Resolved

Since it’s already the last week of the month, the “ZOMG IT’S A NEW DECADE SPAZZZ” phase has worn off a little, so I’m a slightly late on this “New Years’ Resolutions” list.  But here I go anyway, all debate-format-like…

Resolved, I will work harder.

I didn’t have to work very hard in high school to do well, and that made for a pretty relaxing lifestyle.  Then I came to Reed.  All of a sudden everyone around me was more well-read, more articulate, more productive, and just flat-out smarter than I was.  (And no, the use of “was” doesn’t indicate anything has changed in that regard – all of that is still true).

I knew this going in, but it was reinforced over the course of a semester: I can’t get by, let alone perform well, without a sharp increase in my work ethic.  I’m not even close to being the smartest kid in the class anymore – and even if I was, it still wouldn’t be enough.  My grandfather always told me about how he was never the smartest kid in law school – far from it, he would say.  So in order to get ahead, he spent his summers reading all of the material for the following semester.  He would go on to get a 95.5 on the bar exam.

Resolved, I will read for fun more often.

Reading is fun!  Hum 110 is cool and all, but last semester I sort of forgot what reading for pleasure felt like.  Then I did it for most of my winter break.  It was amazing.

So, in an effort to nurture my soul and generally maintain a reasonable level of sanity, I will read fun books, for fun.  These are the ones I’m planning to finish by the end of the spring semester:

“Good Omens” by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett (I’m almost done with this one)

“A Million Miles in a Thousand Years” by Donald Miller

“Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” by Jonathan Safran Foer

“The English Patient” by Michael Ondaatje

“A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius” by Dave Eggers

I probably won’t get through all of these by mid-May, but in general, reading for fun is a good thing to do.

Resolved, I will be better at managing my money.

I can be really impulsive sometimes, especially when it comes to purchases.  No, I’m not a compulsive clothes/shoes/expensive somethings shopper.  I’m a compulsive food and drink buyer.

The worst part is how insidious it is, because food and drink purchases, on their own, aren’t very expensive.  But when I buy three $3 lattes a day (even after I drink black coffee at home, but my coffee addiction is another story) and some chips and candy here and there, it adds up very, very quickly.  It was even worse in Hong Kong, when the cost of paying for too many glasses of wine/scotch/beer burned through my wallet before I could say “Hangover?  What hangover?”  This needs to stop, simply because it’s bad habit.  I can’t afford to do this once I start earning money on my own.

Resolved, I will make an effort to get to know people outside of Sullivan III.

I’ve made many good friends at Reed so far, and I love them all very, very much.  The thing is, they all live within 100 feet of my living space.  And that’s great and all, but it can feel a little restricting sometimes, and the last thing I want to do in college is settle into a clique.  I never had one specific circle of friends in high school, and that’s a large part of why I was happy there (again, the first two years didn’t count).

The truth is, much of what constitutes “the Reed community” still lies far beyond my comfort zone, partially because I fit virtually none of the defined criteria for a Reedie.  When I was choosing between Reed and Kenyon, the latter featured a campus community that seemed like a better fit.  But despite all the things Kenyon had going for it – a prettier campus, better food, actual varsity athletics, a “better fit” – Reed was, without a doubt, the superior academic institution in every single way.  I probably would have been more socially comfortable at some other college.  But that doesn’t mean I can’t make friends here anyway.  All it means is that it’ll take more effort on my part.  Besides, the whole “I don’t fit the Reed stereotype” shtick is pretty much self-imposed anyway, and the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that it’s actually kind of snotty.  People are people, and people are generally good people.  That should be enough, right?  And this brings me to my final resolution…

Resolved, I will love people more expressively.

If you don’t know me very well, this revelation may be a bit of a surprise: I think people are awesome.  If you read this blog regularly, you’ll know how often I’ve mentioned how important it is to love people.  The problem, however, is this: much of it happens only in my head.  I usually think very nice things about people, which is a good start, but it doesn’t mean much if none of it translates into action.  Part of it is because while it doesn’t take much for me to like people, it takes a lot for me to be comfortable around people.  But again, much of that discomfort is within my control.  If I can really lay claim to genuinely loving and caring about people, I need to show it.  I can’t fully describe what that is going to look or feel like, but I’ll know if I’m doing the right thing.

Resolved, I will sleep more.

