The business

I literally have like 6 things on my mind right now... simultaneously:

1) School. Duh. 4 classes.

2) Job- AAP Tutoring! Lesson planning. etc

3) Job hunting- for when I finally graduate. Career fairs, resumes, hunting through the endless jobs to find the ones you want....

4) Mship- shit be goin down!

5) Research- writin the paper I was supposed to finish over summer.

6) Keeping in touch!!

Was 2nd week always this busy?

Friends

Last night, inspired by another friend who had done the same thing, I sat down and made a list of the people in my life that I wanted to keep in touch with. Rest assured, lucky reader, chances are you are on it if you care enough to read what I'm writing. It was interesting to see the people I've met, the kind of people I really care about, and how the distribution of the friends I make has changed over time. Like for example the vast majority of my friends in high school were guys. Same thing with first year. Used to be a group of guys, you know how it is.

It surprised me that some people I really wanted to keep in touch with I couldn't even really call a friend just yet, or its still developing, while others I've known for 10+ years.

One thing I realized in college was that I started making more diverse friends, but usually not in groups... usually individuals here and there. Some, people that I see often because of mship and camp, class, research, and others that I don't see as often for the exact same reasons. The upside is I have some really great friends, people from (somewhat...) different walks of life and ways of living... buuut the downside is I don't really have a "group" to always count on to hang out with anymore.

I think college has sort of changed what a friend is to me... used to be that to be a friend we had to hang out outside of any commitments or what-have-you. It's been hard for me to understand, but I realized I care a lot about people that I wouldn't really call up on a random night to hang out. I feel like it would be weird to call them outside of our normal context... but maybe that's a mistaken perception.

I also realized that I don't take a lot of initiative in developing friendships... generally most of the people that I've kept in touch with over the years have made more effort than I have, which I'm really thankful for. I guess I avoided doing so because I tend to look at my commitments and go "shit... this needs to get done... i dont have time to call someone up and go through all the motions...".

From studying 6++ hours a day my first two years to losing (and finding) myself to mentorship the past two, somehow having no time for friends was just the price I paid for my ambitions. Which isn't fair to my friends.... so time for a change. My goal is to take more initiative in maintaining old friendships and forming new ones as well!

The US political system is the way it is because we wanted it this way.

Over the past two years I've learned that there are certain aspects of our culture, American culture, that lead us to have leaders who lie to us, a media that spends more time covering Britney Spears than the war in Afghanistan, and a public that is unengaged in the political process, myself included. Before I try to elaborate, who or what caused this? Are we the people to blame? Or is it the leaders and media? I think it was the leaders/media ("the man"), mostly because it is in our own interest to be engaged in the political process, so why would we start out not wanting to be involved unless someone else made us think that other things were more worthy of our attention?

This is going to be a rant, okay? Okay. Just a random list of things that I think have political implications.

1. People always want to hear the positives, never the negatives. I saw this so much on Committee. People were so concerned with phrasing things in a positive light that the necessary truths to be communicated were instead obfuscated. It's strange how people, when they hear something negative, immediately take a negative attitude towards the person speaking as well.

My point here is... when you only want to hear the good and not the bad, you're putting people in a position to lie to you. By lie I don't mean literally "I said something that is completely untrue." I mean more... misdirection. You don't have to say false things to lie. You just have to confuse the listener, to obscure the reality of what is happening, by focusing on another aspect.

I just feel like because people don't take well to the cold hard truth, it puts leaders in a position to candy-coat the truth, which leads to misinformation and confusion, excluding people from the political process because they don't understand what is truly happening.

You might say, but Raja... it's just human psychology... people like to hear good things more than bad things. My counter is that I think to be human is to try and overcome our base instincts. Yes we have them, yes we should follow them to some extent. But I think to be human is to attempt to unite emotion with intellect. Yes, we love to hear positives over negatives, but by this point we know at an intellectual level that hearing the truth requires both, even if at an emotional level we prefer one over the other.

