I've been thinking a lot lately about the written word as an art form -- and so it was only fitting that I came across this passage today while reading "Linchpin":
Art isn't only a painting. Art is anything that's creative, passionate, and personal. And great art resonates with the viewer, not only with the creator.
What makes someone an artist? I don't think it has anything to do with a paintbrush. There are painters who follow the numbers, or paint billboards, or work in a small village in China, painting reproductions. These folks, while swell people, aren't artists. On the other hand, Charlie Chaplin was an artist, beyond a doubt. So is Jonathan Ive, who designed the iPod. You can be an artist who works with oil paints of marble, sure. But there are artists who work with numbers, business models, and customer conversations. Art is about intent and communication, not substances.
An artist is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo. And an artist takes it personally.
...
Art is not related to craft, except to the extent that the craft helps deliver the change. Technical skill might be a helpful component in making art, but it's certainly not required. Art doesn't have to be decorative; it can be useful as long as the use causes change.
...
By definition, art is human. A machine can't create art, because the intent matters. It's much more likely to be art if you do it on purpose.
A cook is not an artist. A cook follows a recipe, and he's a good cook if he follows the recipe correctly. A chef is an artist. She's an artist when she invents a new way of cooking or a new type of dish that creates surprise or joy or pleasure for the person she created it for.
Showing posts with label quotes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label quotes. Show all posts
03 August 2010
29 June 2010
Finding balance
A little excerpt that struck me in the last reread of "Flow":
More and more, we seem to bury our heads in the sand to avoid hearing bad news, withdrawing into gated communities protected by armed response. But a good personal life is impossible while staying aloof of a corrupt society, as Socrates knew and those who have lived under recent dictatorships have found out. It would be so much easier if we were responsible only for ourselves. Unfortunately, things don't work that way. An active responsibility for the rest of humankind, and for the world of which we are a part, is a necessary ingredient of a good life.
The real challenge, however, is to reduce entropy in one's surroundings without increasing it in one's consciousness. The Buddhists have a good piece of advice as to how this can be done: "Act always as if the future of the Universe depended on what you did, while laughing at yourself for thinking that whatever you do makes any difference." It is this serious playfulness, this combination of concern and humility, that makes it possible to be both engaged and carefree at the same time. With this attitude one does not need to win to feel content; helping to maintain order in the universe becomes its own reward, regardless of consequences. Then it is possible to find joy even when fighting a losing battle in a good cause.
More and more, we seem to bury our heads in the sand to avoid hearing bad news, withdrawing into gated communities protected by armed response. But a good personal life is impossible while staying aloof of a corrupt society, as Socrates knew and those who have lived under recent dictatorships have found out. It would be so much easier if we were responsible only for ourselves. Unfortunately, things don't work that way. An active responsibility for the rest of humankind, and for the world of which we are a part, is a necessary ingredient of a good life.
The real challenge, however, is to reduce entropy in one's surroundings without increasing it in one's consciousness. The Buddhists have a good piece of advice as to how this can be done: "Act always as if the future of the Universe depended on what you did, while laughing at yourself for thinking that whatever you do makes any difference." It is this serious playfulness, this combination of concern and humility, that makes it possible to be both engaged and carefree at the same time. With this attitude one does not need to win to feel content; helping to maintain order in the universe becomes its own reward, regardless of consequences. Then it is possible to find joy even when fighting a losing battle in a good cause.
25 April 2010
Finding Flow
"To overcome the anxieties and depressions of contemporary life, individuals must become independent of the social envinronment to the degree that they no longer respond exclusively in terms of its rewards and punishments. To achieve such autonomy, a person has to learn to provide rewards to herself. She has to develop the ability to find enjoyment and purpose regardless of external circumstances. This challenge is both easier and more difficult than it sounds: easier because the ability to do so is entirely within each person's hands; difficult because it requires a discipline and perseverance that are relatively rare in any era, and perhaps especially in the present. And before all else, achieving control over experience requires a drastic change in attitude about what is important and what is not."
- "Flow," by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyl
- "Flow," by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyl
04 April 2010
True words.
