged pause, he shrugged and said, "It doesn't really make a difference to me."
"Oh?" I sighed. I guess that wasn't much of a revelation anyway, and I left it at that. After a couple minutes of processing that, he blurted out something of a clarification, "Well, I guess I'd be going to lunch anyway, with or without you, so it doesn't really make much of a difference."
"Oh?"
Another round of silence fell upon us till he gave it another try. "I mean, you don't see my complain, so I guess I don't mind spending it with you."
"Oh..." All of a sudden I felt like turning back the clock and wishing I could reclaim all the time I had wasted trying to foster our "friendship." For months, I would go to work the same day after eating lunch with him, and not surprisingly I would go to work sleep deprived and not particularly happy. But the kids didn't give up on me. We had our ups and downs this year, but mostly ups. The kids still were nice to me. They still told me they liked me as a teacher. They still participated in class, raised great questions, behaved well, and made me feel so proud. They were holding up their end of the bargain, but was I?
The next week, I ran straight out of lecture without saying a word to my "lunch-buddy." In a hurried spree, I rushed back to my dorm, took off my jacket and shoes as fast as I could and plopped into bed. That's right, I napped. It wasn't much--40 minutes at most--but I woke up much more refreshed, and it gave me just the extra energy I needed to give "my kids" the attention they rightly deserved. When I left my dorm to get back to class, one of my neighbors say me and asked what I was doing around here at this time of the day. "I took a nap, I'm working later today, and I just had to do it for the kids," I said, and I smiled.
Though I'm the fourth grade teacher, my students taught me one of the most important lessons I could learn at this point in my life. I need to treat myself well, first. So if that means sacrificing my sad attempts at being social so I can get some extra shut-eye to complement my usually short 5-hour nights of sleep, then so be it. Treating myself well makes me feel so much better about myself. And maybe, once I start learning how to treat myself the way I deserve to be treated, maybe then I'll have an easier time making friends in the first place.
Monday, April 26, 2004
Note to Self: Amir, try not to put off doing homework till the early morning hours, especially when you have a paper due and and exam the same day. Oh, and also, Amir, try not to go to bed at 4am when you have to wake up 5 hours later to go take an exam.
Note from Self: Hah! What's this, some sort joke? Fat chance I'll ever avoid something like that again.
Note from Self: Hah! What's this, some sort joke? Fat chance I'll ever avoid something like that again.
Saturday, April 24, 2004
Not All That
I was eating dinner in the dining hall tonight when I became the witness of something not so cool. A high school senior made his way into the dining hall. Apparently he had been accepted and was visiting to see if the school was right for him. If any of you keep up on the college-industry's literature, you might notice that it's very emphatic about recommending people to visit schools before they officially enroll. Not only do they recommend a visit. They recommend an overnight stay, and a meal in the dining halls, and talking to students, among other things. So this high school senior apparently decided to take this advice to heart. He approached a group of students eating at a table right beside the one I was sitting by.
"Mind if I sit with you?" He asked. The students didn't give give him much more than an apathetic shrug, but he persisted.
"Are you Cornell students?" He asked. The students gave him a nasty look, as if, "what else would we be?" The high school student's question might have been a bit odd, except for the fact that one of the "Cornell students" was wearing a big, fat YALE t-shirt. The high school kid proceeded to explain that he is visiting and wanted to know if he could ask them a few questions about the school.
"Sure," they sort of said. They should have just saved him the grief and said no in advance, because the conversation that followed was pretty pathetic. I think the kid's first question was about how they liked the school. The one college kid who emerged as the main respondent quickly wanted to know what college he had been accepted to.
"I'm a liberal arts student." The high schooler said.
"Oh, well we're not, so we probably couldn't tell you much." That's such bull. Almost one third of the student body here is "liberal arts" students. A lot of the classes are mixed, and so are the dorms, so for those students to pretend that they don't know anything about liberal arts students or what it's like is just a pathetic excuse. If they didn't want to talk to him they should have just said so instead of giving him a hard time.
The college kids responded to pretty much all of his following questions, whether they were about academics or student life, with snappy answers like, "it depends," "you should ask someone who's in liberal arts," or just one-word answers.
