De5tiny

Six years ago, around this time of year, came the period of Judgement. Everything I'd worked for and accomplished in my 18 years of life, now weighed and judged by college admissions, would return to me in the form of acceptance and rejection letters.

I found out that I'd been accepted to UC Berkeley and Duke University in the same afternoon. My friends in journalism were ecstatic. My brother wrote on Facebook: "HOLY FUCK YEAH! dude we're gonna video tape dad's reaction. first, you gotta fake cry, then suddenly scream in joy. i can't wait!"

As it turned out, my parents hardly reacted. They were waiting for the big enchiladas -- Harvard, Princeton, Yale. A few days later, I was rejected from all three.

It was subtle--but I knew and felt it. Their disappointment seeped through the seams, in offhand comments that they made. Even my mother, who eventually helped convince my father to let me go to Duke over Berkeley, said something about "expecting better results." Why didn't I study harder for the SATs? Why didn't I have better scores? She said I should have taken more practice tests, and soon funneled all her energy towards my brother. And I've written here before about my struggle with convincing my father to let me attend Duke, and the ensuing stress that debilitated my freshman year.

For other people, getting into Duke might have been a victory. But it didn't feel like one to me.

Fast-foward to last night. I'm at an Irish pub in New Orleans, sitting at a table packed with Duke fans and graduates. Our contingent of Duke Blue is outnumbered by the swarm of Wisconsin red, but it doesn't matter. When Grayson Allen turns on the heat and almost single-handedly cuts down Wisconsin's lead in the second half, we roar. When the buzzer goes to zero at 68-63, we jump to our feet screaming. My Facebook feed goes nuts, my phone shakes with messages from friends and old classmates.

I think of the last time I experienced something like this, five years ago at the end of the worst academic year of my life. I'd asked myself so many times then if I'd made the wrong choice, if I should have gone to a UC instead. When we won the NCAA national championship that spring of my freshman year, the doubts didn't evaporate overnight. But something changed. I found myself standing in the middle of Cameron Indoor Stadium the night we defeated Butler, with people laughing and crying in triumph all around me, and realized just how damn lucky I was to be here.

If I could tell my 17-year-old self one thing, it would be this: Call it fate or destiny; everything works itself out in the end. And someday, it will be impossible for you to imagine being anything other than a Blue Devil.

Duke and Spirituality

ETA: I just found out that Duke has reversed its decision and decided to hold the call to prayer in the quad instead. I can't say I was particularly pleased with this backtracking, but I have to acknowledge that Christians might not be comfortable with the chapel being used for the Muslim call to prayer. (Though I have to say... the chapel holds a lot of non-Christian events at school, and I have yet to hear any major complaints against those.)

HOWEVER.... what pissed me off more than anything were the comments people left on Duke's Facebook page. Calling Duke a "traitor Muslim school' and all sorts of garbage. I suspect NONE of those people ever studied at Duke in the first place and have NO IDEA what it's like on campus. Those people threatening to never send their kids there -- if your kids are just as close-minded and poisonous with hateful words, then they probably don't belong at Duke either.

---------------
Original Post

I generally don't blog about current events, but there are times when the events intersect strangely with the ongoings in my own life, and I feel compelled to write in order to process my thoughts.

My alma mater, Duke University, recently announced that every Friday, the Muslim call to prayer will ring from the chapel bell tower. This has been gaining particular attention the news, especially in light of the recent events in France with the terrorist act committed at Charlie Hebdo. Some boneheads have been calling upon donors and alum to stop donating to Duke until the policy is reversed, claiming that this encouragement of Islam is a threat to Christianity.

I won't even go into the fact that the influence of Christianity is everywhere at Duke (the insignia, the chapel, the Bibles we all receive upon graduation), and that the idea of Christianity being wiped out from Duke is laughable. But I will talk about how I am indebted to Duke for opening my eyes to religious acceptance and spirituality.

When I entered the school in August 2009, I had no concept of either. I was vaguely aware of the Buddhist influence on my extended family an ocean away, but growing up I had no religious rituals and hardly ever thought about higher powers and whatnot. That changed almost as soon as I started my freshman year, when a high school alum at Duke invited me to join a Christian fellowship's welcome event.