“I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.” —Bill Cosby
06 February 2010
Excerpted: An 18-Year-Old Looks Back On Life
From Joyce Maynard's 1972 piece for the New York Times magazine:
"When my friends and I were little, we had big plans. I would be a famous actress and singer, dancing on the side. I would paint my own sets and compose my own music, writing the script and the lyrics and reviewing the performance for The New York Times. I would marry and have three children (they don't allow us dreams like that any more) and we would live, rich and famous (donating lots to charity, of course, and periodically adopting orphans), in a house we designed ourselves. When I was older I had visions of good works. I saw myself in South American rain forests and African deserts, feeding the hungry and healing the sick, with an obsessive selflessness, I see now, as selfish, in the end, as my original plans for stardom.
Now my goal is simpler. I want to be happy. And I want comfort -- nice clothes, a nice house, good music and good food, and hte feeling that I'm doing some little thing that matters. I'll vote and I'll give to charity, but I won't give myself. I feel a sudden desire to buy land -- not a lot, not as a business investment, but just a small plot of earth so that whatever they do to the country I'll have a place where I can go -- a kind of fallout shelter, I guess. As some people prepare for their old age, so I prepare for my 20's. A little house, a comfortable chair, peace and quiet -- retirement sounds tempting."
Time for some reflection and reassessing, no?
"When my friends and I were little, we had big plans. I would be a famous actress and singer, dancing on the side. I would paint my own sets and compose my own music, writing the script and the lyrics and reviewing the performance for The New York Times. I would marry and have three children (they don't allow us dreams like that any more) and we would live, rich and famous (donating lots to charity, of course, and periodically adopting orphans), in a house we designed ourselves. When I was older I had visions of good works. I saw myself in South American rain forests and African deserts, feeding the hungry and healing the sick, with an obsessive selflessness, I see now, as selfish, in the end, as my original plans for stardom.
Now my goal is simpler. I want to be happy. And I want comfort -- nice clothes, a nice house, good music and good food, and hte feeling that I'm doing some little thing that matters. I'll vote and I'll give to charity, but I won't give myself. I feel a sudden desire to buy land -- not a lot, not as a business investment, but just a small plot of earth so that whatever they do to the country I'll have a place where I can go -- a kind of fallout shelter, I guess. As some people prepare for their old age, so I prepare for my 20's. A little house, a comfortable chair, peace and quiet -- retirement sounds tempting."
Time for some reflection and reassessing, no?
13 January 2010
Why she writes
So. I don't even remember how or why I came across this, but I somehow ended up enraptured by this Joan Didion piece titled "Why I Write" while at work today. I've read bits of it before, but never the piece in its entirety.
I've been thinking a lot lately about WHY I want to pursue journalism (especially in this financial, and let's face it, social, climate), because my answer used to be pretty basic. Because I love to meet new people, and I love to write. I feel more comfortable expressing myself through writing than speaking. I'm not a math whiz, and my desire to have a standard 9-5 is negligible at best.
But those aren't good enough reasons, really. I'm still trying to figure out a more solid answer, but until then, these are the bits that really gave me pause:
"During the years when I was an undergraduate at Berkeley I tried, with a kind of hopeless late-adolescent energy, to buy some temporary visa into the world of ideas, to forge for myself a mind that could deal with the abstract. In short I tried to think. I failed. My attention veered inexorably back to the specific, to the tangible, to what was generally considered, by everyone I knew then and for that matter have known since, the peripheral."
"I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want to what I fear."
"Grammar is a piano I play by ear, since I seem to have been out of school the year the rules were mentioned. All i know of grammar is its infinite power. To shift the structure of a sentence alters the meaning of that sentence, as definitely and inflexibly as the position of a camera alters the meaning ofthe object being photographed. Many people know about camera angles now, but not so many know about sentences. The arrangement of words matters, and the arrangement you want can be found in the picture in your mind. The picture dictates the arrangement. The picture dictates whether this will be a sentence with or without clauses, a sentence that ends hard or a dying-fall sentence, long or short, active or passive. The picture tells you how to arrange words and the arrangement of the words tells you, or tells me, what's going on in the picture Nota bene:
It tells you.
You don't tell it."
"Who was this narrator? Why was this narrator telling me this story? Let me tell you one thing about why writers write: had I known the answer to any of these questions I would never have needed to write a novel."
