Tuesday, March 15, 2005
My cell phone went out the window after the call I posted about, which in retrospect was a great decision, since the only calls I was getting was from my mother. I need time by myself away from her nagging, to get my thoughts sorted out and to concentrate on my schoolwork. Doing well in school does matter to me, but what my parents need to understand is that I do it for myself, and not to make up for their own feelings of inadequate academic achievement, now three decades in the past. I am starting to suspect that East Asian societies have their own mechanisms to keep their constituents trapped in feelings of inadequacy, though I doubt it could be as bad as the image-based Calvinist society we live in in America. It would be an "out of the frying pan and into the fire" type of scenario for my parents, if only they could speak English and begin to understand the society into which they immigrated and discarded their children. Ignorance is bliss, I suppose.
In any case, I've been keeping myself busy, mostly with various physics classes. It is not a bad way to live, this 100 mile-an-hour from the moment my eyes pop open, to when I collapse in bed some sixteen hours later. My contact with people remains limited to my physics study group. A few times a week I will meet Mike and Bess to work on our problem sets, where I sit and solve my differential equations, and answer the occasional question from Mike or nod at a random disparaging comment about physics majors from Bess. I suppose it would be quite a culture shock to transfer into the physics major senior year, so I don't really blame her for doting on the anti-social nature of her fellow physics majors. An outsider's viewpoint is always refreshing, at least to me.
In any case, I've been keeping myself busy, mostly with various physics classes. It is not a bad way to live, this 100 mile-an-hour from the moment my eyes pop open, to when I collapse in bed some sixteen hours later. My contact with people remains limited to my physics study group. A few times a week I will meet Mike and Bess to work on our problem sets, where I sit and solve my differential equations, and answer the occasional question from Mike or nod at a random disparaging comment about physics majors from Bess. I suppose it would be quite a culture shock to transfer into the physics major senior year, so I don't really blame her for doting on the anti-social nature of her fellow physics majors. An outsider's viewpoint is always refreshing, at least to me.
