Category: Life

unwelcome study breaks

It’s finals week, and there was a fight just now in the second floor of the campus library, next to the computer stations and meeting boardrooms. It’s nothing like the street brawls you see on a website like World Star Hip Hop, with two people throwing fists at each other over a cheering crowd who could care less about the outcome. Morbid curiosity keeps you glued to the screen, but it’s a different feeling when someone is getting stomped on the ground right in front of you. Uncertainty, perhaps.

Maybe there was a reason for it. Maybe there wasn’t. Either way, you’ll never know, because one of the guys just bolted down the stairs. The other is slouching behind the computer, staring ahead instead of back at all the people looking at him. He doesn’t look like he’s in the mood to talk.

Everyone went back to studying.

herfststorm

With seven consecutive consonants in the middle, it’s about as difficult to pronounce herfststorm as it is to ride your bike in one. Many international students who had classes in town ended up taking the bus instead. The autumn storm this year had some of the worst winds in years. It’s over now, but just a few days ago we had 40+ kph winds. Even for Dutch weather, this was not typical.

Did you hear what happened in Amsterdam?

One person got killed by a falling tree, I heard. 

Ah.

~

Classes still went on as usual.

 

Station 7B, or regret

“I think that’s your train over there.”

Station 7B was not where we were supposed to be. Station 14 was. So there we were, watching the train in Station 14 go off in its merry way. It was 3:17 AM and the next train from Amsterdam to Utrecht would come in an hour. And while we had friets with mayonnaise and tartar sauce to keep us company, there’s no doubt that this kinda sucked.

~

“Are you lost?”

It’s 3:15 AM, and in comes a Dutch man named Flip – old-fashioned for Philip, he says. Like Goedhart, all we had to do was make eye contact before he posed the question. He would spend the next half hour giving us tips and advice around the best places in Amsterdam and Den Haag. Disco clubs, ethnic restaurants, book recommendations, and wise advice like how herring is good for hangovers. He wasn’t even going on the same train as us.

The conversation had been going well, so I thought I’d ask him this question:

“Is there anything you’d wish you’d have done our age?”

No regrets, he says – although he does wish that he studied abroad during his college years. He had an amazing time at university, and I get the impression that he’s travelled all around the world – but living in a foreign country as a student is much different than visiting as a tourist or living as an expat. But this is only in hindsight — something he didn’t think of until after he graduated. There was no emotional baggage from this, just the sense of “what if?”

But then he turned the question to me. What about you? People don’t ask other people (let alone someone they’ve met for less than an hour) these kinds of things unless they have some regrets themselves.

If five other people went up and asked the same question, I could have different answers for all of them. But that night I told him one.

~

Regret is good in that it forces you to reflect on your past so you don’t make the same mistakes in the future. And while I do wish I made some different decisions in life, I’m rather happy with how things have turned out — even if it meant missing the train and walking home in the pouring rain until 6. At least it was memorable.

“You must love the math.”

A reflection after finishing the Math 10 sequence at UCSD — my least favorite sequence, despite the interesting professors who bring it to life.

It’s the first day of class, and in walks the math professor, Dr. Stevens. We exchange the usual pleasantries (and by we, I mean her and a hundred blank stares), and with students either scribbling everything down or taking it as a free pass to zone out, she offers advice her own professor gave years ago:

“You must love the math. Call everyday, and treat math as if a lovely lady to woo.”

Ten weeks later I ended up with a C+. It would take another quarter before I pulled my head out of my ass and realized that it was not enough to call. If I was going to have a memorable and meaningful conversation with math, my mind had to be in it. Opening the textbook and drilling the homework problems would not be enough, and neither would all the office hours in the world if I mentally checked out the moment I left the room.

Which begs the question — why was I so loathe to put my mind into math in the first place? Was it because I found it boring? In a sense. I mean, I wasn’t dreaming about integrals and differentiation at night. But more so because it came with the threat of failure. Math was my weakest subject back in high school, right behind Spanish. I even flunked it in eighth grade, but the teacher took pity on me and gave me a D- instead (which, surprise surprise, didn’t feel any better). Quite the drop from a person who used to sweat over anything less than an A.

Perhaps the most frustrating realization was that all this took a lot more work and effort than if I had just done it “right” the first time — that is, seeking to understand why a problem is so, rather than plugging and chugging an answer and calling it a day.

Love for math can’t be forced. And relying on validation from good grades as an indicator of self-worth comes with its own set of problems. But knowing when to quit and when to push forward is essential to learning and deciding priorities in life, and this is a time when I quit too early.

 

Still not a fan of integrals.