The high school kid was smart enough to pick up on their vibe and apparently realized it would a waste of time for him to stay there any try to get some useful information out of them. He thanked them and walked away.
By the time the highschooler was five steps away from the table, the college students broke out in a neanderthal-like laughter.
"Oh dude, we gave him like the worst impression," one of the guys managed to say between his gleeful oinks.
"Fuck, I wouldn't come here if I were him," another one said. They then had the nerv to go on and make fun of him and his questions.
Geez, I was fuming. If I weren't so tired, I would have given them a piece of my mind, or maybe tossed them back to where they came from--the stone age. I felt bad for the kid. He deserved to be treated with some basic dignity, which the college students were pretty hard pressed to accord to him. For someone to have the guts to approach a group of strangers who are older than him, he should have gotten a bit more respect. That's why I didn't even bother to approach college students after I got my acceptance letter and came to visit. I didn't want to spend so much time and waste my energy building up the strength to approach someone only to be mocked or made to feel like some annoying little burden. I'm glad I spared myself the grief, but that doesn't mean the kids who actually do try to talk to college students before they enroll should be given grief!!!
See that's the thing about college and college students these days. They're not all that--even the ivy-leaguers. I attended one of the presentations in an Affirmative Action conference that was going on on campus this Friday. During the panel discussion, one of the presenters mentioned that Ivy League schools (like this one) grant athletes and legacies a bigger advantage than they do to minority students. [And no, by legacies I don't mean someone who's done something wonderful and therefore deserves the title of a "legacy"--for some reason the people here call students whose parents or other family members attended the same school a legacy.] It's pretty astonishing if you think about it. There's so much fuss about affirmative action programs when there are other admissions policies around that influence who's admitted even more than affirmative action programs do. Some people at the conference mentioned that even when minority students are admitted, they're often stigmatized or given a hard time about it--"oh, you only got in because of your race." Well, using that same argument, think about how many students "only got in because they're legacies/jocks." You hear much less of that, and even though it's pretty obvious who got in because of his/her jockishness, that's generally not considered a shameful thing (whereas getting in because of your race is?).
I really don't get the whole legacy thing though, and especially that legacies are given such a big "tip factor" (as the Harvard admission folks like to call it). The conference presenters said that it originally stemmed from the idea that children of ivy-league college graduates would generally tend to be well educated and well qualified. Well duh, when your parents are rich and smart it's not a big surprise that the children would have a huge advantage to begin with, so why do we need to give them a "tip factor" on top of that all?! There's another to these legacies, an unspoken truth of some sort. A lot of the legacy students come from wealthier families and grow up sheltered and overprotected. The real zinger is that many of these kids end up being really spoiled rich brats who engage in things that "society" doesn't quite approve of. You know what I'm talking about, you know how many of those goodie-goodie rich suburbanites end up sniffing up drugs like it's the air they breathe or fill their water bottles with beer.
I know that saying this kind of stuff can get me in trouble, but, before you lash out, don't accuse me of making false generalizations. I know there are plenty of good people among the legacies, and plenty of good people among the jocks. We'd be naive though, if we didn't consider the flipside--which we often like to turn a big blind eye towards. Before I came to Cornell, I was told that a school like this is where I would find many people "like me," be it people who aren't into drinking, who don't do drugs, who take school more seriously, whatever, I don't know--can't define myself--but you get the idea. The truth of the matter is that the reality I came to experience here was far from that. Even in this ivy league school, smoking up and drinking till you puke seem to be the extracurriculars of choice for most people. I KNOW there are people out there who don't do that, I am NOT generalizing, but it is true that those who opt out from the wildness end up in isolated pockets and it's much harder to connect. It's the drinkers and the smokers and rich snobs who tend to get most of the attention.
Even the highschooler gravitated right towards them, while I was sitting there, nearby, with an empty seat right across from me. I wondering why he didn't want to try to talk to me over some kids who seemed too occupied with each other to give him any attention. I then realized that I had my water bottle right across from me, not leaving enough room for a tray. I quickly moved my waterbottle and cleared up the other half of the table, but he didn't come over. Oh well, I don't blame him. I thought he was going to crawl into a whole after the way those college kids treated him... but after a couple minutes I saw him still moving from table to table trying to talk to people... Gosh, if that's not called "gettin' and up keepin' on moving," I don't know what is.