I've been thinking a lot lately about WHY I want to pursue journalism (especially in this financial, and let's face it, social, climate), because my answer used to be pretty basic. Because I love to meet new people, and I love to write. I feel more comfortable expressing myself through writing than speaking. I'm not a math whiz, and my desire to have a standard 9-5 is negligible at best.
But those aren't good enough reasons, really. I'm still trying to figure out a more solid answer, but until then, these are the bits that really gave me pause:
"During the years when I was an undergraduate at Berkeley I tried, with a kind of hopeless late-adolescent energy, to buy some temporary visa into the world of ideas, to forge for myself a mind that could deal with the abstract. In short I tried to think. I failed. My attention veered inexorably back to the specific, to the tangible, to what was generally considered, by everyone I knew then and for that matter have known since, the peripheral."
"I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want to what I fear."
"Grammar is a piano I play by ear, since I seem to have been out of school the year the rules were mentioned. All i know of grammar is its infinite power. To shift the structure of a sentence alters the meaning of that sentence, as definitely and inflexibly as the position of a camera alters the meaning ofthe object being photographed. Many people know about camera angles now, but not so many know about sentences. The arrangement of words matters, and the arrangement you want can be found in the picture in your mind. The picture dictates the arrangement. The picture dictates whether this will be a sentence with or without clauses, a sentence that ends hard or a dying-fall sentence, long or short, active or passive. The picture tells you how to arrange words and the arrangement of the words tells you, or tells me, what's going on in the picture Nota bene:
It tells you.
You don't tell it."
"Who was this narrator? Why was this narrator telling me this story? Let me tell you one thing about why writers write: had I known the answer to any of these questions I would never have needed to write a novel."
06 September 2009
Thought of the day.
Getting what you want isn't the hard part.
Knowing what you want is.
...maybe I've been watching too much Everwood, ya know what I mean?
Knowing what you want is.
...maybe I've been watching too much Everwood, ya know what I mean?
16 August 2009
Getting on the bandwagon
So the mother learned how to text today. And this is what I get:
this is my first texting. i got 100 free texts in two months. most of my friends using calls instead of texting. that why jean pang asked me whom am i going to text. nice questiuon. ha! Ha! D'Hour is at our house now. He likes Seattle very much. this is a long text. I am waiting him to leav so we can out to dinner.
My favorite part is when she decides to note that this is a long text by typing "this is a long text," thereby elongating the text.
Second favorite part: she's texting as she's waiting for my brother's friend to leave so the fam can go out to dinner. Isn't that what angsty teens do when they're waiting for parents' friends to leave?
...ha.
this is my first texting. i got 100 free texts in two months. most of my friends using calls instead of texting. that why jean pang asked me whom am i going to text. nice questiuon. ha! Ha! D'Hour is at our house now. He likes Seattle very much. this is a long text. I am waiting him to leav so we can out to dinner.
My favorite part is when she decides to note that this is a long text by typing "this is a long text," thereby elongating the text.
Second favorite part: she's texting as she's waiting for my brother's friend to leave so the fam can go out to dinner. Isn't that what angsty teens do when they're waiting for parents' friends to leave?
...ha.
05 July 2009
Best nuggets of advice
...and yes, I just said "nuggets." So I'm reading this book:
and I'm finding lots of bits of inspiration in it, many quotable things, so I thought I would share:
"A number of people said they were simply in the right place at the right time. Many of our respondents, Don Hewitt among them, used the word lucky when describing the arc of their lives or careers. While they may have indeed been fortunate in different ways, we should take this as a sign that they're thankful for their success - that they understand the value of humility. Most people understand that chance favors the prepared. Hard work, risk taking, refusing to quite, and the will to get to the next waypoint no matter how formidable the obstacles appeared helped to define these people." ...as stated in the introduction.
"Stop working for a living and start designing a life." ...as stated by Tony Robbins.
"The important thing to know is that one thing that was really beneficial to me was my naivete ... Those who need certainty don't do anything, because nothing is ever certain." ...as stated by Survivor creator Mark Burnett.
"The key to achieving success in business is passion. Don't approach the business with a formula or just expecting to make a quick buck. You must have a desire. A vision. And then go at it hammer and tongs." ...as stated by Steve Forbes.
