uh-oh, a new round of questions

So I just finished another round of deadlines (papers, Watson proposal, outlines, math thesis bibliography), all of which I managed to meet at the verrrrrry last minute. In addition to the fears I'm beginning to have about managing my life once I start the internship on top of everything else, I found another couple causes of concern.

First, there was kind of a lot of half-assing going on with work this week. Nothing new, per se, but this week, it extended to something I really care about: the Watson proposal. Some of it was the last-minute epiphany that helped me frame my topic; let me narrate:
Wednesday morning, I talked with a couple profs about the proposal and particularly about my soul-crushing fear of what I was getting myself into. Like I wasn't this scared when my gas light went on and I was stuck in gridlock on the 101 downtown and late for my interview with Legal Aid, which was a tangibly bad situation. The saving grace may well have been Yamashita's Japan-centrism: I'm looking at Korea (a Japanese colony 1910-1945) as part of my "food of postcolonialism" project. And that was the first, most important domino: the itenerary was set as a result, and it doesn't require learning ten new languages or hiring translators, and it feels good. Not like familiar or comfortable, certainly a little scary, but not on the level of a nightmare, which is what it had been before.
Wednesday night, I was talking with a friend about how I saw dim sum, the role it plays in my life and in how I see my own identity. And the personal statement clicked. Why do I care at all about postcolonialism? Well, it seems to me like there are a lot of commonalities between identity development in multiracial people and culturally contested practices like eating lunch.
Then I had to do last-minute classwork until Thursday night, when I ended up working as late as I have in recent memory on the proposal, only to wake up early this morning to keep writing. And I still ended up with a first draft that barely barely made it in under the whistle. Since writing the proposal and explaining the idea (looking at the effects of colonialism on the construction of food culture) to people, I've completely fallen in love with it. But my love is tempered with doubt: it was, after all, a first draft, rambling like anything I try to write about myself and without a doubt disorganized. The thing that hurts so much about it is that I can't imagine that love shining through the mangled and prolix paragraphs, the car wreck of a document that represents the entire basis of the judges' decision about whether it merits a follow-up interview. I know, I know, I could ace the damn interview. The project is me, I am embodied in this work. And I get to eat, too.
The Big Question this raises, though: have I really internalized this sort of last-minute, half-ass, get-a-decent-grade-because-I-know-what-I'm-doing mentality, or was this just a busy week? Can I make excuses about not sacrificing enough for what I care about? Why am I comfortable with doing work that I know isn't my best?

Second, talking with Yamashita this afternoon about my thesis raised another question. I told him a little about the dim sum experience (the most dramatic example, I suppose, of what I'm trying to say), and he asked why I didn't do a food thesis. Something language-accessible, like "Anglo American perceptions of Asian food, 1880 - 1980" would play to things I know how to do (deconstruct texts and reassemble constructive ideas) instead of stuff I'm lost about (legal records, vague concepts like 'Americanization', any sort of understanding of immigrants and their mindset). But it means, for one thing, a big backtrack: starting at square one, just like where I was five weeks ago when I got struck by the idea of legal access and built a semester out of it, dreamed up a career out of it. It makes me feel indecisive, mercurial to rearrange what was supposed to be the academic justification of what I was doing in life. That's not the worst part, though. Part of my doubt comes from knowing that part of why I liked the thesis idea was because it attempts to validate immigrant experiences, to fight oppression with my pedagogical sword and whatever. And the topic is personal, too--I saw my grandfather in the history I've been reading, separated from his wife and infant son by blatantly discriminatory legal barriers and then by a war. Dropping the topic because it's difficult (maybe even infeasibly difficult--no faculty member I've talked to has any interest whatsoever in advising me on the damn thing) feels like I'm 'selling out', giving up on learning my culture or family story. That changing away from this topic mitigates the good I thought I was doing. But I can't deny that the thesis would be better, qualitatively, would engage me more, and yes would be easier to research and write. I have a lot of thought time to go before I can reconcile this (I mean, here I go making an Asian history concentration thesis about white people) and come to terms with what really feels like the right thing to do. This is one that I really wish I could talk with Stephanie about, but she's as busy as I guess we all are this year.