Instead of going to bed, I wrote this blog post and now it’s 1:13 am.  Time to hit the sack.

Unhealthy Living

Maybe I’m just imagining it, but it always feels like jetlag hits me more severely when I fly from Hong Kong to the US (as opposed to the other way around).

Anyway, it’s Saturday night here in Portland, and I’m sitting in my dorm room recovering from a nasty case of jetlag, which was accompanied by a fever and an upset stomach yesterday morning.  I feel much better now, but the other day I just felt terrible.  My body had, for all intents and purposes, given out – I had been travelling for 16 hours and slept for virtually none of it (in-flight entertainment is distracting, especially when you have noise-cancelling headphones), and my last two meals consisted of a pepperoni pizza and a breakfast burrito.  Not exactly the healthiest decisions.

So basically, 11 hour flight + 16 hour time difference + 2 hour layover + 2 hour delay + 1 hour flight + 1 pepperoni pizza + 1 breakfast burrito + 0 sleep + slight homesickness = I FEEL REALLY SICK SOMEONE GET ME BACK TO HONG KONG PLEASE!

…all right, I’m not really sick anymore.  At this point, I’m only jetlagged.  Yesterday I had to decide whether to sleep during the day to get better even though it would most certainly screw up my body clock even further.  As a result, I’m not sick, but I’ve gotten up at 5:00 AM for two straight days and still can’t make it through the afternoon without dozing off.

And okay, as much as I continually whine about how much I miss Hong Kong, it’s nice to be back at Reed.  I really missed my friends over the break, and it’s nice to be back and see everyone again.  There is, however, that one outstanding issue of starting another semester of college, but I think I’ll put that off for one more day.

Now, bed.  Sleep?  I don’t know.  But at the very least, I’m going to turn off the lights, lie down in my slightly-too-small bed, daydream a little, and pray that my eyelids feel heavy enough for me to fall asleep and dream about happy, restful things.

An Educational Break

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that, for the next two to three weeks, almost every conversation I have at Reed will begin with “How was your winter break?”  My typical response will be “good”, “fun”, or “exciting”.  All three of those descriptions are true, but the most fitting adjective would be “educational”.  You see, I’ve learned (or relearned) a few things over the last few weeks.  Here they are:

(Warning:  There’s some pretty deep stuff in this post.  No kidding).

I really hate being drunk.

Some people hate alcoholic drinks but love the buzz that comes with it, so they drink anyway.  I have the opposite problem.  I like alcoholic drinks – beer, wine, scotch, you name it – but I really don’t like the feeling of being drunk.  When I look back on my winter break, none of the highlights involved alcohol.  In fact, I’d venture to say that most of the low points involved drinking of some sort.  Yeah, I’ve been there, and it can be fun, but lately I’ve found that the trade-off involved in getting drunk – i.e. being less restrained and more easily amused at the expense of rational and reflexive functions – isn’t really worth it.  Not even a little bit.

My heart belongs to Hong Kong.

I feel like I need to make this perfectly clear before I talk about how awesome Hong Kong is: I love Reed, and I love college.  I’m happy where I am, and I’m doing my best not to compare my new home with my old one.

No matter how much I love Reed and all the people in it, Hong Kong will always be my hometown.  It doesn’t necessarily fit the bill of “home” in the same way that it does for most people (I’m still not Cantonese and neither is my family), but no matter how you spin it, I’ve lived here for 13 years.

I grew up in Hong Kong, and I feel free in this city.  I can go anywhere at any time and do almost anything.  And yes, the city is far from perfect – overcrowded streets, polluted skies, and an overly uptight and wound-up populace – but regardless, I feel so much more energized here.  In Hong Kong, I can feel the earth turn just a little faster every time I glance at the stunning skyline and towering skyscrapers.  This is where the action is, and I love it.  Oh, and have I mentioned the food yet?  Eating Commons food for another semester is going to prove difficult.

There is no substitute for facing your problems.

Any good friend of mine knows what I’m talking about here, but I don’t make a habit of being specific with these things on my blog.  Basically, I’ve learned that, if you’re hurting, avoidance is the worst thing you can do – but so is self-absorption (which I’ll get to in a minute).  Some things weren’t quite right when winter break started, and it took me a long time to realize that the only way to make things right was to take the initiative rather than waiting for the elephant in the room to die, because that takes way longer.