That freshman year was a terrible year, but it made me who I am today. Two things happened coincidentally during that period. My disastrous academic experience hurtled me into a personal crisis of intense self-doubt and loathing. At the same time, I began exploring Christianity -- initially, as a way to make friends who also felt fatigued by the prevalent hook-up culture, but little by little I began attending small groups and large groups, intrigued by the conversations on what it meant to live a good life and be a good person. These were conversations I'd never had growing up, and I read Bible verses and listened to the pastors in curiosity.

At a certain point, however, I reached a dead-end. There were things I liked about Christianity, but there were also things I didn't like, couldn't accept, or just couldn't believe. As I asked more and more questions to my mentors, the answers started to meld into one: "It will make sense if you believe." But I can't believe, I wanted to say, because it doesn't make sense! Gradually, I stopped attending the group events, but the friends that I made remained through the rest of my undergraduate career and beyond. My best friend from Duke is a devout Christian, and if anything, my experience with that Christian fellowship taught me how to be religiously sensitive.

The other major spiritual epiphany happened in my junior year. To get some English major requirements out of the way, I enrolled in a class called "Spiritual Autobiographies." Our first essay assignment was to observe a spiritual or religious event that is not part of our own beliefs and write about the experience. Some classmates went to a mosque, while others went to a Buddhist temple. I went to visit a pagan witch on the night of the full moon.

That night will always be one of my favorite memories, because in many ways it changed me. Not because I started believing in pagan rituals or spirits, but because of certain things the witch said to me that night. One was what she told me when she read my Tarot card. The second was when she said that it's okay to take bits and pieces of what you like in other religions and custom-build your own spirituality, without having to accept all the other baggage that comes with each organized religion.

The light came on. And that's where I am now--spiritual, but not religious.

In medical school, religion becomes especially important when we talk about end of life care and death. During my end-of-life elective class yesterday, we had to act in scenarios with actors in which we were supposed to break the bad news that his/her mother had terminal cancer. We were split into small groups that rotated through four stations, each with a different actor. As soon as my actor asked me, with tears streaming down his face, if I believed in Jesus our Lord and Savior, bells went off in my head.

My friend had to do the same scenario in a different group, and she said her first reaction was panic. I understood -- religion is something we almost never discuss publicly and can become a scary topic to broach. But as I held the actor's arm, I quietly told him that I believed in a higher power, but that my role in his mother's care was not in religion but in medicine. When he suddenly closed his eyes to pray aloud, I let him. I kept my eyes down in respect, just like I'd done all those times I'd had dinner with my Christian friends who said Grace before every meal.

Duke University not only helped me understand my own spiritual beliefs, but also helped me understand how to interact with people of other beliefs, and to respect the positive things that religion can bring--compassion, comfort, and solace. I am proud of my school for leading the way in religious acceptance and grateful for what it has taught me in turn.

Wisdom at Age 22

A few months ago, I was asked a question along the lines of, "What has been your favorite age?" My response was something like, "The age I'm at right now, because I'm always getting wiser."

Sure, I'll admit there's a bit of romanticism about the "milestone" years, but looking back I wouldn't mind smacking my former selves a bit.

I would tell my 16-year-old self to get to know my favorite high school teachers better and to be friendlier with everyone in general, even if I have no real interest in being BFFs with them or if I secretly think they're immature/vapid/incompetent/dumb-as-bricks.

I would tell my 18-year-old self to stop measuring my self-worth with my GPA and learn how to study smarter, not harder.

I would tell my 21-year-old self not to take the people around me for granted and learn how to show affection every once in awhile.

Why did I think of this recently? I had a phone call with my mother yesterday, and at one point in the conversation, she told me she ran into A's mother at the farmer's market on Saturday. Like all Asian mothers are wont to do, they started tittering about what their children were up to these days. My mom told her that I was likely heading to New Orleans for med school in the fall. Well, A's mother reacted in dismay in light of this news (aiyah!), and she said something about how her darling A had been disappointed about going to Northwestern for medical school.

Hello shit, meet fan.

My response to that was less than artful. It probably sounded really defensive, actually. But the gist of it was something like, considering how effectively my sense of entitlement had been squashed at Duke, all I was really hoping for was just getting into ANY school. Nevermind UCSF or JHU or whatnot.

