Glow

A friend of mine, O, is a Theater Studies major at Yale and is one of the most rebellious, craziest, funnest Southern gal I have ever met. Before I left Yale, a group of friends presented me with a shoebox filled with little things for me to remember them by. O gave me a pair of sunglasses. My first attempt at describing them was "these orange, red things." I thought she gave them to me because she's a badass and badasses wear "orange, red" sunglasses. Yet upon reading the card that my friends gave me, I realized they were for a different reason - a simple but beautiful reason. O wrote "Good luck this year - may you find yourself. Here are some Rose-Colored glasses to show you the world in a pretty glow."

Paper on a Friday Night

Music: Glee, Take a Bow
Mood: meh

I finally finished those 2 nasty, horrible, disgusting, torturing thermodynamics problem sets, and now I am typing up a 2500 words paper on the Iraq-Iran war/Gulf War/offensive realism IR theory. I have no idea when the due date is, but sometimes before Sunday should be fine with my professor...

I think it's rather odd that on this Friday night, when I have a paper to rush, I am feeling the most calm, the calmest that I have been in the past month and half.

I am trying to remember what I did most of my Friday nights here: 9/4 - had dinner with Charles and company and coffee/long catch up session with Angela. 9/11 - rushed my BCG application/had dinner at M's place. 9/18 - had dinner at Thali Too with YHHAP/slept early for my LSAT diag test the next day. 9/25 - had dinner with M and I was so out of it that I really didn't enjoy it. 10/2 - Bouchet's Alum Conference dinner/spend the night at M's place/had a good talk. 10/9 - was too excited to get over a hard week, wanted to study, but decided to hang out with M instead, and slept like crazy. 10/16 - tonight, writing my essay, researching at the library, and missing all my friends and M.

I cannot believe it's only been a month and half... it feels like I have been here for at least twice that amount of life. So many things have happened, and it seems like everything just sort of unravels senior year. It's the first weekend that I feel like I am at Yale - I am studying, I am reading, I am doing problem sets, and I am typing at the library. These might sound really nerdy and uncool, but these are what I am comfortable with. I know how to rush papers, crank out quantatative answers that I have no idea what they mean, look up books on Orbis, check out articles, and youtube in between those amazing hours of paper BSing. For the last month and half, I have been challenged with lots of new things - some exciting, some lovely, some terrifying, some frustrating, but none exhilarating. Getting over an old relationship, getting into a new relationship, taking a seminar on the Middle East (really should have taken intro to ME first...), being a senior and realizing that there are still lots of things you don't know about Yale/New Haven, applying for fellowships, writings resumes and cover letters, going on interviews, trying to figure out what's the next stage of life, trying to uncover what exactly am I passionate about, and just dealing with random crap along the way that were super unnecessary but inevitable. I have been so out of my elements, and today, even though I am kind of sad, I feel sort of like myself again.

October Update

So it's been a month or so ever since I got back to Yale, and oh gosh, it's been... interesting.

First of all, the job hunt atmosphere here among Yalies, especially for consulting and ibanking jobs, is just too intense for me to handle. Even if you are selected for an interview, you still have to wait by your laptop like the moment they send out the email or else you do not get the time slot you want since everyone else is by his/her laptop, waiting for that perfect time to sign up.

Second of all, I feel like this semester is not as academic as I would like it to be. I have been applying to so many random stuff, mainly jobs, I have been ignoring academics. I think it's time to get back on track.

I ended a horrible summer relationship, started a new one, dealt with some health issues, decided to delay my application to grad school, got over my health issues, and now am faced with some new interesting but difficult development in my relationship. I don't know... it's just soooooooo many things happening within such a short amount of time that I have had time to digest...

Let's hope the November update is more enlightening....

Howard Dean

OMGish!!! I don't know why, but I was randomly infatuated with the politics of HD in high school....but now he's coming to Yale!!!!

CSPC 210a (BK), So, "Understanding Politics and Politicians" David Berg, organizational psychologist, and Howard Dean, former governor of Vermont and former chair of the Democratic National Committee. Lecturers in Yale College. The DUS will consider individual petitions for credit to the major in Sociology prior to or following completion of course.

Starbucks

A good conversation with a comforting friend and Starbucks Coffee ice cream are some of the positive asepcts of life that I appreciate. Being okay with myself is something I am still working on.

From LA

I just flew back from Cambridge to LA last Saturday night, slept a lot, ate a lot, and went to another ever so exciting LSAT prep class.

Now that Cambridge is over and that I have basically less than a month left before Yale starts, my life is rather in pieces and I have lots of preparation work to do before senior year hits. That daunting to-do list was rather neglected at Cambridge, and now it's coming back to bite me in the rear end. The comforting thing, however, is that I am happy and calm (okay, not really calm, but not really stressed out either). I am satisfied with the decisions I am making because life moves on after them, albeit in some changed ways. A friend at Cambridge told me that the real judgment of character is not the choice that we make in life but rather what we decide to do with those choices that we've made. I am not sure how true that is (if it is even true), but I think I am content with that for now.

