ivy league nobody

It’s been almost a year since I’ve last written something in here, and it wouldn’t suffice to try and summarize its events in one go. Maybe in time I’ll be able to touch on these things. I’d like to start writing again.

As I’m packing away my belongings for the summer, bidding farewell to close friends, and awaiting my return to California, I can’t believe the transformation that has occurred in the past year. 

I love it here. I finally can look forward to coming back.

I’m currently writing from George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, where the Go Congress is taking place. It’s been refreshing to get away from things for a little while to gain a bit of perspective.

The biggest difference between this summer and the last is that I have a job now that keeps me busy from 9-5. While the experience has been immensely valuable, it has brought with it a really difficult situation that has been depressing me for quite a while. Where before I had all day in the summer to spend hanging out with friends and with my girlfriend J, I’m finding myself wishing I had more time to do all the things I want to do. With the little time that I have to spend, I’m practically forced to pick which areas of my life I can actually give my time (and inadvertently, which ones are left to neglect).

It’s impossible to balance my time among work, friends, sleep, J, and personal time. While I’m okay with sacrificing sleep and personal time, the other three are not as open to compromise. Work takes on a fixed amount, so ultimately, the problem at hand is being able to spend time with J and with my friends. By time I get home from work, it’s 5:30, so the only free time I really have is the night (typically after dinner).

To remind you all of my situation, J and I are in a long-distance relationship where we spend roughly 8 months of our time 3000 miles apart from each other. The school year was really difficult for us, but we were able to persevere and make it to the summer, though not without strain on the relationship. By the time summer began, our relationship was very rocky, there were so many unresolved problems, and it seemed like we were practically fighting everyday. Once we were out of school, there was no question that we needed to spend a lot of time working our problems out, gaining trust, and getting back to where we used to be. And in the past couple weeks, we’ve come so far, and things now are fantastic. We’ve grown more mature and are better able to handle our issues, and I couldn’t be happier with her than I am now.

The problem was, at the same time I was trying to strengthen my relationship with J, many of my friendships grew weaker, and now I’m finding myself the odd one out whenever a group of us hang out - being out of the loop, not being invited to hangouts, etc. I can feel the emotional distance with some of them, and it really makes me sad. I don’t know what to do about it either, because so much of it seems beyond my control. Even now, with the little time I have, I would like to spend it with J since we barely see each other during the school year. However, that doesn’t mean I don’t want to spend any time with my friends, because I really love them and wish I could hang out with them more. It’s been especially difficult, though, because they’ve gotten into the habit of assuming that I’m always busy or with J, and thus, we miss out on chances to hang out together. Moreover, whenever I hang out with J and skip out on hangouts with them, I’m pretty sure some of them think, “oh, he doesn’t think we’re important enough” or something along those lines. And so the vicious cycle continues to reinforce itself, and I feel hopelessly trapped by my circumstances.

So that’s what I’m dealing with right now.

Let’s make this very clear - I’m not trying to blame anybody.  Nor do I seek sympathy for the situation I’m in. I know that I can’t have everything, and that I can’t possibly expect my friends to treat me exactly the same way they did a summer ago. All I want is to still feel included, to feel like I still belong. I really miss them.

The other day, my mom told me that my eyes don’t shine anymore.

I had originally planned on spending this summer to chill and relax - my “summer of self-discovery” - but it seems that I can’t handle the responsibility that comes with so much free time. At the end of the school year, I applied for and was accepted for a position at a start-up company this summer in Silicon Valley. There are four Princeton students - two recent graduates, a rising junior, and a rising sophomore (me). And as cliche as working in Silicon Valley sounds, it’s proving to be an enormously valuable experience.

Without spilling too many details, I am doing front-end development for an online network that allows people to display, buy, and sell art. Obviously, there are competitors out there, but we’ve developed some pretty revolutionary approaches that no one has thought of yet, so it will be very interesting to see how things pan out.

My responsibilities as of right now are primarily centered around design and coding, namely the website and the facebook application. Since I do print design normally, it’s been really awesome to take on a different mindset for web design, which is centered around UX and functionality, two entirely different concerns from the purely artistic perspective that I did before. It’s been fun to pick up HTML and CSS again and actually learn about coding websites the legit way - conforming to W3C standards and developing crazy stylesheets. At the same time, I’m learning other programming languages as my responsibilities increase, and the cool thing about a start-up is that no one has a compartmentalized role. Everyone is racking their brains together to make decisions about the direction the company will take, and at times that responsibility places me in situations where I have to make decisions I lack the confidence for.