A and I were both among the twelve high school valedictorians in our graduating class who'd maintained a 4.0 GPA all four years, so I guess you could say we started off at the same level, until A chose Berkeley over Penn for undergrad and I chose Duke over Berkeley. I will fully admit that part of my decision in choosing Duke at the time was out of pride. Quite a number of people at my high school end up at Berkeley each year, while usually only one or two people get into Duke. And, seeing as I was used to being at the top of my class back then, I wanted to be "that one girl that went to Duke" as opposed to "one of the twenty that went to Berkeley."

Stuck-up mentality, perhaps? Well, I don't regret choosing Duke one bit. Sure, I was chewed up and spit out during those four years, but for all the ups and downs, it made me who I am today. There's also something to be said about going to a school with so much school spirit. My high school had zero school pride, because our cliques rarely wanted anything to do with each other. The thing about Duke is, because it gets shitted on so much by everyone else (dook, puke, I've heard it all), we tend to band together in an us-versus-them mentality. Also, having a consistently great basketball team to root for is always fun. (side note: Jabari Parker might be my favorite Duke player ever, since I started following the team in 2009)

//end Sophelia's Ode to Duke

But back on topic. Maybe A did exceptionally well at Berkeley and had the stats to get into NW Med. Maybe I would have had a better GPA if I'd chosen to attend a different undergrad school But it's moot to think like this because there's no point in dwelling on the what-could-have-beens.

One piece of wisdom I adopted during my time at Duke is to accept that everything happens the way it's meant to be. You try your best whenever you have the agency to do so, but accept the outcome whatever it happens to be. I've come to believe that the universe will throw obstacles in your path in order to nudge you towards the direction you're meant to take.

It took me a long time to accept this. I spent several years believing I was a big fat disappointment. I was rejected from the five other private undergraduate universities I applied for, including the prestigious HYPS. My parents' disappointment was quite palpable; in fact, my mother even told me so. It was still a sore spot for me three years later, when my younger brother managed to achieve everything I'd failed to do: place as a finalist on the first try at the piano competition I'd competed in twice and only placed as semifinalist each time; earn a perfect score on the SAT; gain all those research internships I'd only half-heartedly tried to get and was rejected from; receive acceptance letters from every school he applied to except good ole Yale.

Not gonna lie. At times, it was a hard pill to swallow, watching your only sibling achieve everything your parents had piled their hopes on you at one point. But by then, I was already in my junior year of college, and I'd come to realize that while all those expectations they'd placed on me had been appropriate for my brother, but they hadn't been right for me. I never wanted to be a scientific researcher. I didn't love science the way I loved English. (This became exceptionally clear when I found myself reading critical essays on English literature via JSTOR for fun. Would I ever look up scientific papers for fun? Not likely.) Duke ended up being the right place for me, in that I was able to earn a second major in English without running through major hoops (a near-impossible feat to do at a place like Harvard).

And just to clarify, I am proud of my brother. I will brag about my sibling to anybody whenever I have the chance.

Time will tell, but I'm optimistic that New Orleans will be a good place for me. There's so much culture and artistic history in the city, and there's a huge emphasis on service at the school I've been accepted to. Moreover, I'm not pursuing a medical degree in hopes of becoming the top researcher in the world. I want a career that will allow me to interact with people, to observe life at the crossroads of human mortality like Chekhov and William Carlos Williams. I was so unhappy through the tail-end of my teenage years because I let other people dictate what my ambitions were. Now that I know what I want for myself, I shouldn't let people like A's mother get me down, right?

Apparently, I still need to learn how to grow a thicker skin. But I'm getting there.

GTHC

I am dead tired and more irritable than ever. But...


... last night's epic victory against the Tar Heels reminded me of why I'm glad to be where I am. Above is a picture I found online of the bonfire in the quad last night, after we came back from a 16-point deficit to win against our biggest rival. I never had this in high school -- there was no unity, no real sense of school spirit then.

I didn't realize until I came to college that people love to hate on Duke; when the whole powerpoint scandal broke out last semester, columnists and bloggers were still beating around that dead horse lacrosse scandal and using us as the scapegoat for what is essentially a problem on campuses all across the nation -- the alcohol-fueled hook-up culture.

Haters gonna hate, but the ones looking in from the outside are never going to understand what the school spirit is really like here. Sure, I don't drink much and I don't hook-up. But that doesn't mean I don't feel like I belong here. I watched the NCAA basketball championship game in Cameron Stadium last spring, when our team took down Butler 61-59 in Indiana to win the 2010 national title. The stadium was packed. As the buzzer went off, people were storming the court, laughing, cheering, hugging, and crying. It was unlike anything I had ever felt in my life.

