Dear Miss Tiger Lady,

I have just read your article on the Wall Street Journal. Beforehand, I’ve thought about parenting in some aspects. I sometimes imagine hypotheticals. “What if my parents did this when I was four? Seven?” Your article brought into question a lot that I’ve taken for granted. The story at the end was the kicker, bringing doubt to the way I view parents. For this, I thank you greatly.

Still, I’m left to wonder how justified some of your standards are, particularly with grades. You dictated at the very beginning that your children were not allowed to get less than an A nor be less than #1 in their class. You then proceeded to interpret why Chinese parents would think in such a way.

Fallacy of composition aside, I still disagree. For one, students could incorrectly interpret it by focusing purely on the grades and not on the effort they spend or the real lessons they learn. This could result in cheating and plagiarism. Of course, the iron grip of a tiger mom may prevent the very thought of cheating. But I digress. The thing is, such a rule seems to over emphasize the results over the process, when in fact attention to process produces great results.

The bigger fear I have with this standard originates from a situation I encountered in college. During my freshman year, many of my friends started off in an introductory calculus class. Anxiously smiling, they took the first exam of their college lives under that subject. Afterwards, I heard their general consensus. “It was a massive rape.” To state the statistics, the average score on the exam was a 38% and the highest score was an 80%. This would raise many questions about the students, professors, and the whole education system. But at the end of the day, the big question is: how will students react to this? It seems intuitive that the student’s self-esteem would drop to an abyss with such previous expectations.

Let’s now put a Tiger Mother-raised student into this situation. All her life, she was told that the only acceptable grade was an “A.” A “B” would get her shouts of “Garbage!” from the phone. I won’t even try to imagine what would happen to the student who got the average score. But maybe you are suggesting that, under the expectations of a Tiger Mother, one would have the confidence to say “I can do better” and not sulk over such failures. Of course, now I am inserting words in your mouth. I would really like to know what you would say to your child, if she got a B (or dare I say it, a grade near 38%).

Best Regards,

Mr. Now Ashamed Piano Quitter

Dilemma

Every so often, a college student faces a dilemma in the dorm laundry room. All the washers are full of clothes but one has finished washing. He waits a few minutes, if he's nice. But after that, the question remains: should he take out another person's clothes, boxers, thongs, and all?

Alas, I was in this situation. There are a few other stories like this, but none as traumatizing as this. Let's continue.

I open the washer. Great. It's a girl's. In my defense I waited a few minutes, filling another washer with clothes. I still had a shit load of clothes to wash.

Work fast!, my mind thought. My hands raced, trying not to think too much on the fact that I was touching various undergarments. Quick! She might be coming down at this very moment.

Right when I slammed the door, she arrives. Well, shit.

Then I did the worst possible thing: I tried to be smooth. Emphasis on tried.

I went to my other washer. She opens the door. Her washer coincidentally no longer holds her clothes. Wonder who made that happen? (hint: who else is in the laundry room?)

I left the room, as if it wasn't me. Then I had second thoughts. I went back, thinking it didn't really matter.

Or did it? Because my friend Steven was now in the laundry room. Girl #1 was now putting clothes away in the dryer. Then another girl came in.

"Oh, are you in line?" Girl #2 asks Steven.
"Yeah, I'm just waiting a few minutes for some other people to get their stuff out," nice guy Steven replied
"Oh, people get my clothes out all the time." Girl #2 said as a matter of fact. Her words didn't seem to matter. Not when the owner of those removed clothes was in the same room.

The blood of Humiliation was rushing full blast into my skull. With a layer of sweat on my forehead, I ran to the elevator back to my dorm. As I got into the elevator, I heard the ominous footsteps. Please, I begged the elevator door, close faster.

Just as the door was about to shut tight, it reopened. And in walked Girl #1, the girl whose laundry I shamefully pulled out of the washer. It was a long and awkward 4 flights of an elevator ride. Why me?

Somewhere, a divine creator is chuckling rofling his ass off.

Should I feel guilty? Or is it not that big a deal? Thoughts?

Sanity

Sometimes I forget that I'm in college. That most of the time I'm just a student

College. Student. Those two words seem to carry different connotations. "Student" makes me think of the tasks, the academics, the essays and the problem sets. I can't help but feel a slight tingling stress just thinking about it.

But college, that's something different. It's friends, the nights out, laughter, the moments. Cheers to that.

So are you a student? Or are you in college? Both?

???

Overall, things are going well. There's the occasional feeling of loss, like something's hollow. Can't explain why really. It may have something to do with me losing focus on everything. I even stop caring sometimes. Is that a good thing?

Whatever.

It could just be the unusual high amounts of Kyle Landry/Yiruma I've been listening to. I actually like it. Used to be that I thought they played nice piano music. But now, I'm just....disgusted with myself. I blame my roommate.

=P

Stoked

So another break passes. Time to go back. Once again, there's so much I want to do.

But I worry. Can I do this? Am I too unrealistic?

Suck it up.

Here goes. Here's to making new commitments, and quitting the ones that don't matter.

