Reflections: Sophomore Fall Quarter
I’m writing this from Shanghai, China, eight days into my quarantine. (In case you’re curious, I’m here for research and subsidized birth control—I’ll be staying for three months in Shenzhen and three more in Beijing. The details are still a bit hazy, since I need to see how my grants and visa applications go. Hopefully, if I can study abroad at Oxford during the summer, I won’t need to return to the U.S. until September.)
That being said, my second fall quarter is over! You can read about the classes I took here, but they were all geared towards my major and minors. Having finished three months of mental bootcamp extraordinaire, and having lost all coherence in the process, I opted for a bunch of separate outtakes in lieu of the usual essay. So…
Things I’m really proud of:
completely relearning my love for learning (and getting my ass kicked by professors who 100% saw through my academic bs’ing). I learned so, so much this quarter: about U.S. foreign policy, about modern Chinese history, about U.S.-China relations. Having stumbled through my academics in freshman year, I knew exactly what I was committing myself to when I chose my 20 units. For the first time since high school, I actually edited my papers (I know, I know) and attended office hours. I made it a point to do my makeup and dress nicely before classes—more to delineate my working hours from my downtime than for anything else, although there were cute people on Zoom, too—and I changed up my organizational system. Before this year, my academic writing was pretty subpar compared to my creative writing, and I sought out my professors’ and TAs’ help to change that. And to my great surprise, I learned to love and take pride in my academic writing, too. Maybe I should put some of my research projects on here? I don’t know, that might be taking things a little too far.
finishing my RAship for the quarter! I studied the role of A.I. in the U.S.-Russia-China great power competition with Dr. Colin Kahl and Dr. Harold Trinkunas. This was my first job in academia, and it was both comforting and mind-boggling. The tasks were familiar; the field was not. And I wasn’t researching in a vacuum: A.I. is still a very new field, and a lot of the people in our working group are working on the frontlines of national security, cyberwarfare, and cross-domain deterrence. I’ll be continuing my RAship through winter quarter.
coming to terms with personal happiness, learning not to glorify suffering for the sake of external validation, learning to be vulnerable (and, in the same line as that, learning not to confuse external validation for genuine love—and breaking down the assumption that I need to be extraordinary to be loved). It took me a very, very long time to learn that I was inherently worthy of love and respect, and that I could exist outside my accomplishments and labels. I spent such a long time positioning myself as the take-no-shit and can-do-it-all friend, the one who gave everything without losing anything, to the extent that I would feel somewhat indignant when others gave me advice (even when I’d asked for it). Quarantine, and its slew of canceled resume-building opportunities, removed all the structures I’d used for external validation. I was no longer able to compensate for my personal life, relationships, and insecurities with my professional life, and I was forced to confront eighteen years’ worth of toxicity and unhealthy coping mechanisms. I had no choice but to open up to my friends, and I realized what I wish I’d known years ago: that being vulnerable, rather than pushing my friends away, actually brought them closer to me.
rebuilding my nail polish collection (formerly a glorious empire of 40 different colors, all of which are stranded in California). This doesn’t need much elaboration. My nail color of 2020 is rose gold (2019’s, in case you were curious, was white. 2018’s was red.)
dancing way more and coming to terms with my body. At the beginning of quarantine, I was so out of shape that I could barely finish a barre. March/April was an emotionally exhausting time, and I just couldn’t afford the headspace required for self-scrutinization. I spent the summer doing Chloe Ting workouts, which were so much more straightforward, until August rolled around and I told myself to suck it up. It took several more months to feel comfortable in a leotard and tights again (granted, I still refuse to wear pink tights unless I have sweatpants, too—some lines cannot be crossed), but the progress I made in those months were extremely heartening. Although I’ve been in and out of shape for some years now, this was the first time I’d built myself back up to a full class (and 32 fouettes!) without anyone else holding me accountable. This was the first time I’d gotten back in shape without berating myself for being out of shape. And, having never had a healthy and encouraging dance community before, I was somewhat bewildered but very thankful for CBC’s presence throughout the summer and fall. Two years ago, during a modern dance workshop, I heard a choreographer bemoan the changing nature of dance: dance, historically, was a celebration of our bodies and communities; today, however, it can so easily become a conduit for cutthroat individualism and self-hatred. Quarantine essentially taught me to love dance as an art form, rather than as a means to garner approval or validation, and I think I’m very lucky to be dancing at all. Keep your eyes peeled for CBC’s virtual Nutcracker!
learning how to delegate and lead. It’s Real grew beautifully this quarter (shoutout to the website and social media teams, who have been managing everything flawlessly—our sixteenth issue is coming out in a few days), and FACES has been great.
taking a much-needed break from writing. I realized this year that I can fall out of shape with writing just as easily as I can with ballet: even if I spend two or three days away from a draft, it’s hard for me to string together thoughts and words. That being said, I’m glad I didn’t write this quarter. I (think I) changed and learned so much during quarantine that I kind of outgrew my old novel, and I’ve gained enough distance from it that I’ve begun wondering whether I want to keep writing it or start a new project that reflects how I’ve changed. Although I’ll definitely go back and reread the draft, since I am proud of those 123,000 words (and it’s garnered the interest of a lot of agents), I’m no longer that afraid of letting it go and starting over.