2. People don't like reading long emails. Let's say I have a lot of information to communicate to you, and the only way to communicate to you and like 100 other people efficiently is via email. It interests me that people, even though they may be super passionate about something, somehow don't have the passion to read the information I need to convey for them to pursue their passion. It needs to have color and be readable in 3 seconds. Seriously? Is this what American media and consumerism has done to us? Not everything that you need is going to come in small soundbytes. Come on now, let's sit still and just read. I think this explains a lot of people's issues with textbooks too... reading and comprehending takes a LONG time. Why do that when you can watch a show and get an immediate, vicarious, sense of accomplishment and belonging.

I admit I'm guilty of this from time to time, but I try hard to read through every email, regardless of length.

I guess my point with this one is how can you think critically and have nuanced opinions if you're not willing to take the time to form them. Our environment is designed, intentionally I think, to distract us from developing our own opinions. Maybe it's a long stretch to connect reading emails to this but I do find it a little ridiculous the lengths that need to be taken to capture people's attention.

I can't help but connect these things to our political situation. If you say you want to go into politics, people say "get used to lying" or some shit. How sad is that? It speaks volumes about our political system, and our perception of it. We all know politicians lie to us and yet somehow we let it happen. Ultimately it's because they prey on our weaknesses, our fears, our laziness to search for the truth for ourselves. And even if they told us the truth and nothing but, we would eat them alive.

3. People always want to know how something can benefit them. What gain will they get out of this action? I mean I know people have to watch out for themselves, cause it's a tough world out there and all, but I think there's a fine line between making wise choices for yourself and doing something to help everyone else.

If everyone did that what kind of world would we live in? We don't initiate the change because we think that others wouldn't participate, but this is precisely the problem. If everyone bought into the concept, the system would work. I'm being probably super vague right now because I don't want to go too far off on a tangent... this idea will be for another post... "The Prisoner's Dilemma and Utopia" or some shit.

Anyway, it just irritates me when I see that people aren't willing to make sacrifices for something they supposedly care about. Like when you are on a leadership team yet somehow can't bother yourself to wake up early and flier so I don't have to do it by myself every morning. I'm not bitter, I'm just saying that it takes a mindset that I don't agree with to make those choices. And I think it really has to do with the benefit they think they get out of the activity. How much enjoyment, fulfillment, etc. Not everything worth doing has immediate rewards. Immediacy is a symptom of capitalism... when driven to pursue our self interest we forget how to protect our common interests. Tragedy of the commons and all that... except unlike Hardin, I actually think morality is the only solution.

Hmm that's it for now, I'm done ranting...as always, ideas that I need to explore further and find the right way to phrase... this post does not capture the essence of what I feel about these issues. But that's for another day.

music

I think I'm going to use this space to upload musical fragments as they come to me. Omar-Rodriguez Lopez, guitarist and composer (wow that sounds pretentious) of the Mars Volta, said writing music is like holding a bucket under a leaky faucet. So you're basically wading through a mountain of shit to pick the right sounds... my problem in writing music has been I forget everything I write. No bucket. This blog will be my bucket.

Lesson 2: Everyone has something to offer

In continuing this "what I've learned" series, we come to the second lesson: everyone has something to offer. This is one of those no shit wisdoms that you don't really take to heart until you experience it for yourself, and I was no exception. I think being raised by two parents with a masters/phd changes your idea of the kind of contributions people can make.

I remember being in first grade, and our class project was to figure out what we wanted to do with our lives. In first grade, the only thing I wanted to do was play with toys, so I figured being a cashier at Toys-R-Us or Target or something would be a great job because you got to handle toys all day. My dad did not approve, and made sure that I did not share that particular sentiment with my class the next day.