...and I'm just four chapters in.
and I'm finding lots of bits of inspiration in it, many quotable things, so I thought I would share:
"A number of people said they were simply in the right place at the right time. Many of our respondents, Don Hewitt among them, used the word lucky when describing the arc of their lives or careers. While they may have indeed been fortunate in different ways, we should take this as a sign that they're thankful for their success - that they understand the value of humility. Most people understand that chance favors the prepared. Hard work, risk taking, refusing to quite, and the will to get to the next waypoint no matter how formidable the obstacles appeared helped to define these people." ...as stated in the introduction.
"Stop working for a living and start designing a life." ...as stated by Tony Robbins.
"The important thing to know is that one thing that was really beneficial to me was my naivete ... Those who need certainty don't do anything, because nothing is ever certain." ...as stated by Survivor creator Mark Burnett.
"The key to achieving success in business is passion. Don't approach the business with a formula or just expecting to make a quick buck. You must have a desire. A vision. And then go at it hammer and tongs." ...as stated by Steve Forbes.
...and I'm just four chapters in.
20 June 2009
Seen and heard.
Seen on the subway on my 2 hour journey to Rockaway Beach yesterday:
“To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.”
Also seen yesterday on my way back:
16 June 2009
Heard on the train
A couple steps onto the train moments before the doors close shut behind them. The woman is pregnant, and the man is carrying about five large shopping bags. It's crowded, rush hour. Someone quickly gets up from his seat and shuffles to the side to let the pregnant woman sit down.
"Oh, I'm fine," she said, smiling. "He might need to sit down more than me."
She nods toward her husband's bags.
"We went shoe shopping today, I've been sitting plenty."
"Oh, I'm fine," she said, smiling. "He might need to sit down more than me."
She nods toward her husband's bags.
"We went shoe shopping today, I've been sitting plenty."
14 June 2009
I like family, family is good.
In an email from the mother:
Dear Brian and Joyce,
How is your day in New York? I went to dad's residents' graduation today. Guess what? Dad won the Golden Blade Award again.(This is the award voted by the residents every year, the highest honor a staff physician can win in the department) Last time he won the award was 2006. He is the staff who won the most. I'm so proud for him. He doesn't socialize a lot with people but he has PASSION for teaching his residents and works very hard, also very responsible. I believe he sets a great example for you. Don't forget to congratulate him. Ha! Ha!
Love,
mom
Dear Brian and Joyce,
How is your day in New York? I went to dad's residents' graduation today. Guess what? Dad won the Golden Blade Award again.(This is the award voted by the residents every year, the highest honor a staff physician can win in the department) Last time he won the award was 2006. He is the staff who won the most. I'm so proud for him. He doesn't socialize a lot with people but he has PASSION for teaching his residents and works very hard, also very responsible. I believe he sets a great example for you. Don't forget to congratulate him. Ha! Ha!
Love,
mom
31 May 2009
Seen and heard.
Had dinner with a friend tonight, and it was an interesting conversation, both of us trying to describe our experiences with the city thus far.
Me: I know this sounds really weird, but I don't feel like New York City is actually much of a ... physical place. It's more of a state of mind or something.
Him: DUDe. I know what you mean. It's more like ... temporary. Everything feels really transient - the people, the events, everything. It's like a city on speed.
Me: Doesn't seem like anyone's ever here for very long, except for the people who've already become a part of the city - the cops, the street sweepers, the beggars. It's one or two years and then PEACE out, NYC.
Him: But at the same time ... I can totally imagine the city standing here on its own even without the people. It's got a life of its own and sometimes I feel like it would breathe better if all the people weren't suffocating it so much.
Me: I know this sounds really weird, but I don't feel like New York City is actually much of a ... physical place. It's more of a state of mind or something.
Him: DUDe. I know what you mean. It's more like ... temporary. Everything feels really transient - the people, the events, everything. It's like a city on speed.
Me: Doesn't seem like anyone's ever here for very long, except for the people who've already become a part of the city - the cops, the street sweepers, the beggars. It's one or two years and then PEACE out, NYC.
Him: But at the same time ... I can totally imagine the city standing here on its own even without the people. It's got a life of its own and sometimes I feel like it would breathe better if all the people weren't suffocating it so much.
