Principles ?

 I used to believe principles were absolute. I grew up (like many people) reading stories about principled and idealistic people who gave up their lives for their honor. According to these, you’re either the hero who upholds your principles, or you’re the petty villain who gave up and made compromises.

After I grew up, I started to realize, life isn’t that clean cut. I realized that if a person is able to uphold a principle simply because that principle was never challenged, and they never need to make a difficult decision, that’s not being principled, that’s having privilege. And perhaps we should have a little bit of compassion for those who make the compromises.

I studied art in college, went to grad school for it.

When I graduated, I wanted to be a concept artist for games or movies. Of course, concept artist is the most coveted position in game production and the competition is insane. But, I have a dream. I’m going to go for it. Only losers give up. I found a non-game related desk job that paid the rent, I took out more student loans and got a second BA while working full time. I participated in various online art competitions.

And come 2008, the financial crisis hit. I got laid off.

I didn’t give up. I got my unemployment insurance and COBRA. I hunkered down and kept at it. It was depressing. So many game companies had gone under. I would send out resumes to THQ one week, and two weeks later, read the news about their bankruptcy.

6 months passed, my COBRA expired.

I didn’t get a single return from any game companies.

So, I lowered my expectations. Started to apply for any positions I can do, production, QA, anything, art or not. As long as I could get a game-related job.

Another 3 months passed, more companies went under. I wasn’t sure if I could get an extension of my unemployment.

I started to send resumes to non-game companies. Any job would do. As long as they needed people, and I could do the job, I would do it.

Mind you, I was living at my parents’ place. I didn’t have a mortgage, my student loan was on furlough. Yes, I was unemployed for 9 months, but I wasn’t in any real danger of being homeless.

In desperation, I went to blackjack dealer school, since casinos were the only place still hiring contractors.

I talked to people who had graduated and were working as dealers, getting to know the casino industry better, about what my future life might be. And at that moment, I gave up. I thought this was my life now. Finish training, get a job at a casino, and stand for long hours, in second-hand smoke, doing basic math for the rest of my life. Joint pain and lung cancer, a one-bedroom house in the middle of nowhere (California casinos are all built in the desert).

That’s how easy it was to kill my dream: all it took was a bad economy and 12 months of unemployment.

Of course, I eventually bounced back and found a job in the video game industry.

But I’ll always remember that moment when I accepted defeat and got myself ready for a different life. And that gave me a bit of a different perspective about people and their choices.

When I see people who work in retail, cashiers, cleaning crew, waitresses, telemarketers… The jobs that people look down upon. People think these people are either lazy or stupid. People play pranks on telemarketers and laugh about it.

They aren’t stupid or lazy or evil. They’re just desperate. They make compromises.

If a telemarketing company was hiring back in mid-2009, I would jump at the opportunity, and be ridiculed by the people I called. Imagine if it’s you, in that position, imagine if you have kids and mortgages, and your house was about to get foreclosed. Would you not take that job? Would you willing to go homeless because telemarketing as an industry has dubious morals and you wouldn’t lower yourself to that level?

And I realized the reason I get to be a principled person the majority of the time isn’t that I’m a better person. It is because I got lucky. I’m privileged enough to never have my principles challenged. I never need to choose between “feeding myself” and “my principles”. I never need to choose between “take your boss’s racism” and “be fired”. I never need to choose between “let your husband beat you” and “leave your home and live in a shelter”. I never need to choose between “my sexual orientation” and “my job”.

And if I were to put into that situation, I honestly don’t know how I would choose.

So now, my principle is: be kind and have compassion.

And I hope if my principle is challenged, I would have the courage to do the right thing

-Feifei Wang

Blessed ?

Wasted Your 20s ?

Imagine you don't like pizza.

 The guy you are dating really likes it so you say you love pizza to make him like you.

You don't like pizza and end up eating pizza often rather than speaking up.

You risk ending up angry at him for always picking pizza.

Your anger builds up. You can't see it now but you are not angry at him. You are angry at yourself.

This is people pleasing.

Now imagine you don't like pizza and all your friends like it. You say you don't like pizza, but you like spending time with them so decide that you can be flexible, that this time you can set your preferences aside to be accommodating.

That's being nice.

I understand how this can be a fine line but the first will make you feel used and resentful and diminished and the second will make you happy because you own where you stand and are being generous.

People pleasing is not about making things easier for others but rather involves compromising who you are. It means trying to make everyone happy at your expense and realizing that despite your effort it cannot be done.

It's a losing battle to play against yourself.

It's sacrificing you to such an extent you lose track of who you are.

That's not nice. Nice begins by being nice to yourself.

-Dushka Zapata

The MIT Experience

Being an undergraduate at MIT was an incredibly unique experience. This place will amaze you from day one, and you will feel every possible feeling towards it. You will love it. You will hate it. You will be happy. You will be sad. You will feel connected. You will feel lonely. But you will most certainly feel glad to have lived through it, and you will take great experiences and friendships from MIT.