There were remnants of that even last night. My friends and I were sitting on one of the couches in our common room with other students from the dorm. Most of us had books and laptops on our laps as we attempted to finish our homework while watching the game. Though the first half was ugly, things started going crazy once Seth Curry stepped up his game. Nobody was even trying to work anymore. We suddenly became this one, monstrous entity that was spread out across the campus, either packed in the student section of Cameron or crowded around common room televisions, cheering in unison. It's one thing to experience a small, personal joy; it's quite another to have that little piece of joy amplified into a collective swell of pride and exuberance.

Slain

Somebody needs to drag my dead body back to California.

Hell Week

I've already had two dreams about going home, and it's the only the third day of finals week. In the first dream, I went home and discovered that my family had bought a new puppy. I played with it for awhile, then glanced at the carry-bag and asked where Matisse was. My mother responded that Matisse had fallen ill, collapsed, and died. It's not the first time I've had this dream, and once again I woke up crying. In the second dream, I went home to discover that my family had gotten incredibly thin and were starving themselves to pay for my college tuition. Soon, I was seriously considering applying to transfer to one of the UCs.

I turned in my first paper yesterday, and crunch time begins tomorrow -- I have exams on Thursday and Friday and a ten-page paper due Saturday that I haven't started. I can't wait to go home.

By the Way..

I will be spending the summer of 2011 in Vietnam for a civic engagement project. Building things, manual labor, teaching schoolkids, et cetera. All expenses paid for by Duke University.

WOOHOO!!

Pulse 2

I want to tell you what needs to be said. But my tongue feels severed.

I can't believe it's already halfway into the semester. Our midterm grades were posted on Friday. Let's just say... my grades could be better. I feel like I've given myself additional stress with my pre-med plans; many of my peers are happy just to be passing their classes. But after my bad case of senioritis, I've learned that I will regret it if I don't immerse myself in work.

So basically, I am a workaholic.

I'm starting to realize just how much of a party school Duke is. At first, I thought all colleges were like this, but now I'm beginning to hear about what it's like at other schools. It is so easy to find parties here on the weekends. You just have to wander around West Campus and follow the scent of beer. Sometimes, the frats and sororities even post fliers around campus advertising their parties. The school doesn't do much to curb underage drinking either. I hear stories about how you have to "register" your parties with the school at Georgetown, and I can imagine how that system would NEVER work here at Duke.

Still completely sober, for those of you who are wondering. The friends I have been making are not partiers, and so I haven't felt the need to do so. I can live vicariously through my roommate F's regaling of her escapades (most recently: reaching third base with her close guy friend during Fall Break).

Oh my goodness. I am exhausted, and it's not even midnight. Good night, dear friends. I added a random poll for kicks. Feel free to contribute.

Studying like a College Student

1. 7:40 pm - Return to the room after dinner. Upon sitting into desk, is immediately sucked into the black hole known as the Internet
   
2. 8:50 pm - Manage to stumble out of the black hole and force self to read William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying for English class inside the walk-in closet because roommate is asleep (so the lights must remain off) and because Facebook is singing like Odysseus' sirens
3. 9:25 pm - Feeling woozy from the closet's pervasive smell of dirty laundry, decide to trek down four flights of stairs with a week's worth of laundry
   
4. 9:30 pm - Wonder why laundry costs aren't included in the horrendous tuition fees; one would think that 50k a year would qualify for private ladies-in-waiting and a personal chef. Continue reading Faulkner on the bench in the laundry room while listening to mp3 player -- doing so guarantees staying awake and feeling productive, for it is all too easy to fall asleep or be distracted while in the room
5. 10:00 pm - Washing machine chirps to announce completion of the cycle. Wet laundry is loaded into a dryer. Wonder why anyone bothers paying $1.50 to dry clothes when the sun has been shining every single day for free.
6. 10:30 pm - Despite the discomfort of the bench, sleepiness prevails. Trek back up four flights of stairs. Immediately upon opening the door, the laptop begins to sing like the sirens.
7. 11:00 pm - Read sparknotes for As I Lay Dying. Find an interesting link at the bottom of one of the pages on the sparknotes website and discover a blogger named Dan who has been blogging/critiquing Twilight and New Moon with biting sarcasm. Almost feels like looking in the mirror and seeing oneself, cynicism and all. (Click here for a snapshot of his post on the first two chapters of Twilight. For the index of "Blogging Twilight" posts, click here. )
8. 11:40 pm - After retrieving freshly laundered clothes from dryer, log onto Blogger and decide to share with the uninterested public how the last three hours of a college freshman's life has been squandered.
   