On the other hand, the good thing about a small company like a start-up is the chill and laidback environment. I genuinely look forward to going to work everyday because everyone is just awesome, and I am constantly learning a lot. Moreover, the real value of this experience comes not from professional experience or acquiring new skills, but rather from learning things about myself and perhaps what sort of direction to take for the future. As of now, nothing’s ironed out, but I am slowly finding out what kinds of things I like to do. I’ll keep you guys updated on what’s going on!

Having survived the hellish final stretch of the school year, I come back to this this blog with a lot to say but lacking all the words to say them. I’m heading back to California today for a full four months of summer, and the feeling can only be aptly described as surreal.

I suspect that over the course of this school year that I’ve gone through many transformations, both visible and invisible ones. I’m not quite sure what they are, but I’m told that once I get away from here, I’ll start to understand the nature of the imprints Princeton has left on me.

California and everything I associate with it (high school, good food, good weather) literally seem like a world away. And despite how many times during the school year I clung onto the prospect of heading home to get through the year, now that I’m just a day away, I can feel an attachment to this place and its people, formed not by superficial memories of excitement and happiness, but by just the breadth of experience I’ve had here in the past year.

Just months ago, I was contemplating transferring away from Princeton. And now, no matter how many things there are about Princeton that I’m unhappy with, I can’t deny that Princeton is now part of who I am, and I can’t simply disavow it.

That was as far as I got until I ran out of words. Since you last heard from me, I’ve gotten out of school and come back home to California. Up until this point, I’ve had multiple instances where I wanted to blog about something but couldn’t, because I knew that before I could write about anything else, I had to finish this entry.

I remember a conversation I was having with someone during the school year - I wondered aloud “if I had changed” while at Princeton, and I was told that I had and wouldn’t be able to tell until I was away from it for a while. Well, now, a month into my summer and away from Princeton, it’s become abundantly clear that I have changed.

I’m a different person now. While it’s difficult to qualify that change, those “imprints” that Princeton have left me with place me in a limbo between being able to “belong” at home and being able to “belong” at Princeton. I feel like I’ve grown so much, but everything back here is still the same - and that’s not enough for me anymore. When hanging out with friends from high school, I feel like a puzzle piece that doesn’t quite fit anymore. I feel like my experiences have set me apart because nobody here could possibly understand the world I lived in for the last nine months. I continue to find myself talking about things that other people cannot identify with. At the same time, Princeton remains a source of mixed feelings. I’m not quite sure if I can call either place “home.”

That Princeton is a bubble is something I’ve always known, but the full validity of the statement did not dawn on me until I spent a few days at home. In some ways, it was so much easier to be at Princeton, despite how burnt out I was about academics and how much I missed California. As a cog in the machine, there’s very little to concern yourself with. Princeton keeps you busy - the busyness is tinged with a bit of misery, but it’s equally pacifying because that little bubble becomes your world. Everything becomes contained.

Being back here, having little to do for so long is truly frightening. Things are a lot slower around here, and the moments of stillness unnerve me. No longer can I distract myself with things that keep me busy - I have no choice but to confront these questions and problems that weigh down my mind.

It will take time to sort through these issues or to even figure out what they are, but I already know what some of them are. Some are so painfully obvious that they seem like cliches - what do I want to make of myself? What makes me happy? What do I want out of life? Some are mundane, to the point where I inwardly scoff at their crippling nature despite how trivial I know they are - what do I want to study? Classes? Major? Grad school? Future job?

This summer was supposed to be my “summer of self-discovery.” If I can find the answer to even a few of these, then I’ll be satisfied. However, I can’t help but feel like I may never find the answer to most of them. But in spite of that, life keeps moving on, and I can’t just sit where I am. I need to keep moving, too.

Already I’ve learned something about myself - despite my disdain for those at Princeton who play the game of self-advancement and working the system, I realize that I still play the game, though just in a larger and less obvious form. I need to stop living for other people, trying to make everybody happy. I can’t please everyone, and I need to pick and choose those who are important to me. And if I can’t please them? Then at the very least, I still need to live for myself.

I don’t know where this post is going. It’s naive of me to think that I could coalesce a year of experience into a single cohesive line of thought. I may never fully understand or appreciate how transformative this chapter of my life has been or will be. But the fact remains: this post was unfinished business, and I understand now that it needs no conclusion. Life keeps moving on, and I need to do that too.