There is nothing in life that is only about me.

In addition to the Donald Miller quote that I’ve referenced about ten times on this blog, I can’t help but remember the scene in It’s a Wonderful Life when (SPOILER…but seriously, if you haven’t seen It’s a Wonderful Life, shame on you!) George sees what the world looks like without him.  As he takes a minute to absorb his surroundings, Clarence says the following:

Each man’s life touches so many other lives.  When he isn’t around he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?

As humans, we need each other.  We belong to each other.  With that in mind, no problem I have, regardless of its enormity or privacy, is solely about me.  I’m not going to lie; I wasn’t in the best emotional shape when winter break started.  But something I hadn’t considered amid my self-absorption is that when I’m hurting, so are the people who love me.  Nothing is only about me.  Life is not a story about me.

There’s always enough time to make new friends.

When I think about my best friends from high school, I’d say a majority of them were made within my last year of high school.  True story.  But (and this is a word of advice to you HKIS kids) it doesn’t end at graduation, especially if you’re coming back for winter break and summer.  I know that, for many people, the primary function of winter break was to catch up with old friends.  This was true for me, too – but in addition to that, I got closer with some friends and met some pretty cool new people, and I think that’s awesome.

A commonly written line in my senior yearbook says “I wish I had gotten to know you better”.  Reading that line back in June tore me apart every time I read it, because I couldn’t help but feel like I missed out on something.  And yeah, I did – but that’s the wrong way to look at it.  Sure, maybe I didn’t get to know certain people in high school very well, but it doesn’t end at graduation.  Just because high school is over doesn’t mean you can’t make new friends from high school.

–

Well, there we go!  One winter break is in the books.  I’m not looking forward to my 14-hour haul across the Pacific tomorrow but it’s the only way to get back to Reed.  Thanks for a great break, everyone!  Keep in touch, and I’ll see you in a few months.

Notes from an Adjudication Sheet

Well, I think it’s fair to say that I’ve had an eventful day.  I spent my final weekend of winter break judging China Cup Forensics.  For most of the day, I was holed up in Room 807b of the High School – my little “fiefdom”, as it were.  From 8:30 am to 7:00 pm on Saturday, I was seated behind a judges’ desk, scribbling almost nonstop in a futile attempt to keep up and stay on schedule.

It’s always fun seeing things from the other side.  It’s become a recurring pattern – in high school, I coached Community Basketball and taught Sunday School for four years after having participated in both during Elementary and Middle School.  And this weekend, as a college freshman, I judged China Cup Forensics.  I didn’t participate in China Cup during high school, but I was a member of the club for two years and went to Kuala Lumpur in 2008 and 2009, and I can say without hesitation that Forensics was one of the highlights of my high school career.

(Author’s Note:  The Forensics team refers to the definition which describes “Forensics” as “an argumentative exercise” or “the art or study of argumentative discourse” – and is not, as most people believe, a team that practices CSI-esque techniques for fun).

But first, some thoughts on judging.  First and foremost, it’s tough.  And even though I wasn’t the one performing, I couldn’t help but feel a little nervous, especially in the preliminary rounds, which only had one judge per room.  It’s a little unsettling to think that you, as a judge, have been entrusted to with deciding which performances were better than others.  And if you screw up or if people disagree with you, you can basically guarantee that whiny high school kids will bitch about you to no end for the next 48 hours.  Sometimes they’ll have good reason to, because no matter how qualified I or anyone else claims to be, it ultimately can be a little arbitrary.

It’s also taxing.  Sitting behind a desk all day doesn’t seem very draining (in fact, it sounds like school or work at the office), but you can’t just sit there and let your mind drift off into space.  You’re the only one in the room who has to constantly listen and pay close attention to every little detail in an effort to get it right.  My brain hurt immensely after the tournament and it still does right now, which makes writing this blog post a little tougher than it should be.

All in all, it was a good time.  And I’m getting paid!  Now, on to lighter subjects.  Over the course of the events I judged, I gleaned a few general observations as well as some neat quotes:

1)  Apparently, the UN is really, really important and powerful.  Like, REALLY powerful.

Obviously you can’t delve into the deeper issue of the UN’s authority in a Forensics debate, but I just found this really amusing.  During several debates, it was brought up that if X country does Y action that contradicts Z UN resolutions, the consequences would be catastrophic for EVERYONE!  That’s right, EVERYONE!

