“We encounter others who embody the opportunity for us to learn our most pressing lesson” -Robin Norwood, Women Who Love Too Much

On why academia is killing me

Since the beginning of the school year, I’ve been feeling this nebulous weight that has been growing to such degree that even the thought of going to a cafe to do research for class-related endeavors has become repulsive. This is alarming because I use to love going to cafes to do reading for class.

There’s something about my academic program that is killing me. Talking to my ESTJ roommate has helped me realize that I need to siphon out certain aspects of why I feel this way rather than being stuck in the all too familiar depths of despair.

On the grand scale, I feel disillusioned by the social welfare program in academia where the emphasis is on name-making through publishing in journals and not on transforming communities. Of all the fields I thought social welfare would be the most connected to the populations being researched.

I feel disillusioned by the whole research model, in which your profession is sustained through winning grants to publish in journals that no one outside of academia reads or knows how to read for that matter. Furthermore, because of the pressure to publish, there is no end to the supply of crappy studies circulating out there with ill-founded conclusions based on poorly designed and biased sampling methods, variables that don’t measure what they intend to measure, results that cannot be generalized, uncontrolled variables that confound outcomes, poorly fit models. There’s an endless number of things to think through when conducting studies and a litany of validities one needs to account for. Every study you read will be susceptible to threats to validity (internal, external, statistical conclusion, construct) and conducting good research accounts for those. In research, you are essentially crafting an argument and supporting it with facts. The problem is that you’re doing it in an esoteric way that is difficult to communicate to professionals working in the field. Another problem is that you are so buried in  your work that it’s hard to stay afloat of what is being done in the field. The field is always changing. Academia is slow to keep pace, like this clunky out-of-touch parent who tells you things you’ve BEEN doing with long proofs that is blindly accepted because it’s esoteric.

I need structure, I need clear expectations, guidance and support that I don’t have in my program. I need to be doing something with others, collaborating on a team, a part of a team with an achievable purpose that lifts people up instead of writing about lifting people up.

End of vague rant.

 

 

 

on improv

Improv is one of my favorite things in this world. It falls under the category of game-playing and team sports. I first dabbled in improv in an amateur theater group in college where I remember freezing on stage and smiling awkwardly. I remember overthinking things and trying to be funny and feeling bad about myself for failing to perform.

After college, I got to do more improv with a group that met at our church. And tonight, through someone at church, I got to do improv with a theater group in Santa Monica. They are incredibly talented. It helped that I had a fat headache the size of new mexico so it was hard to care about making people laugh and trying to fit in.

Improv is one of those things where the less you care about what the audience thinks of you and the less you care about how much of a fool you might be, the more free you are to create a scene that is absolutely amazing.

 

on singleness

The upside of being single is that I can hangout with my married friends and not just hangout…but sleepover at their place. I was trying to imagine what this would be like if I were married and I can only say that it would be different. The dynamic of being a couple changes the way I interact with other people and more notably, the way other people interact with me. It’s nice for me to be 100% attentive to my friends I spend time with and not think about tending to some guy who is chained to me, metaphorically.

If I ever get married, I hope I can marry someone who can enhance my attentiveness to others and to God rather than being the object of my attention…which especially happens when I date broken guys. Having been single for 8 months (factoring a messy break-up), I can see value in this verse:

1 Corinthians 7:34
The woman who is unmarried is concerned about the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and spirit; but one who is married is concerned about the things of the world, how she may please her husband

Singleness is a gift, truly. It’s a time to process your baggage and discover the foundation of your identity.

on skin

Yesterday was really hot. I was walking around Santa Monica promenade trying to find the booth that sells succulent terrariums only to find that they are only there on Thursdays and Fridays. That means that the last time I made a trip out for terrariums happened to be on a Thursday or Friday and I was grateful for the timing then. The timing now was crappy. Then I walked back to my car after getting gypped by a fellow Asian woman on a tiny little succulent plant. Then I thought my car was stolen because I walked up the wrong staircase. Anyways, I was sweating so naturally as I headed back to campus, took off my t-shirt and was wearing a very unattractive tank top.

As I’m walking towards campus, this youngish adult is staring at my chest and then looks into my eyes. I think of what my friend L once told me – that if you want a guy to compliment you or pay you extra attention, just wear a low-cut shirt.

Ok. compare that with me today when I ran to Ralphs wearing a faded FDNY t-shirt from circa 2003 and longish shorts. No one checked me out! I think I was so off the fashion standard for LA that people just avoided looking at me.

on running

I never liked running, even when I was playing soccer in high school. I played mid-field, which involves the most running and I’d sprint around, start panting for breath and then start walking. My coach would yell at me for letting so many people dribble by me and then take me out. I’d look forward to half-time when we could all sit and eat oranges.

I’ve been trying to run around my neighborhood for the last year or so. In the beginning when I was just starting, I’d feel my chest burning and I’d have to stop because I felt like I was dying. I’d run for a minute or two and walk for three. Running uphill was death.

In recent weeks as I’ve begun to run more regularly, I’m surprised by how the same path that I had taken before isn’t as terrible as it had once been. The hills are familiar now and don’t slay me as they used to.

Today I ran for 2.1 miles straight, only stopping at traffic lights, and I was able to think about things other than how tired I was for the reason being that I wasn’t that tired.

I hear from M and cross-country runners at my church that there are two challenges in running. The first is overcoming the lung capacity challenge of learning to breathe at a higher rate of activity. The second is overcoming the mental capacity challenge of learning to push through when every part of you wants to stop.

Running is a great metaphor for life. I think life is full of challenges that God allows us to experience (factoring in free-will and the reality of living in a broken world) that should we step into instead of drown out with distractions, will push us to a level of excellence that is out of this world.

The only drawback is that this whole process is extremely challenging and will almost kill you.

But 2 Corinthians 4:17 – For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.

accomplishment of the day

  
I was about to finally wash my hair when I saw that our shampoo holder had fallen apart in pieces in our tub. I was super pissed at the situation. 

Anyways, I pieced it back together and put it back in its place, praying that the spring doesn’t pop out again and stab someone in the eye. 

snowboarding heroine

This is a photo of Chloe Kim, 15 year old snowboarder who does amazing things in the air. She is majorly talented and bold.

Her story makes me want to encourage future generations to figure out what their talents are and pursue them whole-heartedly. We don’t need more robot-Asians that excel in school (look mama, I’m one of them), we need a spectrum of young people who celebrate their diverse array of talents and dream beautiful and unusual! kanye west lyrics. Good night!

it’s egregious!

I took a screenshot of this webster definition because it’s kind of ridiculous how the meaning of the word changed in a 180 degree kind of way. I know how definitions change over time because society changes (cue: marriage), but to go from “remarkably good” to “outstandingly bad” is just a bit… egregious in the modern day sense of the word.

mental help

I have major brain problems. I don’t think I ever applied myself in learning. From years of skimming and getting by with doing the minimum for the maximum reward, I still don’t know how the primary elections or the electoral college work. I think because I do things from Fi, if I don’t care about something, I will not invest much time in understanding it. Therefore, that rules out almost everything related to politics, taxes, and finance. This is a problem because I have a master degree in public policy, but I can’t even tell you what public policy means, aside from having to do with politics, taxes, and finance.

I really don’t understand how I ended up in a doctorate program.

Oh well.