21 May 2009
16 May 2009
APA gradumacation speech
After four years of college, everything's finally done. Over. Ending. It's a bittersweet emotion we all have rising to the tops of our throats now, knowing this. We've each absorbed different lessons from our classes, our family and friends, our mentors. Our experiences and our mistakes. For me, from these past four years, the most valuable lesson I've learned is this: I know absolutely nothing about everything.
College has taught me that I know nothing about life, love, or all the things that fall in between. I thought that at the end of receiving a world-class education, I would know without a doubt what friendship, love and life really are. Turns out, though, I really don't. I don't even know what this ambiguous thing we call the future is.
It has been a whirlwind of late nights, long weeks and lazy days, and now, four years later, I don't know that I'm anywhere closer to being a full-fledged "grown-up" than I was four years ago when I first set foot on USC's campus.
These are terrifying realizations to come upon at the end of a four-year journey, I know, but there's an explanation for all this nothingness that I now know so well. Really. I hope (and secretly know) that I'm not the only one who is doubtful about how the knowledge and skills I've acquired at USC will play out in the "real world." Four years, umpteen all-nighters, countless papers, a few strands of sanity and several tens of thousands - scratch that, hundreds of thousands - of dollars later, how much will my ability to properly write a lede or a lab report translate into success in my career?
A whole lot, the way I see it - though not necessarily how you might think.
******
The truth of the matter is, is that college teaches you to embrace your ignorance, and more than that, to use it to your advantage. I'm a sucker for quotes - the cheesier the better - and the one that I have tacked on my wall across from my desk is the one that's stuck with me all these years.
“If you wait to do everything until you're sure it's right, you'll probably never do much of anything.”
Let me say this again, as the Win Borden quote does, in my opinion, bear repeating.
"If you wait to do everything until you're sure it's right, you'll probably never do much of anything."
In other words, acknowledging that you know nothing is the start of a beautiful journey to discovering everything. You have to break down a little bit to build yourself back up. You have to jump into things uncertain, or you'll never really jump at all.
******
Let's go back four years. Imagine: it's the beginning of freshman year, and we were adjusting to a lot of new experiences. We were meeting people from all corners of the country and from a wide range of different backgrounds. You shake a lot of people's hands those first few weeks. Name? Major? City? It felt like a never-ending parade of "hi's" and "how are you's." In those first few weeks, you feel like you know a lot, that you're very sure about where you came from and what you want to experience in college.
You define yourself by your major (or lack thereof), because somehow in the gap between high school and college, you were told that you had to be a certain way and a certain type of person in order to succeed. You have to be sure of things before getting started. I know for a fact that for my first few papers for Writing 140, I would research everything, map out my outline and write draft after draft, convinced that what I knew worked in high school would translate into college.
Wrong.
My first paper back was drowned in a sea of red marks, scratches, and that ominous grade at the top of the paper. Didn't I do everything right? Hadn't I gone by-the-books, followed the step-by-step formula of Writing 140 paper success? I had just finished stacks upon stacks of college application essays. I knew myself. I knew how to plug in the parts of an equation to get the answer I was looking for. I knew.
And here I thought I knew how to write! I thought I was going into journalism. I thought I knew. I thought, I thought, I thought.
You learn, jumping from high school to college, that a lot of the things you thought you knew - don't apply. College isn't a new chapter of your life - it's a whole other book. And more than that, a lot of the things I discovered I didn't know, I didn't know I didn't know prior to USC anyway.
Confusing? Case in point:
******
That first semester, I was still under the impression that I was going to be expanding upon my activities from high school. I'm from Cerritos, California, which has a whole lot of Asian Americans, so when I heard about APASS, I thought, "Here's a good way for me to start college with some semblance of familiarity. These are my people." And I didn't think there would be very much the department or the programs or the organizations could teach me that I didn't know already.
This couldn't have been further from the truth. The only thing that I had been right in guessing was that being around Asian Americans would be a form of familiarity. After being involved with Connections!, through which I found two lifelong mentors; PEER Mentoring, through which I was able to act as a mentor; APA Student Welcome, where I was able to engage new students with the USC campus; and Bamboo Offshoot, my pet project of sorts, bringing APA issues to light through writing and reporting - after being involved with so many programs under APASS, I discovered that I really didn't know there was so much I didn't know before.