An End

Finally

These three weeks have been chaotic as ever. It's all a blur now that it's over. Only thing I remember is this video of harold and kumar of all things. It gave me hope =D haha.

Looking back I am sorta disappointed in myself. I'm too easily distracted as always and I'm never exactly realistic. Going to sleep at 2 and expecting myself to wake up early on a weekend. My old roommate had the remarkable ability to go to sleep at 11pm no matter how much work he finished. Seeing as it's already 1am, I am far from mastering that ability.

It feels unbelievably better now. "A late night, a cup of coffee, music playing, no work at all..."

So before my mind wanders off

zZ

Before this dies

Right. Before I give up on this thing for good. Gotta write something

Update on my life?

College is busy. Sophomore year is pretty much suffer-more year. I came in thinking I could do more than just school work and classes. Started to read books outside class. But eventually the entire attitude fell out. Too busy. Maybe one day I'll restart that...yeah

Right now I want to major in civil engineering with a minor in architecture. It's pretty interesting so far. One minute I'm in a studio where people are discussing transformations, fields, sites, and line weights and the next I'm in a engineering lab where people are dictating numbers, figures, deformations, and forces. It feels weird, but it's the awesome kind of weird.

Till then,

College

It's been a while since I've written in this blog. College has definitely kept me busy. Before going to college I didn't have many expectations on what it was going to be like. I definitely knew it was going to be fun. But I also expected that academics were going to be difficult.

During my previous summer of watching youtube videos, however, I came across this clip that gave me some great encouragement and useful advice. [link]

After watching this, I thought “Man. Bourdain is such a...such a rocker. He travels the world and dares to eat fermented tofu, cobra heart, pig intestines, anything that the local people consider food. Even when he works in the kitchen, he endures, fights it out, rocks on.” (insert electric guitar strum here) Right then I believed that that was how I was going to do things in college.

After about a month into college, I made many friends who felt the same, at least when they were out partying or sledding on stolen dining hall trays. They would eat things they've never eaten before. Drink till they start enjoying massages by strangers. Enjoy life like there's no tomorrow.

When it came to academics though, my friends often complained. About getting absolutely raped by tests, prelims, and midterms that were unbelievably difficult or curved to a B. Time and time again I would hear something along the lines of “Success is now defined as how well you do against others in the class.” I couldn't blame them. College is hard. But I had my own opinions back then.

I thought, “No worries. A true rocker never fears, even in academics. I'm not gonna stress over stupid grade curves or how difficult other people say the test is gonna be. I'm gonna rock on and not get intimidated.” So I studied hard, aimed for an A+, and yada yada I aced my first few tests. I thought to myself, “Yeah! Be a rocker, that's what I'm gonna do. It'll all work out just like it did just now.”

Besides these little bouts of arrogance, there was nothing else wrong with what happened. I “rocked on” and succeeded. But little did I know that I had yet to really prove myself as a rocker.

Then one midnight I found myself with two research papers due the next day, both of which were far from finished. I'm not here to brag about workload but this had me freaking out. I heard a voice saying “Be a rocker. Rock on!”

And then I thought “pffft. Fuck that. That whole bullshit about 'rocking out' is easier said than done. How the hell am I going to succeed. I'm fucked...and I'm going crazy too with all these voices.” I abandoned this whole idea of being a rocker. It didn't matter whether I was or wasn't one, I just started working. Eventually both papers were finished. I was muttering curses under my breath the entire time, exhausted, at my limits.

Looking back at this moment though, I have to say that even though I “abandoned” the idea, I was still a rocker. To quote again from Bourdain's clip, “You have to keep swimming and swimming and swimming upstream... It's kinda like any high stress situation. You're not aware of what you're doing, you're just doing it.”

What being a rocker really means is simply acting. When you're partying and enjoying yourself, this seems almost second nature. Have another shot. Don't think just take it. Granted it can lead to some mistakes...but those can be avoided if you're smart and lucky enough.

It's more difficult to see and do in academics. You're not exactly having the time of your life when you are studying. If you do have time of your life, then you need to get a life. The good news is, it's no different from when you are enjoying yourself. You just have to act.

If any of my friends ever had the patience to read this far into my post, I hope they at least take this lesson from it. Don't worry about the mountains of work. Don't worry about tomorrow. And certainly don't give a damn about that stupid curve. Already, I've seen my friends in situations like the one I had. 2 papers and a textbook review due the next day. 3 finals in 3 consecutive days.

I know I'll definitely be facing some worse situations throughout the rest of college. Three research papers? Four and a project? I can't tell what it will be. I'm probably going to be eating the very words I'm typing. But for now, I'll say it. I'm going to be ready and rock on. And I hope my friends will too.

At this point, though, some of them would probably be thinking, “Daniel....you need to get laid. This entire post is about working hard. You never said you went to a party.” OK OK, I probably should go to college parties for once, so that I'm not so hypocritical on the partying parts of this blog post. =D

Rock on

A Happy New Year to all. Please comment.