From some random lecture

I am sitting in some random lecture about Parliamentary will, which is given by this random lecturer from some obscure college of Cambridge; he's also a wine steward. I am absolutely enthralled with and fascinated by his commentaries on punctuations and taxes on juke boxes, motivating me to check my facebook/email/twitter account/igoogle music tab/and finally my blogger.

I am 3/4 way done with the program here at Cambridge, and it's been a happy but trying experience so far. Lectures have gotten better - with science lectures on sustainability and an impending tour of the botanic garden, history lectures on memories and history (totally within the realm of my research topic), and a couple of ISS lectures on international politics and government. I have found that for most lectures, the elaborate title is the often the most exciting aspect of that lecture. Our discussion sections on selective afternoons are rather uninspiring and often insipid. My supervisions are getting better and better though - we started off with a discussion of culture, moved on to Fukuyama and history, flirted with Kant and his theory of aesthetics, and now we are pondering about human nature. Various lectures and my supervisions have challenged my understanding of the world or a Hegelian perspective on history and international relations (even though I do not believe that Realism should have sprung from Hegel's writing on sovereignty and international relations... but that's a different issue now). I find it hard to defend my position - how do I reject the Existential view that history is random and prove that we are developing towards a state of perfect harmony? How do I prove that all human beings are rational and that there's one value to which all humanity aspire to? I am now debating whether I should continue with intellectual history or should I move on to analytical philosophy?

I am also struggling to mature and grow up a bit here in Cambridge. Conversations with friends that I have made here, who are from various parts of the world, have made me see the grave deficiencies in my understanding of the world and human nature. I am exploring another aspect of my personal life that I have usually ignored out of fear, bad time management, and general bad luck. This process is a bit daunting but through it, I am reaffirming my selfhood and identity. When challenged, I realize the set of moral and life beliefs that I hold dearly to my heart. There are just some beliefs that I refuse to give up, not out of stubbornness but out of self-preservation in the sense of a self-identity.

Nevertheless, I still look forward to go home - eat good food, meet up with friends, start research for grad school or job search, visit San Francisco, and most importantly, go back to Yale!

First attempt from Cambridge, UK

So it's my third official day at Cambridge, and it's been a rather trying experience. I am doing the Global Summers Program (GSP) that Yale established in partnership with Cambridge and 10 other universities around the world. My specific program is called "Cambridge Connections" and the purpose to allow you to make "connections" between different fields. I was doubtful of the concept behind the program at first because, well you know, would I really extract something from science that could be applied to my research on Hegel. Now I am fully convinced that the whole program is just random and does not achieve the goal it's set out to because there's absolutely no connection to be made at all! Well, even if there's something out there in science that Hegel relates to, Cambridge has not shown me that. The program is rather disorganized, and only superficial attention is paid to the students of GSP. Our lecture schedules were not made at all despite the fact that we had to fill out lecture preference grids twice prior to our arrival at Cambridge. Our supervisions are coordinated haphazardly despite the fact that we had to turn in a research proposal before they picked our supervisors. I think this would have been a nice program to do when I was a freshman or sophomore but definitely not as a senior since I am already focused on a specific field in political theory. Cambridge was supposed to provide me with some insight and guidance in terms of my academic pursuit, but rather, the program has only thrown random things in my way.

Second of all, our accommodation is rather ghastly - dark shower rooms (yes, only one dim light for all four stalls (two of which are bathtubs and which no one uses) with no where to put your shampoo/etc, sinks with only burning hot water or super cold water (they don't come out of the same faucet), and internet-less rooms. The dorms do not have internet and it's trying me nuts. Thank goodness that England is rather chilly even during the summer so the computer room downstairs do not get burning hot with all the computer fans.

But nevertheless, Cambridge is beautiful, even with 8 showers per day. It reminds me of a even greener Yale where the concept of trimming trees does not exist. British people are just lovely with their accents, dressy attires, and willingness to help you out. I love the people in my program, who are all international students from China, Australia, Japan, Iran, Singapore, just to name a few. I found a pair of running shorts for 2 pounds, which was also a big boast to my day. They also gave me a library card, which made my day even better. I haven't had time to explore Cambridge a bit, but I will make sure that's taken care of once my essay is done tonight (388/2000 words.. keep on going....)

Thoughts in New Haven

I have been in New Haven for the past 3 days, and it seems like I have been moving non-stop. I guess that's just the way Yale is - constant working/studying, hanging out with friends, and attending lots of meetings. It's been busy but I am feeling good. Especially after being abroad in Spain last semester, I definitely feel like I have missed a lot - like what's going on at the AACC, what should I do in preparation for the job hunt next semester (shivers), and how I am supposed to have found a senior paper adviser already (really?).

I met with adviser (or ex-adviser since she's going to be away for next year) yesterday about my research project, and it was incredibly helpful but it also made me realize how much work I still need to do. Professor Ochoa is just amazing in terms getting me to think about the structure of what I am thinking about/why my topic is even relevant or interesting. She's great in teaching me the fundamental tools of a research project - which I am quite slow at getting at. I also regret not doing much research while she was still on campus. Now I pretty much feel like I am on my own.

I am still trying to figure out what I really want to do next year, and my plans keep on changing - work, graduate school, fellowship, or a random project? Being away from Yale and all the information people throw at you, I felt like life after graduation was so far away. But now, I guess not and I am rather behind in planning.