But just because I didn't know everything didn't mean that I couldn't take action and start to do something.
"If you wait to do everything until you're sure it's right, you'll probably never do much of anything."
Having APASS as a home base has meant that I gained the foundation and the confidence I needed to venture out and put words into action.
Serving on the APASA board showed me that communication was key to getting programs, events and progress on the roll. It wasn't enough to learn about how the APA community is notoriously silent on campus. I wanted to strengthen my writing skills, my voice, to bolster it.
Speaking with younger students as a PEER mentor made me reflect on my own struggles to balance home life just 20 minutes away and college life here. It wasn't enough to learn about the difficulties of being Asian American and balancing Asian conservatism with American values of individuality. I wanted to help the next incoming classes know more about it.
More than that, I was learning about my own collegiate career as a journalism major. This showed me that it definitely wasn't enough to learn about glass - er, bamboo - ceilings and being a model minority. I wanted to turn that frustration into motivation to do unconventional things, to push boundaries and to succeed in uncommon fields.
So even though I wasn't entirely sure that it was the right step to take - especially after that first paper left me questioning - I knew that the best way I could service my community and myself would be through writing. And these last four years have allowed me to do so.
******
As I look out over the graduating seniors tonight, I'm sure you all know what I'm talking about when I say, too, that we've all spent a lot of long hours in activities and organizations and practices and meetings for things outside the classroom, for things we didn't know would pay off in the end. There is no guarantee that any of the steps we've taken during our four years will lead us to where we want to be. But remember:
"If you wait to do everything until you're sure it's right, you'll probably never do much of anything."
A part of the quote that I didn't explain earlier is that, in addition to having to know nothing to learn something, you have to trust that regardless of what comes next, you'll never know completely that what you're doing is right. And that's the beauty of uncertainty. Graduating at this point in history, at any point of history, means not knowing exactly what you're getting into. Looked at more positively, that means that the world is just full of possibilities. How's that for glass half full?
It's been a long journey, to say the least, to try to figure out what you know, what you knew, what you will discover in the coming years after graduation. It's going to be an amazing adventure, one in which we all learn so much about ourselves and the world we're about to jump into.
USC didn't teach me absolutely nothing, just that I need to recognize that, stepping into the real world, I'll need to embrace that lack of knowledge. It's okay to be unsure. Take risks, ask questions, and enjoy the view when you take that leap of faith.
“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.”
Congratulations, class of 2009, and thanks for listening. It's been an honor to speak before you, and I wish you the best in everything life has to offer.
After four years of college, everything's finally done. But it isn't over, ending, el fin. It's just beginning.
College has taught me that I know nothing about life, love, or all the things that fall in between. I thought that at the end of receiving a world-class education, I would know without a doubt what friendship, love and life really are. Turns out, though, I really don't. I don't even know what this ambiguous thing we call the future is.
It has been a whirlwind of late nights, long weeks and lazy days, and now, four years later, I don't know that I'm anywhere closer to being a full-fledged "grown-up" than I was four years ago when I first set foot on USC's campus.
These are terrifying realizations to come upon at the end of a four-year journey, I know, but there's an explanation for all this nothingness that I now know so well. Really. I hope (and secretly know) that I'm not the only one who is doubtful about how the knowledge and skills I've acquired at USC will play out in the "real world." Four years, umpteen all-nighters, countless papers, a few strands of sanity and several tens of thousands - scratch that, hundreds of thousands - of dollars later, how much will my ability to properly write a lede or a lab report translate into success in my career?
A whole lot, the way I see it - though not necessarily how you might think.
******
The truth of the matter is, is that college teaches you to embrace your ignorance, and more than that, to use it to your advantage. I'm a sucker for quotes - the cheesier the better - and the one that I have tacked on my wall across from my desk is the one that's stuck with me all these years.
“If you wait to do everything until you're sure it's right, you'll probably never do much of anything.”
Let me say this again, as the Win Borden quote does, in my opinion, bear repeating.
"If you wait to do everything until you're sure it's right, you'll probably never do much of anything."
In other words, acknowledging that you know nothing is the start of a beautiful journey to discovering everything. You have to break down a little bit to build yourself back up. You have to jump into things uncertain, or you'll never really jump at all.