I want to end this entry with some sort of nice moral or final thought, but I can't really. There is no resolution. That kid rocks for persisting after being snubbed by those college students. There are also other issues like why students like those sullen-laughing college kids even get into schools like this. And what about all the drinking and drugging up that runs rampant even in schools like Harvard, how often does the average Joe associate ivy-league students with that type of behavior? There's a lot going on as far as misconceptions and twisted realities in college life... The admissions machines at schools like these would want you to believe that everyone they accept is the "creme de la creme," and that you have to be ultra-amazing to get into a school like this. But no, I contend, that's not the case, there's definitely some stuff going on the down-low that is not readily apparent to the general public...
Monday, April 19, 2004
Letter to Ben Affleck?
So, I have a question to you... Yes you, the reader. If you're reading this I want your opinion. If you had a chance to write a letter to Ben Affleck that you knew he would read, what would you write? See... I'm in that position right now, and I have no clue what to do.
Maybe I should explain. Forgive me if I come off as tooting my horn or anything--that's really not my intention at all. Briefly, this is how it all came about. Back in March I wrote a bit about something I was going through at the time... [To be or not to be elusive?] Okay, whatever, I'll just say it again for those of you who don't want to look back. I was featured in Teen People along with 20 other amazing teenagers including a couple celebrities... In March, Teen People and L'Oreal flew us up to New York City for a luncheon to meet each other, the employees of Teen People and L'Oreal, and to talk a little bit about what we do. So anyway, Ben Affleck hosted the whole event. It was a HUGE surprise. I never thought I'd ever meet him (or anyone of his caliber) in my life, so it was a huge shock when all one day, unexpectedly, I was in the same room with him, shook his hand twice, posed with him and some other teens on the "red carpet" and even was introduced on stage by him...
Once the whole event was over and I settled back to life in school, I figured that would be the end of it all. And it was the end of it all... for a few weeks. Except that this past week, I got an e-mail from someone at Teen People that they're asking all the Teens who attended the event (about 15 of us) to each write Ben Affleck a personal note, which they will compile into a book and give him. On Saturday, I got a Fedex with a fancy page they designed with a picture of myself and Ben Affleck on it for me to write the letter...
Oh gosh. So how often do you get to write a letter to someone like him and know they're going to read it? More so, how often do you get ASKED to write a letter to Ben Affleck? It's kind of insane. I don't quite know what to write, what to say, how to make it meaningful. I'm not one to write a dull standard letter... I'd love for him to support my volunteer work, but I bet he gets asked that by a million people anyway. I've asked my friends and got nothing too helpful: Ask him to cast you in his next movie! Ask him what happened between him and J.Lo! Tell him he should have left J.Lo! Ask him a million random questions, and then just sign at the end "just kidding, I didn't really know what else to say..."
Okay, so those are all nice and funny suggestions, ha ha, but seriously... How do you make something like this count? I feel like it's one of those last chance/one-and-only type things, and I want to make the most of it. Am I being foolish or naive? Am I making too big of a deal about this? It's tough, it's overwhelming, and I don't quite know what to do. What would you do?
Saturday, April 17, 2004
Thoroughly Disgusted
Yeah, that's right, this is my second post today (though I had an eight hour nap in between this and the last), and if I stay this moody it might not be my last.
So far today's just been one of those really grumpy days. I woke up tired and pissed off for some reason and it's been making me annoyed. It didn't help that when I went to eat my brunch at the dinining hall it was more crowded than hell. It was worse than a zoo. Sit down! Get out of my way! Move! Don't freaking fill your cup, drink it all while standing in front of the juice machine and then refill it while I'm waiting for my turn!!!Then I was trying to eat my food with some peace of mind. But that's impossible when there are lots of annoying, rich girls with pounds of hair gel on sitting next to you and being really loud, spoiled brats. One girl got up and thrust her chair upon me and walked away. Excuse me?! Excuse you!