It's Funny

I've never been worried about making a tennis team in my entire life.

Until today.

//edit//

I MADE THE TEAM!

No, I did not make the Duke Varsity Women's Tennis team, which won the NCAA tournament last season. I made the Women's Club Tennis team, which is still a pretty competitive team, just a notch below the Varsity team. There were probably thirty or so girls who tried out today -- and from what I could discern from the e-mail, only 11 were admitted to the competitive team (MY TEAM -- the rest are kind of like Junior Varsity). And apparently, we travel around the country (?) for competitions. :O

But now I am sad that I was not in California this weekend. Otherwise, I would have totally gone to watch Silversun Pickups perform this weekend at Outside Lands Music Festival. Boo.

On another note, I woke up one morning a few days ago to find 10 review alerts from fictionpress in my inbox. That's right, TEN. I was so happy/ashamed -- happy that there are people out there who are still reading my dormant story, ashamed that I have not updated in more than six months.

It's funny though. It's been about three years since I started the story. Writing can mark progress of one's life, and I can tell from reading my old work that I have grown up. My characters were flat and two-dimensional, based on stereotypical characters I had often read about in books or watched in movies. But the 18-year-old me has met many different people in the last three years. I've watched relationships grow, bloom, and wilt; I've met some pleasantly eccentric and not-so-pleasantly weird people; and I myself have changed. When I read the writing I wrote as a 15-year-old, I am dismayed by how flat Rhys is, how much I oversimplified Rory's character, and how underdeveloped the supporting characters are. A part of me is too embarrassed to reread my work, but on the other hand, another part of me is dying to rewrite and revise.

Pssttt. Want to know something? I had this idea of writing a blog from the point of view of a Duke freshman girl. I was considering wiping out Heart & Crossbones and starting over with a new semi-fictional blog. I'd create a new persona and write about the girl's epic adventures. Since my life is so boring, I'd entertain my friends with fictional accounts of Duke life. Win-win, right? I get to live vicariously (as I always do) through my character, and the rest of you get a good story.

Unfortunately, it turns out that I have way too much shit to do every day. But who knows? Maybe I might. Someday, sometime.

And now, jumping to yet another completely unrelated note... I feel strangely excited, and seemingly for no reason. But then again, I'm sure I'll feel otherwise Monday morning when I get up for class.

Highlights of the Day, No. 2

• Meeting Tangerine's sister and a ton of kickass upperclassmen at the IV freshmen welcome party. (Even though I'm not Christian, I felt right at home.)
• "I told my friends once day when I was really hyper, 'I'm so excited about coming to Duke! I'm going to find a guy and become a Duchess!" -- J, a girl I share several mutual friends with who hung out with me this evening.
• In all honesty, Orientation Week wasn't really my cup of tea. But things are definitely looking up.

But on the downside...

CLASSES START TOMORROW! EEK.

Exit

So my mother finally yelled at me today. Well, I think I already knew it was too good to be true, considering how she had been so remarkably patient and good-humored ever since I came back. I guess she bottled it for too long, because her blowup actually came rather arbitrarily. We just happened to drive by the place I used to get tutoring for the SAT II, which led her to talk about the college presentation I did with Gov. J, C, and S. And then, it all went downhill from there. Basically, she managed to fill a twenty-minute car ride with everything that had bothered her since the beginning of second semester (plus some of junior year, in which she nailed me for not really taking practice SAT tests, as opposed to Gov. J who revealed that she had taken over 15 practice tests. Love that girl, but I HATE being compared to her).

Whatever. I acknowledge most of her arguments, including getting lazy my senior year and getting crummy scores on the AP tests. The one thing that REALLY ticks me off though, is how she always says, "Your father wouldn't be so reluctant to pay your college tuition if you had gotten into Harvard." Um... okay, I'm SORRY I got into Duke. I'm SORRY that the only colleges Asian parents seem to know are Harvard, Stanford, and Berkeley.