******
Let's go back four years. Imagine: it's the beginning of freshman year, and we were adjusting to a lot of new experiences. We were meeting people from all corners of the country and from a wide range of different backgrounds. You shake a lot of people's hands those first few weeks. Name? Major? City? It felt like a never-ending parade of "hi's" and "how are you's." In those first few weeks, you feel like you know a lot, that you're very sure about where you came from and what you want to experience in college.
You define yourself by your major (or lack thereof), because somehow in the gap between high school and college, you were told that you had to be a certain way and a certain type of person in order to succeed. You have to be sure of things before getting started. I know for a fact that for my first few papers for Writing 140, I would research everything, map out my outline and write draft after draft, convinced that what I knew worked in high school would translate into college.
Wrong.
My first paper back was drowned in a sea of red marks, scratches, and that ominous grade at the top of the paper. Didn't I do everything right? Hadn't I gone by-the-books, followed the step-by-step formula of Writing 140 paper success? I had just finished stacks upon stacks of college application essays. I knew myself. I knew how to plug in the parts of an equation to get the answer I was looking for. I knew.
And here I thought I knew how to write! I thought I was going into journalism. I thought I knew. I thought, I thought, I thought.
You learn, jumping from high school to college, that a lot of the things you thought you knew - don't apply. College isn't a new chapter of your life - it's a whole other book. And more than that, a lot of the things I discovered I didn't know, I didn't know I didn't know prior to USC anyway.
Confusing? Case in point:
******
That first semester, I was still under the impression that I was going to be expanding upon my activities from high school. I'm from Cerritos, California, which has a whole lot of Asian Americans, so when I heard about APASS, I thought, "Here's a good way for me to start college with some semblance of familiarity. These are my people." And I didn't think there would be very much the department or the programs or the organizations could teach me that I didn't know already.
This couldn't have been further from the truth. The only thing that I had been right in guessing was that being around Asian Americans would be a form of familiarity. After being involved with Connections!, through which I found two lifelong mentors; PEER Mentoring, through which I was able to act as a mentor; APA Student Welcome, where I was able to engage new students with the USC campus; and Bamboo Offshoot, my pet project of sorts, bringing APA issues to light through writing and reporting - after being involved with so many programs under APASS, I discovered that I really didn't know there was so much I didn't know before.
But just because I didn't know everything didn't mean that I couldn't take action and start to do something.
"If you wait to do everything until you're sure it's right, you'll probably never do much of anything."
Having APASS as a home base has meant that I gained the foundation and the confidence I needed to venture out and put words into action.
Serving on the APASA board showed me that communication was key to getting programs, events and progress on the roll. It wasn't enough to learn about how the APA community is notoriously silent on campus. I wanted to strengthen my writing skills, my voice, to bolster it.
Speaking with younger students as a PEER mentor made me reflect on my own struggles to balance home life just 20 minutes away and college life here. It wasn't enough to learn about the difficulties of being Asian American and balancing Asian conservatism with American values of individuality. I wanted to help the next incoming classes know more about it.
More than that, I was learning about my own collegiate career as a journalism major. This showed me that it definitely wasn't enough to learn about glass - er, bamboo - ceilings and being a model minority. I wanted to turn that frustration into motivation to do unconventional things, to push boundaries and to succeed in uncommon fields.
So even though I wasn't entirely sure that it was the right step to take - especially after that first paper left me questioning - I knew that the best way I could service my community and myself would be through writing. And these last four years have allowed me to do so.
******
As I look out over the graduating seniors tonight, I'm sure you all know what I'm talking about when I say, too, that we've all spent a lot of long hours in activities and organizations and practices and meetings for things outside the classroom, for things we didn't know would pay off in the end. There is no guarantee that any of the steps we've taken during our four years will lead us to where we want to be. But remember:
"If you wait to do everything until you're sure it's right, you'll probably never do much of anything."
A part of the quote that I didn't explain earlier is that, in addition to having to know nothing to learn something, you have to trust that regardless of what comes next, you'll never know completely that what you're doing is right. And that's the beauty of uncertainty. Graduating at this point in history, at any point of history, means not knowing exactly what you're getting into. Looked at more positively, that means that the world is just full of possibilities. How's that for glass half full?