…yeah, okay.  Let’s forget the fact that in its current state, the UN’s power is practically ineffectual unless the United States (and maybe China or Russia) is involved.  Unfortunately, I can’t shout from the judges’ table.

The UN’s supremacy and, apparently, everyone’s reverence thereof was best described by Mr. Steven Keithley’s enthusiastic citing of a UN study during a debate I judged.  It went something like this:

A study by the *pauses, then disproportionately raises voice* UNITED NATIONS!

As a judge, I had to contain my laughter in order to salvage whatever professionalism I hadn’t already destroyed by that point.

2)  Forensics debate can be extremely frustrating to watch.

Don’t get me wrong, I love debate, and I love the concept behind Forensics debating.  But too often, I’ve seen debates simply degenerate into arguments pertaining to definitions rather than ideas.

For example, this years’ resolution stated the following: RESOLVED, governments should repatriate illegal immigrants to their countries of origin. Inevitably, people argued over definitions of “illegal immigrants”, “countries of origin”, and “repatriate” – which spawned my favorite quote of the tournament by one Mr. Stephen Suen:

“Repatriate” is an ACTIVE VERB!

This is all amusing (it really was), but it became exceedingly frustrating to watch because as the bickering over definitions dragged on, debates became about semantics rather than policy, and the whole point of debate itself was lost on whether or not “illegal immigrants” meant “all illegal immigrants” or just some of them.

3)  Individual Events are awesome.

This is definitely a subjective statement – I tend to be a little biased toward the IEs, mostly because I was always much better at them.  I judged almost all of the events, along with the Original Oratory and Extemporaneous Speaking finals.  Most of my fun came from watching those events, especially since there’s no room to be witty or funny during debate.  Another great quote was “Winnie the Pooh was a transcendentalist” by one of the Original Oratory finalists.

HKIS performed extraordinarily well.  We took first place in Original Oratory, Impromptu, Solo Acting, and Debate, against very strong competition from ISB and SAS.  It’s really something, the way Forensics has evolved over the years.  It started off extremely small, and we didn’t perform all that well in tournaments, I was told.  But as time went on, it got bigger, better, and just more awesome.  And the best part?  Forensics is a student-run group.  Sure, there’s a coach (who is awesome, no doubt), but we coach each other, teach each other, and learn from each other.

There was always this kind of camaraderie among the Forensics kids that I doubt existed in most other HKIS clubs, at least when I was around.  It’s not that hard to explain why it’s there, but it’s cool to attribute it to some ineffable quality that only a select few in this world possess.  In reality, though, it can really be summed up by a quote from Mr. James’ opening speech at the beginning of China Cup:

Basically, we are nerds.

Oh, you’re damn right we are.  I’m tired and drained beyond belief, but I had a ton of fun this weekend, and this was definitely a highlight of my winter break.  True story.

I’m really proud of you kids – I’ve said this several times too many, but it’s true.  You’ve all grown and improved so much, and it’s comforting to know that Forensics remains in good hands.  This team continues to get better and better, and it was a joy to judge and watch you guys this weekend.

Re: Question Time

Okay, so I’ve put off roughly three drafts, but I’ll start by answering the questions that were posed to me via Formspring.  Here we go:

Dear Alan, How does it feel to be on your own, with no direction home, like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone?  Sincerely, A Concerned Reader

Dear A Concerned Reader, it feels like a princess on the steeple and all the pretty people.  I used to ride on the chrome horse with my diplomat, who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat.  It also feels like a good but overplayed Bob Dylan song.

In Soviet Russia, does coffee complain about how Alan isn’t strong enough?

No, because I drink it all before it can say anything.  True story.

If you had to have a fetish that involved sci-fi, what would it be?  Same question with fantasy, inanimate objects and characters from Russian novels.

I think I know who wrote this question.

Sci-Fi: Lightsabers.

Fantasy: Swords.  Sensing a pattern here?

Inanimate objects: Fountain pens.

Characters from Russian novels:  New York abstains.  I haven’t read enough Russian novels to develop a fetish…not that I’ve developed fetishes on other topics or anything.

What’s the coolest book you’ve ever read? And preferably not one administered in HKIS’s or Reed’s cirriculum curriculum. I’m talking about the juicy stuff, a book that has really touched your heart that you might have picked up coincidentally.