What's my worst fear? My worst fear is not being able to regain my work ethic once I start school again. I really let myself go during my senior year. There's a lot of pressure on my shoulders. My father was very reluctant to pay the tuition for Duke -- and the only reason he really decided to let me go is that I argued that I'd have a better chance of getting into medical school if I go to a private school. If my grades drop, my parents said they could easily just stop paying for my tuition.

Yup. So now that my happy bubble of carefree living has burst, I'd better go take care of packing.

On another unrelated note, I am considering changing my blog name and url. I will warn you all ahead of time if I decide to switch things up.

The Countdown

three

Jetlagged, she awakens at noon from a 13-hour slumber. Drowning in the flood of sunlight, she struggles to fight her way out of the sprawled tangle of strewn clothing and sheets. She has already missed breakfast, but her stomach is apathetic to the serpentine scent of food trailing up from the kitchen downstairs. Acting entirely on instinct, the first thing she does upon getting up, like typical 21st century spawn, is to log onto facebook and check her wall posts. Her friends -- now all so far away -- have written messages recounting newly imprinted memories and thanking her for "being there" for them this summer. Being there, being here -- she's here but her heart is still there. She feels the familiar trickle of hot, saline pearls and the blurriness of vision. Her eyes are in need of their own set of windshield wipers, but she is never going to let anyone know that she is shedding tears over the technicalities of geography, of the distance between the "here" and the "there."

two

This time, she awakens at 1 pm in the afternoon to the shudder of her vibrating cell phone. An hour and a half later, she is peeling the wrapping paper off of a blue scrapbook that has just been dropped off at her door. When she sees the graduation picture sealed onto the cover of the book, she cannot help but smile. As she turns the pages, grinning at one photograph or laughing at the scribbled middle school note tucked into one of the pages, she is there again. She is there, sprinting all the way from Pier 39 to Pier 1 in San Francisco with three of her most beloved friends laughing by her side. She is there, stacking the chess pieces across the chess board in a reenactment of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, complete with Hobbit pawns and Elvish bishops. She is there, glued in front of the computer screen watching the devilishly handsome Marble-Eyed Prince offer his unsullied handkerchief to the distressed heroine and vicariously experiencing the frisson of Eros' arrow. And she is here, holding the months-long project of her dearest and closest friend and feeling all the more ashamed of not having created something to keep the here and there locked hand-in-hand. Today's here, Rogue is by her side; but at tomorrow's here, Rogue won't be there. The grains of sand are slipping down the hourglass like beads of tears slipping down porcelain skin, but she is never going to let anyone know that she is shedding tears over the technicalities of time, of the seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years between the "here" and the "there."

one

Today, she is unceremoniously dragged out of bed by her mother, who tells her she will forever be trapped in the wrong time zone if she continues to sleep until noon every day. As she forces herself to pack for college, she suddenly remembers to place her gift to her brother, who is out of town, onto his bed. She enters her brother's room and spies the present from their paternal grandfather she had left on his bed just days ago. Stricken with curiosity, with her mother's approval, she carefully opens the box addressed to her brother and pulls out a small bubble-wrapped package. Nestled within, she discovers, is a compact gold-colored clock, a set of batteries, and a small handwritten note. She inspects the clock for a moment (and concluding it to be untouched and most likely brand-new) before pulling out the folded piece of paper and reading its scrawled message. Her mother is reading over her shoulder, but for once, she does not complain about having eyes watching from behind her back. The letter asks her brother about his well-being and informs him that the clock was a highly treasured gift that Grandfather received from an old Japanese friend more than twenty years ago. Without thinking, she voices her awe at the preciousness of the gift and is oblivious to her mother's silence.

But later, as she is packing her clothes and talking about her trip, she casually asks her mother about whether or not her father will return to his hometown this winter when she suddenly notices with a mixture of shock and uneasiness that her mother is crying. Her mother responds with a voice that carries all the weight of grief, anxiety, exasperation, and age. Her mother has asked her father countless times to fly home and see his parents, but for whatever reason, he has never been particularly warm to her advice. And now, with Grandfather handing down his most beloved gifts and maternal Grandmother giving hundreds of dollars away to her grandchildren, it is all too clear to her mother that her grandparents are already beginning to confront their own mortality.