But those are all just side notes. Since I had no one to eat with (as usual) and I brought nothing with me to read, I just sat there and started to think. One thought after another just popped in my head. I thought about some of the people I met last night. I thought about the way I've been treated by teachers and administrators in this school. I thought about all the friends I haven't made and how I'm almost done with this whole freakin' school year and have so little to show for it except a solid case of frustration and depression. I thought about the twisted relationships people get themselves into and the stupid, stupid things some people do. I thought about the using, abusing, and sheer insincerity that runs rampant in this society. Augh, so I was sitting there, and just feeling thoroughly disgusted. It was just one of those moment when so much nastiness runs through your head that you just want to purge it out all.
And now for an Avril lyric from "Don't Tell Me," just because I'm in the mood.
Don't think that your charm and the fact that your arm is now around my neck
Will get you in my pants, I'll have to kick your ass and make you never forget
I'm gonna ask you to stop, thought I liked you a lot, but I'm really upset
Get out of my head get off of my bed yeah thats what I said
Did I not tell you that I'm not like that girl, the one who throws it all away
Did you think that I was gonna give it up to you, this time?
Did you think that it was something I was gonna do and cry?
Don't try to tell me what to do,
Dont try to tell me what to say,
You're better off that way
That's right girl, you sing it like it is. Don't let anyone think they can take advantage of you, use you, abuse you and then get away with it. There are way too many selfish sleazeballs in this world. I'm thoroughly disgusted.
I had somewhat of a nice night tonight, but more about that later. Here a list of things I need to do/get through in the next month. That's right! Let the countdown to the end of my freshman year in college begin!
-Three exams
-Three final exams
-4 Papers
-Homework, readings, quizzes for every class (that's 6 classes)
-Job twice a week
-Plan out my summer and a possible summer tour
-Work on the Cleaner Bus Campaign
-Attend classes (about 30 hours a week)
-Write 3 chemistry lab reports
-Figure out schedule for next semester and register for classes this week
-Write proposal for college scholar program
-Eat
-Sleep
-Smile
-Live
What do you think? Possible? Impossible? Good? Bad? Ugly?
Tuesday, April 13, 2004
Get Up and Keep Movin'
Phew. I just got done with my last exam in this round (deluge) of exams. I had three in six days. Oh lordy. Three too many. Three way too many to prepare for when you got homework and classes and annoying little quizzes and writing projects and you're attempting to create the smallest semblance of a social life for yourself.
So biology didn't go that well, but I surely passed and beat the mean, so maybe I should stop there. Sociology was OK. I'll have no clue how I did till I get it back. Chemistry, the horror I went through tonight, was mighty bad, but as for my projection about the results? Eh, we shall see...
So I've been metaphorically banging my head against the wall for the past few weeks because of everything. Maybe that's just my way of trying to figure things out. And figure things out is definitely what I need to do right about now. I'm frustrated by the way many things are (to keep it nice and vague). It's not too hard to find people who agree--seems like everyone is pretty talented when it comes to complaining about things and identifying what's wrong.
Solutions seem to be a whole different tale. "So why don't we go complain?" "Let's write a letter." "Let's do a petition." "Let's talk to lots of students and build a strong base and voice our demands together. In unison we can't be ignored as easily." "I won't stand for this." "Enough!" Unfortunately, it seems like many people shut down the minute they detect the most minute trace of proactiveness. What is this? The modern plague of apathy? Have we all become too depressed and frail to do anything about anything anymore? Have we developed a bizarre form of masochism in which we all love to live under conditions of anger, frustration and constant stress?
I've said it before, and I'll say it once again, "It's my life!" And don't you forgot, it's your life, too. Having three exams in a such a short period of time made me feel like my life needed to go on hold, like I sat down in one spot and just held by breath for a week. Tonight after my last exam, it's really tempting to crawl into bed and just forget about everything till the next round of hell breaks loose.
Oh no... I won't fall into that trap. I had my week of feeling mopey, stressed, helpless and depressed. Now it's time to get up and keep moving. There are things to do, letters of complaint to write, petitions to get signed, campaigns to wage, changes to be made, a life to make happy and fulfilling...
Thursday, April 08, 2004
Six Years Ago...