I haven’t yet experienced one of those cinematic-type literary discoveries like in Orange County when Colin Hanks finds a copy of a life-changing book while sitting on the beach.  That shit rarely happens.  That’s why it’s always portrayed so dramatically.

I’m going to cheat here by naming two books, because I can’t pick one and stick to it.  The first book is This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald.  The second is Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller.

You know how, supposedly, every American teenager has read The Catcher in the Rye and identifies with Holden Caulfield in some capacity?  You know, because “teenage rebelliousness” just happens to be something that runs through the veins of every kid between the ages of thirteen and seventeen, right?  Yeah, not really.  I could never identify with Holden Caulfield, because I was never a rebellious kid.

For me, Amory Blaine was my Holden Caulfield, and This Side of Paradise was my The Catcher in the Rye.  Amory spends the novel (which might as well be a character study) trying to make peace with himself and attempting to find meaning in his life.  And apart from just being a brilliant piece of literature, This Side of Paradise was one of many reminders that there’s nothing you’ve suffered through that someone else can’t identify with.

Blue Like Jazz is one of those books that changed the way I look at my faith and the people around me.  It was also one of the factors that led to my attending Reed College.  Donald Miller isn’t a theologian or a preacher or some self-proclaimed religious expert – but in a way, that’s what gives his writing so much more meaning.  It’s real, and it’s from a regular guy.  I read this book at a perfect time, because it reaffirmed some deeply held beliefs of mine that were a little shaky at the time, especially when it came to the issue of loving one another.  One specific line from Blue Like Jazz rings through my head almost every day, and it is this:

The most difficult lie I have ever contended with is this: life is a story about me.

what was the worst class you ever took?

Physical Science during my freshman year of high school.  It combined a boring subject with an awful teacher.  I’m not really a science guy, so that didn’t help, but our teacher was just terrible.  He would play the guitar in class, and he didn’t even notice when we played Counter-Strike in the background while he “taught”.  Just awful.

are you for gay rights?

Yes.  I can see why someone would ask me that, since I’m a self-styled Libertarian Conservative and have been Catholic my entire life.  But regardless of what anyone thinks about homosexuality, there is no legal argument for withholding basic civil rights.  None.

–

Well, that’s that!  I’m judging China Cup Forensics tomorrow morning, so I’m heading off to bed.  Lots to write about, though – like I said, I have a few drafts on the way that I’ve promised myself I’ll finish before I get back to Reed and all the academic craziness resumes.

Question Time

In Britain (and in many other countries with parliamentary systems), “Question Time” refers to a parliamentary session in which members of the opposition may question the Prime Minister.  Thankfully, I am not the Prime Minister of anything, so my own personal version of Question Time won’t be quite as screwed up (keep reading, I’ll show you what I mean by that).  An example of just how raucous Question Time can be viewed in the video below:

Never in my life have I been more thankful that I am not Gordon Brown.  Instead, I’ll be taking questions from this website:

http://www.formspring.me/alandaniel09

Basically, you can ask me anything about anything at that URL.  You can ask anonymously, or you can leave your name.  It doesn’t matter.

Yes, this is hopelessly narcissistic and distracting and blah blah blah.  Whatever.  I’ve kind of given up on that front.  I have a blog, a Twitter, and a Tumblr, so I’ve pretty much fallen off the cliff in terms of trying to restrain my level of internet usage.

Anyway, again – feel free to ask me anything via the above link, and if I get any questions, I’ll post some of the answers on here periodically.

Back to the Future

If you haven’t caught the hint, I’m back in Asia, and I’m in the midst of a multiple blogging session.  I’m in Manila, for the moment.  I’ll be back in Hong Kong this Saturday and will be there for a little under three weeks.

The most overused adjective to describe the first winter break back from college is “surreal”, so I’ll stop short of using that word, especially since I’ve used it numerous times in recent conversations.  Unfortunately, the word I’m looking for is related to the term “time travel”, but scouring my brain for an adjective that utilizes such a phrase has proved fruitless.  Another phrase I’ve used recently is that coming back to Hong Kong “feels like I stepped through a time portal”.