For the first time, she can distinctly recall the weathered lines on her grandfather's face and the powdered white tips of his graying eyebrows. She recalls how he would forget questions that she had just asked moments ago, how he had gotten lost in the Main Station when he took her to the High-Speed Rail terminal, how her uncle (a physician specializing in oncology) had told her privately that Grandfather was beginning to show signs of dementia. And when her mother tells her that Grandfather may not be able to recognize her anymore within less than a decade, she is neither here nor there. She is torn between two countries, between two times, and this time she lets her mother see her tears.

zero

Or maybe I am bipolar...

Ignore the last post.

I am feeling MUCH BETTER.

And I cannot wait to get out of here. I cannot wait to go to Duke and completely reinvent myself. I just activated my new Duke e-mail and joined the Facebook network. This is so exciting. I am going to stop wallowing in self-misery and end my high school career with a KABOOM.

And so...

Not in the mood to explain what happened on my birthday, but in any case, the issue has been resolved.

I am now part of Duke Class of 2013.

FREEEEEEEDOMMMMM!!!!!!!

I'm off to North Carolina in a couple of hours. I'm not bringing my laptop, so I'll have no Internet for two days. I'm flying by myself, so yes, I am a trifle scared about figuring my way around North Carolina by myself. But on the other hand...


HOLY MOLY!!! Hogwarts, here I come!!

Mad World

To tell you the truth, I was writing another post with a Pro/Con list for Duke and UC Berkeley. But then I broke down and couldn't write it anymore.

You may recall that I was initially very excited about Duke. That excitement very quickly frittered away when I realized that my father was very against Duke and wanted me to go to Cal. I was suddenly faced with the realization that our family cannot afford 200k to send me through four years of Duke, not to mention the fact that my father feels the only thing Duke is good for is basketball.

My mother, on the other hand, has been very supportive. She understands why I prefer Duke to Cal, and she has been collecting a lot of advice and information from family and friends these past few weeks. However, this afternoon she came into my room to tell me about an acquaintance of ours whose daughter did pre-med at Cal and is going to UC Davis for med school. Perhaps she didn't mean it to come off that way, but I interpreted it as her way of hinting that my argument that Duke is better for pre-meds has been effectively shot down.

She also keeps stressing that I need to have a conversation with my father. I am reluctant to do so on many different levels. (I keep telling myself that I can put this off until after I visit Duke next week.) My relationship with my father is minimal -- if we lived in The Sims, our relationship bar would be in the lukewarm 30s. I don't know how to talk to him, and I don't know what to say. His mind seems to have already been set in concrete -- not once has he indicated any interest in Duke. My mother is the one looking up Duke on Wikipedia and calling up old friends whose children attend Duke. I have never seen my father do anything even close to that.

All of the logical, practical arguments make sense. Cal is cheaper, and so the money that would have been spent at Duke could be used for graduate or medical school. Why spend 200k on the undergraduate university, when I intend to go to graduate or medical school in the future?

At this point, I am trying to convince myself to go to Cal. I don't want to burden my parents with 50k a year on top of the possibility of med school tuition. I don't want to fight with my father.

But at the same time, Cal is not what I have been dreaming of. Ever since I entered high school, I dreamed of getting out of this valley. Our family rarely travels -- I have only been to two other countries other than the United States, and plus, I cannot say I really visited the United States either. Other than good old California, I have merely driven through Oregon and Washington on the way to Canada, was born in Illinois (thus possessing absolutely no recollection of the place), and visited Hawaii when I was two (likewise). I have a severe case of wanderlust that cannot thrive in these economic times.

When I was writing my lists, it dawned on me that if it weren't for money, I wouldn't even be thinking twice (unless my father was STILL insistent on Cal). To be fair, I have not visited Duke yet, so for all I know, I may end up absolutely hating the place. But many times, I've wondered -- if I had gotten into Harvard, Yale, or Princeton, would I even be having this dilemna? Then again, if I had gotten into HYP, would I be pressured to go just because they're HYP?

