I'm choosing to believe that a friend is being awful and flaky and generally uncaring when needed most by others because of her multiple concussions of more than a year ago and she is suffering short term memory loss and sporadic personality shifts. 

i hate crying so much but i can't help it
i  cry at the first sign of anxiety and chaos and it doesn't help my case when i'm trying to argue with someone or make a point
it's just more proof of my fucking womanly weakness fuck me

the college experience.

Most people go to college and come away with so much more of an open mind, so much more enriched with life experiences. It's the first time away from home, the first time away from parental guidance. People realize that they are fully responsible for their own actions, and further they get to seriously do whatever they want. You go out and party instead of studying for a test, and no one is there to criticize you but yourself. Your parents and your past can have influence over what you do in life, but everyone who comes to any particular institution has a unique story, and immersion in this diversity lends itself to the idea that no matter your background, you can wipe the slate clean and your life really becomes  yours. That's the beauty of the college experience. 

Maybe I'm fooling myself, but I feel like I had already grown past a lot of that, even before coming here. I've had my share of cognitive dissonance and existential crises, to the point where I just don't experience them anymore. I was as sexually liberated, so to speak, as I will ever be before I came to college. While my parents still did get to me at times and they always will, I had already largely shut them out. Their input has meant nothing to me for a long time. I already know myself and my needs fairly well, and my biggest struggle in social interactions is in understanding the internal inconsistencies of others. A particularly frustrating situation that I really did not know how to deal with involved a friend asserting and clinging to her straightness while struggling with her hard crushes on girls. I literally explained to her, "if this were a mathematical proof, by definition you cannot be both heterosexual and into girls; that would be a contradiction." It seemed so simple to me, and it still does. But of course, while she eventually came to terms with her queerness, I don't feel that I really helped her.  I feel like a jaded old person who has forgotten what it's like to be young and questioning and expanding oneself. 

It came as a surprise when I was voted "most likely to never change" in my Spanish class. I know it was only Spanish class, but I've thought about it from time to time and I'm increasingly convinced that it has some merit. I have no doubts that my crystallized intelligence will increase very much in my time here, but my personality will be pretty much the same. I'll have some moderate crises about selecting a career, another one about whether I want to be supportive of my parents (financially/socially), another about ending my career, and then that will be pretty much it. 

I'm glad I'm done having big, personal, WHO AM I, crises, but the stability is also sort of lame and disappointing, like I have nothing really to look forward to and I've plateaued as a person. Yet, knowing me, I'll probably find a way to fuck myself up sooner or later. 

-T.

eli dont care!! pooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
me no like
u nd lillian peepee


omfg when did i make this post i just found this in my drafts??? i must have been high....

I'm not crazy????

Why Women Aren't Crazy

^This article is honestly one of the most comforting things I have ever read. This is not about me as a woman, it's about my entire upbringing. Every time I would make a mistake, it was due to some whacked intrinsic attribute.
Missed a spot when washing dishes? "You are so careless you don't even care about anything outside of yourself!!" It wasn't a slip of the hand. It's part of why my perceptions of myself and my mind are so fucked, and ironically it has actually created real mental problems in me.

The last bit of the article is so so on point. Everyone is so obsessed with learning to become a bigger better person, but so much of learning is opening the mind and really unlearning.

sucker

I have a training assignment to do for this volunteer organization I just joined. I have to give a presentation on something I'm passionate about and break it down to be really simple and understandable to anyone. Today two people presented, one on cool environmentally consequential chemical research and then the other on brewing specialty coffees. It should be pretty easy for a UChicago student to share some cool quirky interest with their peers, after all, isn't that what they look for in the application process? Except I don't have any passions. I am fucking receptacle for the ideas of others. I absorb and regurgitate. In my spare time I go on fucking Tumblr or listen to podcasts. I value individuality and autonomy, but there is nothing about me that is original. The crux of my personality is openness followed by introspection. I like thinking about art and social issues and economic problems but I know no solutions. I generate nothing of my own. I am a leech. I simply do school, then get anxious about school. I like math, but a subject like that is either uninteresting or impossible to be made simple. I am out of touch with the world and there's no need for me here. I don't have anything to share. 

Everything is too much fucking effort. Friends are hard to make, and once you make them you have to sustain that relationship continuously, so what's the fucking point? They'll fall away anyway, and I don't want that kind of commitment. I am only comforted by talking to my boyfriend incessantly. I talk to the people I live around but they are mostly twats anyway. I find extreme faults with nearly everyone I encounter. What's the point in doing something fun, pursuing a hobby, when there is studying that can be done? It's funny that I'm the polar opposite of your stereotypical immediate gratification valuing teen. If something gives me a bit of joy, what's the point if I can't put it on my resume or if it doesn't show up on my transcript? 

I love learning, and I'll still learn always, but I won't be able to creatively live a life that I consider successful without money and status. I am going to be a corp whore because of this. No matter how much I wish to retaliate against the values that my parents have, show them that there's more to life, I'm going to realize that I don't think there is any more. I'm stuck and on my way to becoming an investment banker or consultant or trader or something, because I can do numbers but mostly because I simply don't know what else there is to do. And people are going to think I'm great because of it. My parents are going to tell their friends who will tell their children, and I'm going to be That Girl, the one in the Asian social circle that young people aspire to be and then despair that they won't be. Just by getting that ACT/SAT score and going to UChicago and studying math and now getting this internship, I already am far into being That Girl.