Finally, something has intervened to push me to resolve the friends-of-low-quality problem. I can't do it, I can't deal with them, and I don't give a shit anymore how many times they tell me it'll all be OK if I just drop by and visit more often. Maybe part of it was alcohol as a depressant, but there's no way I can visit that space with my ex all over some guy like that. And I know I'm supposed to be bitter in the way that I "rise above" it and riposte him and her judgment/taste and smile knowingly to myself that I'm somehow the best she'll ever do (whether I believe it or not), but that's not how it's working out. That said, I'm ready to give up on everyone else in that group of people--the amount of accomodation I've gotten from any of them is less than zero, and casual company obviously isn't what I need now. I had at least three genuinely great conversations this week that really got to me; there's a level of validation and understanding that was there for them but isn't there when I'm with most of my old friends. Hard as it is to basically fall off the surface of the earth, socially, and worse to not feel missed (the consolation I always sought as a petulant child, the leverage I wished I could exert), this week has made me realize: it's necessary, but the things that have made it necessary aren't things I can look back on and fix. It is what it is.

getting it together

I have now talked to probably a half-dozen professors (most of whom I'd never met before) about my history thesis. Even when I feel like I've somehow trapped myself and that they're going to figure out I have no idea what I'm talking about, I feel like every time I sort of work through it, in particular every time I talk through it, it takes its shape better. Even when one meeting's good idea gets shot down the next time through, there's something about going over a question, a big and amorphous question, again and again and again that somehow gets everything to align right. It's like picking a lock (or so I would assume without ever having actually picked one but while knowing how they work), or maybe the motion of the question between conscious and subconscious (where it sits the other 97% of the time) is like grass shifting between a cow's stomachs to get completely digested. The thesis isn't figured out yet; in fact, it's really pretty far from it. But that doesn't mean I don't like it, that I'm not somehow deeply invested already in this thing I didn't know I would be doing a month ago and that still has a long long way to go before I can begin to begin it. There's something really powerful in this thing; it's a send-off to this institution, but also to this part of my life, and given my relative certainty around not going into academia, it's a send-off to this type of work.

Approaching this week (friday, to be specific) is the deadline for another pivotal piece of writing: a proposal for a Watson Fellowship. That's the one where they give you $25000 for a year abroad, and you're basically not allowed to return to the US while you travel and learn. I have an idea for it, an idea I can get excited about at times, but it also scares me a lot. As in I'm not sure if I could do it even if they gave me the money. I know that a little fear is healthy, but this is kind of ridiculous, especially since this particular grant is widely seen as a great way to put off a job/grad school for a year while enjoying yourself. Some of it, I think, has to do with not having thought everything through, talked everything through enough. That I somehow feel certain that as soon as you stick me in front of a committee to interview about it, I'll break down, admit I have no idea what I'm doing, etc. Part of it, though, is that this is the first deadline I've encountered for stuff that affects life after college. While I'd like to think I'm ok with the next year or two (no pressure, right? a break from school and stuff, at least), at least some of that confidence rings hollow.

The funny thing is, this reminds me of a conversation I had just last week with an underclassman about how surprisingly easy it's been to get really cool stuff done. I cited that summer in DC with Carter and Dinkel, studying abroad, incl. the trips to Stockholm and Moscow, and going with Steph to the NCAA men's basketball tournament freshman year as examples of how things just sort of come out OK. Like I came into college scared to do most of the really cool things I have done, that it's all doable, learnable, in the next couple years. I said, specifically, that it's OK to feel like your friends are more together, better planned, and going more places than you, because it all works out in the end and deep down everyone feels that way about a lot of things, so really nobody's that much further along than anyone else. But when I try to apply that same advice looking forward instead of backward, the future looms just as scary as it ever has been. I may have 'solved' college (i.e. become more active in organizations I care about, spending less time on classes without suffring for it, making good money with work study, found people whose company I really enjoy), but it's like I can't see how it applies to the next part of life.

Maybe I just need to talk it through with someone else. After all, analagously, I think I came to terms with myself, identity-wise, very recently, and that took a lot of talking about stuff. My conscious and subconscious may just have a communication problem, but I think I can something away from this: it's OK to be wrong about a lot of things today as long as you think it over again by tomorrow.

metamorphosis?