learning how to set healthy boundaries. Quarantine brought me back to Seattle before I was fully ready to deal with some of the stuff that had gone down there, and I struggled to redefine my relationship to my home. I’m very heavily influenced by physical location, and I therefore visited a good half-dozen places in my hometown to find closure. I walked through the empty site that’d been my middle school, sat down on the concrete and pulled my knees to my chest before my childhood home (the cul de sac was so much smaller than I’d remembered), and gave my old ballet studios a good hard stare as I drove past. I opened up to my dad about my trauma, and we had a pretty honest discussion about our relationship. It was also nice to set boundaries over social media, since I could easily delete Instagram or ignore a text. I don’t know how this will translate back to an in-person experience, since I won’t have nearly as much control over the people I’m around, but I’m not too worried about things right now.
adding onto physical location: redecorating my room! I hadn’t decorated my room since elementary school, and it was an unexpectedly rewarding experience to pin up a bunch of posters, pictures, and fairy lights. I think I traumatized my thumbs, though, since I used my bare hands to push about two-hundred tacks through my wall.
some other random things: perfecting the over-easy egg, making my own condensed milk (I realized that I didn’t have any for a pumpkin pie, and spent an hour stirring together milk and honey out of spite), scrounging up history’s cheapest Azula costume for Halloween (a ballet skirt, a purse strap, and a t-shirt with the arms tucked in), figuring out a new eyeshadow look, giving my skincare routine a much-needed vibe check and revamp, making it a point to send birthday gifts to all my friends, catching up on all the animated shows I should’ve watched years ago, reading one book a day for the first eighteen days of July (each of which were 100+ pages—my eyes went to hell for that), actually reading books and watching videos about the craft of writing (rather than hoping to learn through osmosis), and expanding my piano repertoire.
Things I’m looking forward to:
trying out my Chinese! I was surprised to realize that I can read about 60-80% of the characters on takeout orders and instruction manuals, so all those Chinese essays and quizzes have paid off. I’ve never spent more than two months in China before, so the immersion will be great for my speaking and reading comprehension.
reconnecting with family! And especially with my mom’s side: now that I’ve learned more Chinese, I should be able to grasp Cantonese…right? (I know I’ll revisit this post in three months and realize how sorely wrong I was.)
dancing in a real studio for the first time in nine months! And doing big jumps and traveling turns, which I’ve sorely missed.
living in Houhai, a newly-renovated part of Shenzhen. My family usually stays in Futian, the business sector, so it’ll be exciting to spend some time outside that bubble. Houhai is huge on renewable energy and sustainability; I’ve heard that their policies rival those of Shanghai. Also, I haven’t visited Beijing in almost a decade, and the Stanford Center at Peking University is stunning.
eating out. Everything I’ve earned during my RAship will go towards restaurant food—I’m not even joking.
That’s about it! Granted, I was going through a lot by the end of the quarter, and I was beyond stressed by the move to China and finals. But quarantining alone has been good for me. I do wish that I had more colorful things to write about: the sunset over MemChu, or the flight from San Jose to Seattle, or my bike rides into Palo Alto. But my writing style has changed pretty considerably. I used to treat imagery and metaphor as crutches for honesty, refusing to realize that I was actually sacrificing genuineness for some pretty words. So I guess…I’m not that scared of honesty anymore?
I find myself comparing this post to the one I’d written exactly one year prior: my reflections on freshman fall quarter. What struck me most was how I’d been struggling with the exact same issues—the need for systems of external validation, my need to define myself by my accomplishments—that I’m still handling today. It was hard to track personal growth this year, given how the months of April-September were practically identical, but I think that despite everything (or maybe because of it) I’ve still grown.
I’d spent so much of 2020 wallowing in cynicism, with the bitter COVID-informed epiphany that nothing I did or accomplished would ever matter, before realizing the freedom allowed in such a mindset. I don’t owe accomplishments to anyone, least of all to myself and my sense of worth, and it has been so much easier to breathe with that in mind.
I think it’s another sign of growth that I don’t feel the need to run away. I’ve always been someone who fled instead of fought: I left high school for college when I could no longer stand Seattle, left campus for Palo Alto when I could no longer stand Stanford, left Palo Alto for San Francisco when I could no longer stand Silicon Valley. It goes without saying that I do this to people, too—confrontation is always a last resort. Quarantine forced me to stop running, to stop seeking perfection elsewhere and to reevaluate my relationship with myself. This time, although I’ll be spending three-quarters of a year abroad, I don’t feel like I’m running away. It’s hard to put that feeling into words, but it is a good feeling, and I’ve learned to trust it.
With that said, I’m feeling pretty good and I should probably take a break from the screen. Good night! (Or good morning? Afternoon? Time zones are confusing.)