Over six years ago my life was changing. I had just moved with my family back to the USA after living abroad for four years. It was probably one of the most difficult changes I've gone through in my life. I was 12 years old, which in and of itself is just an awkward age--remember puberty and all that? Not fun... To make matters worse, my English was pretty rusty after speaking it very little for the past four years. I didn't really have any friends here in the US. Well, some of my old friends were around from four years ago. I had hoped we would reconnect, but that hoped came crashing down like a whole lot of other things did around then.
While my parents were insistent on coming back to the states, claiming there would be many more opportunities, better jobs, and just a chance to live a better life, my new life here was anything but any of that. I was lonely. I didn't really have friends in school or out of school. I didn't really have places to meet people. My English wasn't that great, and after speaking up in class a couple times and getting mocked by the whole class for mispronouncing some words, I decided I'd be better off if I just shut my mouth and spare myself the grief.
Sure there was something nice about the USA. We lived in, what seemed to us, a fancy apartment complex in the suburbs that had a pool, underground parking and manicured green lawns. The strip malls and shopping centers where you could find anything seemed convenient. The roads were wide and well-paved. The people walked around with plastic smiles and everything seemed aesthetic, nice and good ole' 50s style peachy-keen. Nevertheless, I felt like an awkward blemish in the hygienic American landscape... I had always been intrigued by people of foreign places, wanting to learn about their lives abroad and their countries, being foreign never seemed like a bad thing to me, but all of a sudden I felt foreign, and all of a sudden, foreign didn't seem like such a good thing to be anymore.
12 wasn't easy. Aside from going through all the crap of early adolescence, I had to cope with the struggles that being a "foreigner" presented. Without friends to catch me, I had to find ways to pick myself up and bring myself to carry on every time I would trip and fall flat on my face. I had to get used to a new school. I had to learn how to live again without the warmth and comfort of an extended family nearby. Worse yet, no matter where I turned, I had to struggle with a language I did not know all too well, and I had to put up with some people's anal need to correct every one of my ungrammatical sentences or the sullen laughter that my "funny" pronunciation of some words attracted.
Silence became a survival strategy. The less I talked, the less people laughed. The less I talked, the less people could use me for their own power trips and correct everything I said. Most people I encountered seemed much less interested in what I had to say, or why I had to say it. But eventually, the silence gave way to insecurity and shame. I didn't want to talk because everyone around me made me feel like I was always wrong. So I figured I should shut up until I started feeling the same way everyone else did about things. No... That never came.
My silence gave people another thing to spin off of in stigamtizing me. Now I wasn't just the weird, foreign kid who couldn't talk right. I also became the quiet loner who never spoke up in class or never gossiped with the other kids during lunch break. Since I didn't talk much, people started to assume I was inferior... ephemeral, one of the place holders in other people's memory who eventually fades into a silhouette with no name or history. People didn't expect much of me, so all of a sudden it didn't really matter when someone threw a frisbee that hit my head--I didn't deserve an apology. Or, it suddenly, it was OK to call me a loser in front of the whole class when I had finally built up the courage to tell the math teacher I liked the stuff we were learning--I didn't have feelings. It was a fun game to put used gum all over my locker or in my books because the principal wouldn't do anything about it anyway when I complained. Heck, it didn't even matter when finally one day I couldn't take it anymore and spent the last two hours crying in school--but of course, that didn't make much of a difference. No one really cared.
Six years ago, I didn't feel like much of a person. People didn't treat me very well, and for somehow I was led to believe that it was all my fault anyway. I was made to feel that my feelings didn't matter, that my presence wasn't worth much, that I might as well just disappear because no one would care much about it (except my family who were all far away except my parents and sister who were all too busy struggling with this funny, new life themselves). My strength, immunity and resilience gave way to numbness. I'd absorb insults and criticism like a sponge that gets heavier with each drop. I'd let the snotty kids shut me up with their domineering, spoiled snottiness. After a while of all that, I forgot that I actually deserved respect from people, and eventually I think I came very close to forgetting that I should even respect myself and care for my well-being.