Coming back feels like I was sucked out of a four-month long dream in which I traveled to a mythical land called Reed College.  It feels like I slept in just a little too late, and woke up to my real life in Hong Kong, the same life I’ve had for the last thirteen years.  And, for the most part, my life was pretty good.

It feels like nothing has changed.  We still have the same Christmas traditions.  All the bars and clubs in downtown Hong Kong look and feel the same.  HKIS students still complain about the inner workings of their school to no end.  And my family lives in the same place, its little joys and quirks virtually unchanged since my departure.  It feels like nothing has changed – except in reality, everything has changed.  I don’t live in Hong Kong anymore, and I don’t go to HKIS anymore.  In fact, I’m pretty sure I graduated from that place, blue robe and all, and so did everyone else in my year.  We all went our own ways and attended college for four months, and all of it was real.  I’m fairly certain this constitutes some sort of disruption in the space-time continuum, if my mind had any say in its flow.

My mind plays tricks on me sometimes.  On multiple occasions I’ve mentioned that I’m staying with “my grandparents”, even though my grandmother passed away over a year ago.  I keep thinking how I have to get up early to teach Sunday school, even though I stopped doing that when the last school year ended in May.  I have old habits on this side of the world, and the fact that such habits aren’t relevant anymore is a little jolting.

Anyway, that’s all on this subject.  Regardless of the occasional mindfucks inflicted by my return to Asia, it’s really nice to be back.

Just a Haircut

Over the last few weeks, I’ve made a huge deal over whether or not to cut my hair – I’ve probably asked everyone in my dorm at least twice, and every member of my family at least six times on separate occasions.  With this in mind, you might be surprised to know that my haircut has less to do with my overdeveloped sense of vanity than it does with the self-imposed symbolism involved.  I say “self-imposed” because I’m pretty sure most people don’t read as heavily into these sorts of things as I do.

This is what I mean:  my senior year of high school was indisputably the most transformative year of my life.  And during that time, my haircut looked roughly similar to my 3rd grade haircut, my 4th grade haircut, my 5th grade haircut…you get the point.  With the exception of my freshman and sophomore years of high school – years which, with a few exceptions, I would rather soon forget, my haircut has been more or less the same.

Then I went to Reed College in August.  My hair was short-ish at the time.  Then I decided not to cut my hair for four months, mainly because I didn’t want to shell out $25 on a haircut when coffee and snack foods were eating up my monthly allowance.  Regrettably, I’m not in possession of a recent and decent (yeah, I rhymed) photo of my Reed haircut, but let’s just say that it began to curl outwards quite a bit, and I was able to pull off Ash Ketchum’s haircut on Halloween with enough hair gel.

In the days preceding my flight home, I went back and forth on whether or not to get it cut – and again, how good it looked was less relevant than I let on.  I didn’t cut it at first, and then cut it short a few days after returning to Hong Kong.

To everyone I know on this side of the world, my short haircut qualifies as my “normal” look, and if too many of my friends saw my “Reedie” look, it would look a little strange.  Conversely, to my comrades from the Reed bubble, my long and unruly mullet was the norm rather than the exception, and my short hair drew reactions of “OMG NO WAI”.

Why does this matter at all?  Well okay, it really doesn’t (and shouldn’t) matter to you, but if you’re still reading by this point, your perception of what constitutes a worthy use of time is pretty much beyond saving anyway.

But I digress.  My point (or whatever you want to call it) is this:  For some reason, the relationship between my different haircuts and my different friends from different homes highlights a painfully obvious reality I often forgot during my first semester at Reed: Nobody knew anything about me before I came to college.  And conversely, nobody outside of Reed knows anything about who I am inside of Reed (beyond a superficial or second-hand account, anyway).  Weird, isn’t it?  It’s not an matter of me disingenuously altering my personality.  It just happens to end up that way.  Your friends at college will come to know you, and your friends from high school already do.  But it’ll be different – so radically different in ways that I can only fully express by describing something as common as a haircut.

…honestly, though, I think I’m going to stop making haircut-related decisions based on how well it symbolizes the things I think about from here on out, because the more I think about it, the more creepy it sounds.

Homeward Bound

Dear Reader:  I’ll have you know that I intended to write something in this blog at some point before the 17th of December, but I’m afraid I’ve been fresh out of free time recently.