It's been a long journey, to say the least, to try to figure out what you know, what you knew, what you will discover in the coming years after graduation. It's going to be an amazing adventure, one in which we all learn so much about ourselves and the world we're about to jump into.
USC didn't teach me absolutely nothing, just that I need to recognize that, stepping into the real world, I'll need to embrace that lack of knowledge. It's okay to be unsure. Take risks, ask questions, and enjoy the view when you take that leap of faith.
“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.”
Congratulations, class of 2009, and thanks for listening. It's been an honor to speak before you, and I wish you the best in everything life has to offer.
After four years of college, everything's finally done. But it isn't over, ending, el fin. It's just beginning.
06 May 2009
Email from the madre
Dear Joyce,
You have been texting too many and exceeded limit of 500. I've upgraded to 1500 messages for you to avoid paying extra charges (each is $.10). I don't want to encourage you to use too much texting. Please control yourself. There are lots of disadvantage for texting, one thing is bad for your fingers joints and the other one is not concentrating on what you're doing. Remember there was one train accident because the operator was texting while he was operating the train. How terrible it was. Some lady fell on the street because she was texting while she was walking!! Make no sense at all.
Love,
mom
You have been texting too many and exceeded limit of 500. I've upgraded to 1500 messages for you to avoid paying extra charges (each is $.10). I don't want to encourage you to use too much texting. Please control yourself. There are lots of disadvantage for texting, one thing is bad for your fingers joints and the other one is not concentrating on what you're doing. Remember there was one train accident because the operator was texting while he was operating the train. How terrible it was. Some lady fell on the street because she was texting while she was walking!! Make no sense at all.
Love,
mom
31 March 2009
Chuck Palahniuk quotables
"I want to write about the moment when your addictions no longer hide the truth from you. When your whole life breaks down. That's the moment when you have to somehow choose what your life is going to be about."
"People use what they called a telephone because they hate being close together and they're scared of being alone."
"Find out what you're afraid of and go live there."
"If you don't know what you want, you end up with a lot you don't."
And my all-time favourite:
"What we don't understand we can make mean anything."
"People use what they called a telephone because they hate being close together and they're scared of being alone."
"Find out what you're afraid of and go live there."
"If you don't know what you want, you end up with a lot you don't."
And my all-time favourite:
"What we don't understand we can make mean anything."
21 February 2009
Quotables
Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.
- Lou Holtz
Everyone is trying to accomplish something big, not realizing that life is made up of little things.
- Frank A. Clark
You see, in life, lots of people know what to do, but few people actually do what they know. Knowing is not enough! You must take action.
- Anthony Robbins
We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
- Longfellow
People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them.
- George Bernard Shaw
- Lou Holtz
Everyone is trying to accomplish something big, not realizing that life is made up of little things.
- Frank A. Clark
You see, in life, lots of people know what to do, but few people actually do what they know. Knowing is not enough! You must take action.
- Anthony Robbins
We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
- Longfellow
People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them.
- George Bernard Shaw
10 January 2009
Dream Big
If there were ever a time to dare,
To make a difference,
To embark
on something worth doing,
It is now.
Not for any grand cause, necessarily
But for something that tugs
at your heart,
something thing that's your aspiration,
something that's your dream.
You owe it to yourself
to make your days here count.
Have fun.
Dig deep.
Stretch.
Dream big.
Know, though
that things worth doing
seldom come easy.
There will be good days.
And there will be bad days.
There will be times when you
want to turn around,
pack it up
and call it quits.
Those times tell you that you are pushing yourself,
that you are not afraid to learn by
trying.
Persist.
Because with an idea,
determination,
and the right tools,
you can do great things.
Let your instincts,
your intellect,
and your heart guide you.
Trust.
Believe in the incredible power
of the human mind.
Of doing something
that makes
a difference.
Of working hard.
Of laughing and hoping.
Of lazy afternoons.
Of all the things that will cross
your path this year.
The start of something new
brings the hope of
something great.
Anything is possible.
There is only one you.
And you will pass this way
only once.
Do it right.
- author unknown
06 January 2009
Quotables
"The clock is running. Make the most of today. And remember that time waits for no one. Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. But today is a gift. That's why it's called The Present."
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