While my parents were insistent on coming back to the states, claiming there would be many more opportunities, better jobs, and just a chance to live a better life, my new life here was anything but any of that. I was lonely. I didn't really have friends in school or out of school. I didn't really have places to meet people. My English wasn't that great, and after speaking up in class a couple times and getting mocked by the whole class for mispronouncing some words, I decided I'd be better off if I just shut my mouth and spare myself the grief.
Sure there was something nice about the USA. We lived in, what seemed to us, a fancy apartment complex in the suburbs that had a pool, underground parking and manicured green lawns. The strip malls and shopping centers where you could find anything seemed convenient. The roads were wide and well-paved. The people walked around with plastic smiles and everything seemed aesthetic, nice and good ole' 50s style peachy-keen. Nevertheless, I felt like an awkward blemish in the hygienic American landscape... I had always been intrigued by people of foreign places, wanting to learn about their lives abroad and their countries, being foreign never seemed like a bad thing to me, but all of a sudden I felt foreign, and all of a sudden, foreign didn't seem like such a good thing to be anymore.
12 wasn't easy. Aside from going through all the crap of early adolescence, I had to cope with the struggles that being a "foreigner" presented. Without friends to catch me, I had to find ways to pick myself up and bring myself to carry on every time I would trip and fall flat on my face. I had to get used to a new school. I had to learn how to live again without the warmth and comfort of an extended family nearby. Worse yet, no matter where I turned, I had to struggle with a language I did not know all too well, and I had to put up with some people's anal need to correct every one of my ungrammatical sentences or the sullen laughter that my "funny" pronunciation of some words attracted.
Silence became a survival strategy. The less I talked, the less people laughed. The less I talked, the less people could use me for their own power trips and correct everything I said. Most people I encountered seemed much less interested in what I had to say, or why I had to say it. But eventually, the silence gave way to insecurity and shame. I didn't want to talk because everyone around me made me feel like I was always wrong. So I figured I should shut up until I started feeling the same way everyone else did about things. No... That never came.
My silence gave people another thing to spin off of in stigamtizing me. Now I wasn't just the weird, foreign kid who couldn't talk right. I also became the quiet loner who never spoke up in class or never gossiped with the other kids during lunch break. Since I didn't talk much, people started to assume I was inferior... ephemeral, one of the place holders in other people's memory who eventually fades into a silhouette with no name or history. People didn't expect much of me, so all of a sudden it didn't really matter when someone threw a frisbee that hit my head--I didn't deserve an apology. Or, it suddenly, it was OK to call me a loser in front of the whole class when I had finally built up the courage to tell the math teacher I liked the stuff we were learning--I didn't have feelings. It was a fun game to put used gum all over my locker or in my books because the principal wouldn't do anything about it anyway when I complained. Heck, it didn't even matter when finally one day I couldn't take it anymore and spent the last two hours crying in school--but of course, that didn't make much of a difference. No one really cared.
Six years ago, I didn't feel like much of a person. People didn't treat me very well, and for somehow I was led to believe that it was all my fault anyway. I was made to feel that my feelings didn't matter, that my presence wasn't worth much, that I might as well just disappear because no one would care much about it (except my family who were all far away except my parents and sister who were all too busy struggling with this funny, new life themselves). My strength, immunity and resilience gave way to numbness. I'd absorb insults and criticism like a sponge that gets heavier with each drop. I'd let the snotty kids shut me up with their domineering, spoiled snottiness. After a while of all that, I forgot that I actually deserved respect from people, and eventually I think I came very close to forgetting that I should even respect myself and care for my well-being.
Sunday, April 04, 2004
Real Literature
I don't like the word obsession, and I think I would be the last to use that word, but with the lack of a better word, I think I'm developing a little obsession. For the past month I've been finding myself spending more and more time online surfing through weblogs. Gosh, I'm afraid to admit that I've been enjoying it so much that it might just be making its way up to one of my favorite hobbies these days.
Not that I have the time at all, but some days I can find myself spending two hours just surfing weblog content. It's about 2am now and I could have sworn it was hardly midnight a second ago! Some days I don't spend any time sifting through the virtual pages of weblogs, but I suppose that's kind of a good thing. With all of my boring 21 credits worth of school work, I really shouldn't/can't afford to spend two hours a day on this kind of stuff.