Thankfully, I finished my last final exam (It was Chemistry.  For more details, see “train wreck”, “quagmire”, etc.) yesterday, and I’m currently at the Portland airport waiting for my flight to San Francisco, where I will leave on a jetplane and make the trek across the Pacific Ocean by sitting down for 15 hours.

As of right now, I’m coming down with “everyone told me but I didn’t know what they meant until now” syndrome, which is to say that I can’t believe how quickly this semester has passed.  There are really no other words I can come up with.

I wasn’t entirely sure how I felt about leaving Reed and coming back to Hong Kong.  Lots of things have happened and changed since I left, and for a long time my mind seesawed on a regular basis from “ZOMG I CAN’T WAIT TO GO BACK TO HK” to “LOVE REED PLEASE DON’T MAKE ME GO HOME”.  But I think I’ve balanced out fairly well by this point.  Reed has become one of my favorite places in the world, and I’m convinced that there’s no college campus on earth quite like it.  I love my friends to death, and am extremely happy with my life here.  But I’m ready for a month-long break in the city where I grew up.  It’s been such a long time, Hong Kong.  I’ve missed you and your crowded streets, sprawling hills, and amazing public transportation.  It’ll be fun!

A much longer post is imminent, I promise.  But for now, I’m going to sign off.  You’ve been very good to me, Portland.  See you in 2010.

Academics at Reed: Freshling Edition

It hasn’t been a very good week (and it’s only Monday), so I think I’ll spend this evening blogging instead of reading The Republic.  I also think I’ll do myself a favor by writing about something that involves less introspection.  So here we go:

I’m a little hesitant about the title of this post, especially because I’ve previously stressed that no single account of college life is an accurate indicator of what life will be like once you reach that point.  But really, “Alan Edition” sounds so, so lame, so I’ll stick with the title I’ve got.

I feel like a reflection on Academics at Reed deserves an entire post because it represents so much of what defines this college and the people who go here.  But again, this is my experience, not anyone else’s, so kindly take it with a pixelated grain of salt.

At Reed, you will call your professors by their first name.  In fact, you will call basically everyone by their first names – I usually hear the President of the College referred to as “Colin”.  That reality, in itself, doesn’t say much, but it is representative of the way Reed does things.  I can’t speak for my peers and their previous academic experiences, but academics at Reed is a far cry from the grade-obsessed, prestige-worshiping culture of Hong Kong International School.  Reed does not pay mere lip service to the overused line that “you are responsible for your own learning.”  Ideally, you should always be, no matter where you are – but at Reed, if you’re not genuinely involved in your intellectual growth, you will fail.

At Reed, you will not receive your letter grades unless you specifically ask for them, provided none of your grades are below a C.  This seems a little strange, especially in the age of grade inflation, but the underlying premise here is this:  Grades are a woefully inaccurate way of gauging how well one has learned or digested something.  If my essay got an A, does that mean it requires no further improvement?  How much better is an “A” paper versus an “A-minus” paper?  It doesn’t matter, at all.  In fact, I’m glad I can’t see my grades, because I don’t get caught up in categorizing my performance.  Extensive verbal feedback, I’ve found, is a much better way of figuring out where you are, what you’re good at, and what needs improvement.

Then, there are the requirements.  Oh, requirements.  They’re a bitch, and we love to whine about them.  I certainly do my fair share.  Many top-tier schools such as Brown, Wesleyan, and Hamilton have few or none requirements, and lots of people like that.  At Reed, the requirements are quite extensive.  You are required to take Humanities 110 (all non-transfers take it their freshman year), which is a year-long introduction to Western Humanities covering the Greeks and Romans (although next year the syllabus is changing dramatically.  More on that later).  In addition, you must (and I’m paraphrasing) take two units (two semesters) in Literature/Philosophy/Religion/Arts, History/Social Sciences/Psychology, The Natural Sciences (Biology, Chemistry, Physics), and Math/Logic/Foreign Language/Linguistics.  Don’t follow me?  Doesn’t matter – the point is that there are a lot of requirements to fulfill here.  And there aren’t any gut classes you can take that knock off more than one requirement or fulfill the requirement without actually counting as a class in that discipline.  For example, to fulfill the science requirement, you have to take either Biology, Chemistry, or Physics.  That’s it.  No Astronomy, no “Environmental Political Policy” class, or anything of that nature.  Yeah, it’s a bitch.  I don’t like Chemistry much, to be honest.