As has been the case throughout this blog's duration, all the most important or interesting things to happen to me happen all at once and I skip out on writing about them. In the past, these have generally been excursions (my memory is somewhat poor, but I seem to recall Balaton last fall and DC this summer being major omissions); this time, I've left the vicinity of campus not more than once. In other words, whereas 'changes' or 'adventure' even only really applied to my life in an external sense, something that I do, this last month has been really momentous internally. And by that I don't mean like I now have some disease of the kidney or anything--I feel like I'd been doing a lot of growing up in outlook and ideas in the last year, but this last month has been the time when my actions, my life, has caught up in a kind of growth spurt of its own. I kept wanting to write little individual bits as they happened, but it always felt (still feels) like there's too much to try and cover at once. I'll try to get through the major parts piece by piece, follow up on whatever I dropped, and generally reinvest myself in this sort of big internet experiment, which I like to think of as a way to stay connected in some way to friends you don't get a chance to really talk with as often as you might like.

To begin: finished the AAMP training in the last week of august exhausted but fulfilled in way that has been lacking in my life before. There's a huge gap between knowing something to be true and doing something about it, especially when you're in "the academy" and there was something about the way things went during training that made me want to make the jump across it. The part that got to me the most was talking about how directly immigration impacted the lives of everyone at training; it made me really think about how lucky my family is. My grandfather was reunited with his family (who had been in China) only in 1947, and now my grandparents are looking at ten grandchildren, all of whom will have gone to college (assuming my sister follows through on applying this year *cough*), six of whom are currently happily married with kids of their own, etc etc. Comparing that sort of classic immigration story with the stories of those around me made me realize just how privileged and lucky I am. And as a result, I want to do my part to help others succeed in this country. I'm interviewing monday morning for an internship at the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, doing community outreach/awareness work, possibly with immigrant or particularly API communities.

After a year and a half of waffling (I think since I declared), I'm committed to writing a history thesis; it's going to be about how API immigrants used the American legal system 1880-1940 or so, both as a means of fighting for universal rights and as a direct challenge to legislation aimed at excluding them from mainstream society. I think there's a great opportunity to use ideas from politics or Chicano studies about assimilation and what it means to be an American in a context that has personal meaning. At the same time, I will have a chance to look into how access to and denial of the American legal system plays into educational or economic outcomes, the same structural problem addressed by Legal Aid. It's amazing how galvanizing that August has been.

I'm also planning to apply for fellowships, and those are scary. Law school is now an almost-certain destination, but that won't happen for another couple years.

I've engaged in some radical realignment of my social circle since school started. After the last couple years of anxiety and doubt about how I was getting along with people, I feel like I can accept that not everyone is going to be a friend, and that that doesn't say anything about whether they're good people or not. I feel like I've been compulsive probably since middle school in seeking approval (in the form of friendship) from people I think of as good. As it has turned out, those friendships can end up being one-way--people may tolerate or even enjoy your company, but your absence is not meaningful to them. It is the act of missing someone that distinguishes how much you care, and it is acting on it that affirms your end of the friendship. Rather than being anxious and calling and trying to stay "in the loop" and basically stressing out over the meaning of not being affirmed (i.e. not being missed), I've realized I can let it go. You don't have to blow up at people about it, though I did a couple weeks ago--recognizing the limitations of a relationship doesn't mean you have to sever ties with people--but it's so important to make your own peace with it. I'm trying to replace acquaintanceship with spending meaningful time with people who affirm me, and I'm consciously working to affirm them in the same way. I sleep easier this way.

In the same vein, I think I'm finally recognizing what killed my past couple serious relationships, or at least its primary symptom: a lack of compromise. I know a lot of it has to do with being young and stubborn, but mutually acceptable conflict resolution has been absent, utterly absent. Somehow, I've failed completely to recognize the disconnect between loving someone and being conciliatory in disagreements; in fact, I feel like closeness brought out the worst of my competitiveness and exacerbated arguments. Here's where the gulf between knowing something intellectually and living by that knowledge is a bitch. I know I'm not going to get better about this overnight, in the same way that I know tomorrow will not be the first day I'm able to concentrate completely on my obligations. But knowing is a start.