This is one of those days when life feels so empty. Why is everything driven by money? We live and die for pieces of inked paper that represent gold that our country doesn't even possess. I've been born, bred, and raised to live in this system, and I can't even see what's the point. Is the point to be the most successful in the system -- the billionaire CEO or the world-famous lawyer? Or to transcend the system, whether through pure science or art? This world is mad, and we aren't any better.

asdflkjsa;lfjs@&^#(&@

bad news.

normally, my middle-class family would be able to qualify for at least a small sum of financial aid. however...

last year, my father earned a good sum of money from investment in the stock market. all was fine and dandy until the stock market crashed late last year.

so where does that leave me? our family lost a good deal of money, and now my father says i won't be able to qualify for financial aid because the tax forms will only show that our 2008 income was very high, despite the fact that eventually we ended up losing it all anyway.

at the moment, my parents are discussing how to pay for my college tuition. they are aware that i prefer Duke over Cal. However, if I go to Duke, I will more than likely have to take student loans.

while my parents are currently discussing financial affairs i do not understand, instead of doing chem homework, i am trying to think of ways to get money.

- scholarships... but i don't know if i can find any good ones at this point in the year
- get a job... which may be difficult considering the unemployment rate
- the only useful talent i have is writing. maybe i can win some contest somewhere.
- sell my car
- eat only two meals a day

... WHY AM I SO INCREDIBLY LUCKY TO GET TO APPLY FOR COLLEGES THE YEAR WHEN THE ECONOMY IS SINKING LIKE POOP IN A TOILET AND THE APPLICANT POOL IS THE LARGEST IN HISTORY??????

fml.

Retrospect

Now that all of my college decisions have come out, it looks like I'll be going to Duke (if my parents will pay for it) or Cal. I'm leaning towards Duke, for your information. The final tally? Accepted 6 out of 11.

My amazing longtime friend, the multi-talented Gov. J got into both Harvard and Princeton. I was so incredibly happy for her -- I have to admit, I have never felt that proud of anyone other than myself. Ironically, she was rejected by Yale, but who cares? It felt like being acquainted with the hottest celebrity -- like if I was best friends with Kate Winslet when she won the Oscar.

But I do have to confess, it's hard to be so exuberantly happy for a friend, and then come home to tell your mom that you got rejected by the same schools your friend was accepted to. I think my mom really hoped I would get into one of the HYP schools, and in a way, I feel like I've disappointed my parents. So there is a bittersweetness to all this.

Reflecting on this whole business, I've been taking my rejections at HYP much better than when I was rejected by Stanford. Stanford was the first rejection letter I received, and it hurt me rather painfully. I cried for much of the night and stayed up until 3 am talking to Storm online just because I didn't want to go to sleep, and I needed to talk to somebody who was already in college and didn't care to gossip about who got into where.

I think getting rejected from HYP hurt so much less, because by this point, I already know I have two perfectly good schools to go to. Each school I was accepted to culmulatively boosted my confidence -- from Irvine, Davis, San Diego, to Los Angeles -- I was beginning to regain the belief that I was actually a competitive applicant. True, I doubted myself when I didn't get Regents for UCLA and Cal. But in the end, things turned in my favor.

Duke was the turning point for me. I seriously had no expectations for Duke -- I never thought about how I would react if I was accepted or rejected. And so when I read my decision letter in the journalism room, I could not remember the last time I felt so exuberant. Compounded with my acceptance to Cal, and I was simply ecstatic. I was rejected from Johns Hopkins the following day, but the happiness from Duke and Cal swept any negative feelings away.

True, it may have worn off by today. Or perhaps reading three rejection letters in one day is somewhat of an overkill. Once I came home, the negative feelings started kicking in.

But really. I have to admit, I always considered HYP to be reach schools and never seriously expected getting into those three. There are far more superior kids than me who deserve those spots. Before today, everyone was talking about how their fates would be decided today. Personally, that's not how I see it. We shaped our fates long ago, with every decision we made leading up to this moment. Those decisions are what got us this far. I could have made different decisions, such as deciding to intern or volunteer one summer instead of doing something else. I made my fate a long time ago.

And I'm still doing it now.

How I Feel Today, Pt. II

It's been a crappy week, but on the bright side, I got into UC Berkeley and Duke today. Still waiting on three longshots and one match, though right now I'm feeling damn good about Duke.

What sucks is that I feel like slacking off and celebrating right now, when I have two tests and two quizzes tomorrow and a newspaper print date on Monday. I'd love to write more, but I really have too much work to do. So instead, I'll just put up the baby pictures of my dog Matisse. Why? Because googling for pictures of puppies made me feel nostalgic.


Bon soir!