I think that view really influenced me, growing up. In that environment, it's almost natural to look down on the choices that led that person to be there. It's interesting, since I've met so many more people, heard so many life stories, and been exposed to different value systems, my view on that has changed. It's not like there are life choices that are right and wrong (within some window, obviously), so long as you are happy. And if you need to make ends meet, there's nothing wrong with any job that helps you do that.

That's something I try to keep in mind every time I meet someone, particularly if they are on the job in food service or something else like that. A friend works a job like that, and mentioned how much she appreciated having people call her by her name, rather than just "waitress." From then on, I've tried to use names, and humanize each person I come into contact with. I'm still working on this. It can be difficult when "the system" is not set up to humanize the working person. If each person is made human, the economy couldn't function the way it does now. The concept of working for a giant faceless corporation, without any of your input valued, would no longer be dominant. I need to think about this more but that was an interesting thought.

Two years of my life in review

It's crazy to think that it's been two years since I started on this journey. Two years ago, I decided to join mentorship committee. It's interesting to see how this has developed in me over the past two years, and how having significant commitments outside of school has affected how I view school. My first two years of college I used to study more than anyone, probably. I literally studied all the time. After class. Before class. Friday nights. Saturday nights. 6-8 hours a day. Why did I do it? I don't really know. Part of it is I somehow had this sense that it made me better than everyone else, that it made me special. Another part is my whole anal perfectionism thing that I have. Great fun. Another part was the fact that I had regretted going to UCLA over Berkeley, and so tried to make up for what I decided was probably going to be an inferior education experience by studying harder than anyone else.

Two years of that, and then something completely different. School was no longer my priority, it was mentorship. And if I wasn't doing that, I was doing something for research or just hanging out with people. I was thinking about this as I was driving to UCLA today, about how this experience has affected me. It's literally been a paradigm shift for me, to question the vision of success and happiness that I had previously never thought about. I just hope that what I learned from this experience will stay with me as I move on to a new chapter. I hope I will stay as passionate about education, about volunteerism, as I have been these past few years.

I think I'll start posting about things I've learned from this experience, or how I've changed from it. I'll try to post every day or every week to capture what I'm thinking about.

What about today? Let's start with today.

First lesson learned: Work smart.

What does this mean? I used to think that all it took to be successful was to try your hardest. To put everything into the task at hand, to completely dedicate yourself to it. I still think dedication is a huge part of what makes me who I am but I've learned that it's better to take a step back first, and see what would benefit most from your efforts. In mentorship, for example, I wasted valuable energy doing something that should not have been my responsibility. My mindset was, this is my priority. I will do WHATEVER it takes. So why not do this? But it turned out, at the end of the year, that because I had dedicated so much for these other tasks, I had sacrificed working on other, more important things.

I used to think I can just keep working and working and working, like a machine on meth or something. Okay I didn't actually think about the machine on meth part, that was kind of dumb. But I've learned that I should distribute my workload more intelligently, so as to not overburden myself.

That's all for now. More to come soon! Be excited.

random thoughts at 2 am

Entourage is interesting. Plan: check out more.

It's frustrating when someone says they support whatever you choose to do, but when you tell them you're doing something besides what they want you to do, they always find a reason why doing that thing is either a) bad for your future, b) morally decadent, or c) misled. Coincidence? I can't help but think not.

Writing music (or trying to) is so frustrating. Ideas come so easily when you're not trying. As soon as you try, everything you think of just sucks. It's like a physical law. How do you then remember what you're randomly thinking about long enough to make use of it? Maybe I should invest in one of those ipod audio recorders so I can sing ideas to myself... maybe not. Maybe that's trying too hard. And then no ideas will come.

Sometimes the hardest thing is to just be yourself. Same idea as above. Being yourself is so easy, when you're not trying, right???? Then as soon as you try, it gets complicated.

I used to think putting in my best, maximal effort, was the solution to everything. It's interesting to know that sometimes not trying as hard, or at least not forcing things to happen, is better. Life is subtle like that.