I think that the cycle has already started, me going to this fucking elite circle jerk of a college, this college with such emphasis on both academic and corporate elitism. There won't be a week that goes by when I won't hear about J.P. Morgan internship metcalf consulting J.P. Morgan Goldman Sachs Wall Street Goldman Sachs investment banking J.P. Morgan Wall Street GS finance trading. All while the community immediately around me suffers from the effects of gentrification spawned directly by this very institution. I am certain that the corporate ladder, no matter how far I climb it, doesn't end in contentment. But I don't know which path does, and if I get high enough on this one, at the very least others will believe I'm somewhere great. I can only hope that eventually I'll believe it too. 

-T. 

summer goals

• Learn SQL and SAS (preferably before summer even starts plz)
• Learn lots at my internship wow!!! Meet all the people!! Ask lots of questions!! Be proactive!!
• Encourage LE to get a job
• Be nice to my babies and teach the older one how to spell mom and dad and his name and his sister's name
• Continue on that reading list, add more to it
• Check out AP Stats book from library !!
• Learn R ?
• Run 2-3 times a week or at least as much as my ankle can take. If not then don't eat so much !! Calorie restriction (not starvation) leads to longevity, I think...
• ugh but I will be so busy 40 hours a week for 10 weeks omg
• Be fully prepared for Moneythink curriculum
• Donate/give sister clothes that I don't wear anymore
• Only buy clothes if I can wear them in a business casual environment
• Save all of the internship money. Do not spend one single penny of it. 
• Remember that your friends exist. Even if you are a sociopath. 
• 40 hrs a week for 10 weeks where can i get more time??? 

I honestly can't decide if my brain is a blessing or a curse. I might be leaning towards the latter though.

I know that happiness is supposed to come from within, and maybe I am extremely naive, but is it okay for me to think that as long as LE is in my life, I have a chance at long-term happiness?

Learning

The worst part about learning is that I can't possibly remember it all. I want to learn and read so much, but only a small portion will be retained, and that frustrates me so much. I work hard in school, but besides that I try to watch all the documentaries on Netflix and listen to all the podcasts and read all the books that a person should read before they die, and it all feels so futile. I can't even remember everything about all the wonderful books I read over the summer.

I wish I had a better brain.

-T.

unfair probably

I am going to be receiving an offer from Sears to intern over the summer. I will be working as part of customer analytics, meaning interpreting huge sets of customer data and then using mathematical modeling to predict their habits and what they will want to buy (example here). It's going to be totally fucking awesome and exactly what I have always wanted to do and it's also close to my house so this opportunity is so crazy to me.

Even more crazy was how easy it was. The parents of the kids I babysit for offered to help me find something for the summer, as the dad is an important person at Sears. I sent them my resume, and within two days had a phone interview, and then the very next day I was notified that I would be receiving an offer through HR. After months of sending my resume and writing cover letters for dozens of positions and not hearing one thing back, this was much too easy. This position is going to be perfect, more than I could ever have hoped for, while I couldn't get any of the random irrelevant clerical positions I applied for. Partially it's because I was competing with other UChicago students who are at least as qualified as I am and older. But I think that if I had applied for the Sears internship the same way everyone else did, through the website, I probably would not have gotten it either. I had a connection, and that combined with the prestige of my school gave me the foot in the door. It seems that foot in the door is the hardest part, and once I had that I think it was clear that the position was a good fit for me. Without this chance, I may have just resigned to a retail or other similar job, which also takes a lot of effort to find and would not have counted for much towards my long term goals.

I am so fortunate to have this position, but at the same time it makes me even more sure that the American ideal of "if you work hard enough you will get it" is false. We hear this all the time, and yes hard work is needed, I worked tirelessly trying to get anything at all, but in the end it was a stroke of luck and someone else's kindness that provided me an opportunity. I live in a nice neighborhood and go to a nice school so therefore I am able to babysit for people with resources. There were circumstances beyond my control that allowed me to have what I want and will ultimately help me continue to be successful in the future. For a person with a disadvantaged background, living in a very different neighborhood, hard work just isn't enough. Even if it is enough, that person would need to work ten times as hard as I did.  It's quite amusing to me when people assume that poor individuals are just lazy or stupid. The successful people stand out to us, and we often forget that along the way they were lucky and some circumstances helped them. This doesn't mean they didn't work hard, but a chance occurrence will determine whether your effort will count or not.

-T.

I don't smoke cigarettes

I know that they are bad and stupid and not cool. They cause cancer without even giving you a high. They taste shitty and leave a clinging sour smell. They are a big fat waste of money. At the same time, the smoke curling up, resting inside you and then leaving your body is so beautiful and satisfying. Even the constriction of my blood vessels and the burning in my throat that indicate the damage done mean nothing and everything. I am destroying my body from the inside. It feels powerful and ridiculous. It's ephemeral and meaningless, two things that I'll love about anything.