So what is it about weblogs anyway? Something about the stories and the people... It's all just so much more real. Sure there are many weblogs out there that are devoted to propaganda, blah blah and all that stuff, but there's a ton of purely real, raw content. I like that. I wonder if my growing affinity for this kind of content has in any way formed as a result of the increasing amount of dry, academic content I'm sort of forced to read daily.
Having to read hundreds of pages worth of biology, linguistics and chemistry textbook material, scientific articles about food science, and sociological essays about stratification and inequality makes my eyes want to puke. Everything's so standardly type writing, so wordy, so long, so boring, so non-descript, so dry. It's like, get to the point!
I wonder what it'd be like if we had to read weblog stuff material in school. I'd probably get sick of it after a while, but for the most part, I think I'd appreciate it a whole lot more. The academic world just seems somewhat disconnected from any sense of the exigencies and stressors of the real world, and that's unfortunate. Do I really have to read an excruciatingly detailed description of morphophonology? Must I really have to endure the minute details about a statistical analysis that some sociological data from the 1960s were subjected to? Oh please, and don't even get me started on biology and chemistry.
I've been looking at the course roster for next my Fall '04 semester classes, and I noticed the first class listed under the department of Comparative Literature is called "Great Books." Or the English department's first listed course, "English Literary Traditions." I wonder if this weblog-style of writing is represented anywhere among the "great books," or if the many-thousands of voices of writers like us have any place in my college's (and others') concept of "English literary traditions."
To me, the writing that I read online seems much more like real literature. The fact that any anonymous teenager can just start writing about the everyday realities of his/her life and in the process build a strong readership out of nowhere, touch the heart of thousands of readers, and win awards just seems wonderful to me. Sure "academia" has its own time, place, and importance, but I think it represent a very incomplete picture of the world if it mostly ignores the phenomena of real literature that's developing more and more every day.
Not that I have the time at all, but some days I can find myself spending two hours just surfing weblog content. It's about 2am now and I could have sworn it was hardly midnight a second ago! Some days I don't spend any time sifting through the virtual pages of weblogs, but I suppose that's kind of a good thing. With all of my boring 21 credits worth of school work, I really shouldn't/can't afford to spend two hours a day on this kind of stuff.
So what is it about weblogs anyway? Something about the stories and the people... It's all just so much more real. Sure there are many weblogs out there that are devoted to propaganda, blah blah and all that stuff, but there's a ton of purely real, raw content. I like that. I wonder if my growing affinity for this kind of content has in any way formed as a result of the increasing amount of dry, academic content I'm sort of forced to read daily.
Having to read hundreds of pages worth of biology, linguistics and chemistry textbook material, scientific articles about food science, and sociological essays about stratification and inequality makes my eyes want to puke. Everything's so standardly type writing, so wordy, so long, so boring, so non-descript, so dry. It's like, get to the point!
I wonder what it'd be like if we had to read weblog stuff material in school. I'd probably get sick of it after a while, but for the most part, I think I'd appreciate it a whole lot more. The academic world just seems somewhat disconnected from any sense of the exigencies and stressors of the real world, and that's unfortunate. Do I really have to read an excruciatingly detailed description of morphophonology? Must I really have to endure the minute details about a statistical analysis that some sociological data from the 1960s were subjected to? Oh please, and don't even get me started on biology and chemistry.
I've been looking at the course roster for next my Fall '04 semester classes, and I noticed the first class listed under the department of Comparative Literature is called "Great Books." Or the English department's first listed course, "English Literary Traditions." I wonder if this weblog-style of writing is represented anywhere among the "great books," or if the many-thousands of voices of writers like us have any place in my college's (and others') concept of "English literary traditions."
To me, the writing that I read online seems much more like real literature. The fact that any anonymous teenager can just start writing about the everyday realities of his/her life and in the process build a strong readership out of nowhere, touch the heart of thousands of readers, and win awards just seems wonderful to me. Sure "academia" has its own time, place, and importance, but I think it represent a very incomplete picture of the world if it mostly ignores the phenomena of real literature that's developing more and more every day.