I sensed that the above paragraph was degenerating into a rant of sorts (even if I’ve become more favorably disposed towards the principles behind academic requirements), so I X-ed it.  Moving on…

You will have lots of work.  I have a slightly lighter load because I’m taking fewer classes because I’m an impressionable freshman and I’m adjusting to college and dealing with personal issues and blah blah blah blah blah, but most Reedies have a shit ton of work that never stops coming.  It powers the stress culture here at Reed, I’m told.  You’ll have lots of work no matter where you go, but Reed is known for being one of the toughest academic schools in the country.  Our average GPA has floated around 2.9 to 3.1 over the last 25 years.  In that same span of time, nine people have graduated with a 4.0.  Wait, what?  That’s kind of awesome, if not incredibly frightening.

I can be overwhelmingly, if not irrationally, negative sometimes, but I don’t feel like this is such an outlandish statement when I say that one line has consistently run through my mind over the course of my first semester at Reed: How did I get into this school? On a shitty day, it’ll be I’m not smart enough to be here, I’m way out of my league, or some variation on that phrase.  I’ve been told this is a pretty common feeling among Reedies, even if it’s hard for me to imagine.  I’m a big believer in the idea that most people, if not everyone, possess some sort of intelligence – be it emotional, musical, interpersonal, etc.  Reedies, while obviously different in their own ways, are essentially united in their intelligence of the cerebral variety.  With few exceptions (I haven’t met any yet), people are well-read, independent-minded, fiercely intelligent, and, for lack of a better description, fucking brilliant.  It blows my mind every time, and it’s consistently humbling to think about.

I don’t mean to sound arrogant, but I didn’t need to work very hard to do well in high school.  I stopped reading my AP European History textbook in January, and I got a B+ on my AP Mock exam and a 4 on my AP exam, and that was fine with me.  I did my AP English reading because I enjoyed it, but that was enough preparation for our in-class discussions.  In my three months here, I’ve learned, among other things, that the amount of work required to do well here is far beyond the amount of work I had ever put into anything in high school.  I’m not quite there yet – I’m still a little entrenched in my habits, and it’s been difficult to get over.  But I need to find a way to develop a consistent work ethic, or I won’t make it here.  It’s not just that there’s lots of work, it’s that it’s difficult work.  Today, my Humanities conference leader mentioned that The Republic was “hard”, and I laughed to myself (it must have looked weird to everyone else) because “hard”, for me, has pretty much become par for the course.

On my worst days, I feel like an idiot during my Humanities conference.  Sometimes the discussion moves too quickly for my mind to keep up with it, and sometimes the concepts are too difficult for me to figure out on my own.  On my worst days, I wonder how the hell I got into this college, and that somehow, my admission was either a fluke or a product of college’s version of affirmative action, because my background provides that DIVERSITY so many liberal arts colleges are desperate for (it’s actually kind of amusing – see this post for details).  I don’t know if what I’m saying makes sense, or if I’m even in the same intellectual class as the people around me.  But that’s me on my worst days, and while bad days have been a little more common recently, I know it’s not true, and wallowing in self-pity will not get me anywhere.  At the end of the day, I’m here, and I love it.  But more importantly, I believe in the system (which, if you know me, says a lot).  I believe in Reed College because it is genuinely dedicated to scholarship, study, intellectualism, and independent thought.  There is nothing about this college that is fake, and its devotion to academics is a true illustration of that.

On my best days, I can’t help but grin when someone makes a brilliant argument, or when someone displays both the confidence and the courtesy to respectfully disagree with someone’s point.  I can’t help but be inspired by this weird place, day in and day out.  In high school, I did way too much research on colleges, and I knew a lot about Reed (too much, perhaps) before I came here.  Yet it never ceases to amaze me when I walk out of my Humanities conference, feel the autumn wind kiss my face, and remind myself that I don’t just know about this school, I go here.  I go to Reed.  This is a truly unique and special place, and this is my school.

I know I’m supposed to be idealistic as a freshman and end up jaded once I become a senior, but I usually don’t feel or think things for the sake of playing the part.  I’ve always been an unwavering idealist, and that’s how I get through difficult times…oh, damn it, I told myself this wouldn’t be an introspective post.  Oh well.  It was bound to happen.  Anyway, back to Plato.