First Impressions: Prospective Student/Freshman Year

Everything is beautiful. The campus is nice, the dome is awesome. The columns are really cool. If you visit during summer or spring time the grass is green, the flowers grow and the people are happy (The winter, on the other hand is COLD!)

There is a crazy building by Frank Gehry (The Stata Center)

People seem to have a lot of fun. There are a variety of "hacks", one of the recent ones (and among my personal favorites) was the Tetris Building:

(Yes, this is actually a building on campus, and yes, this was playable Tetris! The lights were programmed to respond to a controller!)

From my first visits, I was impressed and very excited. I could definitely see myself here, and I knew that it would be a worthwhile experience.

The Setting: Boston & Cambridge

The greater Boston area is a great place for students. There are multiple universities and colleges around the area as the map shows. MIT and Harvard are nearly neighbors in Cambridge (we are just two subway, a.k.a. T, stops away), but there are also Boston University, Boston College, Tufts, Berklee School of Music etc... (see map for more)

This means there are a lot of young people around, and a good amount of bars and parties.

Transportation is very good around MIT; the #1 bus goes up and down Massachusetts Ave, and there is a T stop on the east side of campus. There are also shuttles that cross the bridge from Cambridge to Boston, to connect MIT to some of the fraternities on the other side of the river. 

The Settling in: Freshman
Once you get into MIT, you have to pick what dorms you are going to live in. Each dorm has a unique culture, and you can check them out here: Undergraduate Residence Halls. Most undergraduate dorms are located close to campus, and you can definitely walk from any of these dorms to classes, but some people choose to get bikes. For reference, I lived in Baker House, my room had a beautiful view of the Boston Skyline, and most of my classes were within a 5-10 minute walk.

Deciding where you live is very important though, and I advise you to check out each dorm, meet the people there and choose the place that matches your culture as well as possible. I do advise incoming students to make this choice based on their tastes rather than their parents'. Sometimes parents will not like a place and try to get you to the dorm they find the nicest. But this decision should definitely be up to you, as a new student, because you are the one that will be living there for possibly the next four years.

Moving was straighforward, and like most big cities, you can get all your things at any of these Bed-Bath megastores. They usually make lists for college students, to help you get everything, so I did not have any issues there.

Fees and Tuition
Most students get some kind of financial aid from MIT. All financial aid is need-based, so every year we have to complete the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) which calculates how much aid you should receive. MIT is not cheap at all (tuition and fees come out to $42,050, plus costs of living and dining), but MIT does try to help out. 

Drinking water from a firehose, Part I:
You are a freshman, have just picked your intro classes (usually first-years take Calculus, Chemistry or Biology, Physics and a Humanities course) and everything is ready to start. And in orientation you get the great news that your first semester is actually Pass/No Record.

What does that mean?

No grades! (insert celebration dance here!)

MIT, in order to help you transition from high school to, well, one of the most intense universities in the world, gives you a "freebie" semester. No grades, if you get above a "C-minus", you get the credit. 

This may seem great, and a reason to party all semester, but it is not that simple. MIT is tough. It is intense, it is challenging, and it will destroy you if you are careless. So people that take this semester lightly and not use the opportunity to get used to MIT's style, often have a tougher time adapting in the following semester.

Once the semester starts, you begin to understand classes at MIT. Freshman lectures are usually in large lecture halls, with sometimes 300 students in a class. But you do get the opportunity to learn from great people in their fields. Many freshman have had the opportunity to take Introductory Chemistry (5.112) with Nobel Laureate Richard R. Schrock, or Introductory Biology (7.012) with Eric Lander, who worked on the Human Genome Project.

These are great opportunities, to learn from people who play a very significant role in their fields. As a freshman, learning about ongoing research of Nobel Laureates is an incredible experience. 

However, the academic part is not easy at all. Once you get your first problem set (Pset) for homework, you notice that MIT is not at all like high school. The questions really challenge you. They are not simple repetition of what you had done in class, but rather, they require you to read additional sources, collaborate with others and ask your TAs and Professors for help. Very few people work on their psets individually, there is a lot of collaboration at MIT.

And then exams came. You study, do your best, and you get your results back with the lowest grade you have ever seen, and the average score among all students was a 50 (out of 100) or lower. It is a humbling experience. From being among the top students of your high school, used to getting straight-As, getting a 40- or 30-something on an exam makes you realize that MIT is going to be tough. Here, you are no longer the best student, and you need to come to terms to getting bad grades and getting over them by studying harder and preparing better for the next exams.

In the end of the semester, you have your finals. A final at MIT is, jokingly, compared to the following scenario:

You take a class on how to build a house. You learn about walls, and windows and doors and pipes and electric systems. And then your final exam comes and asks you one thing: "How do you build a boat"

MIT finals usually cover a great amount of material, and they challenge you. They ask for applications of what was learned in class, rather than simple repetition of facts. So the exams here actually make you think rather than spit out memorized answers.

This is why MIT is compared to drinking water from a firehose. There is so much happening around you, so much academic material, and you try to grasp as much as you can, but you find out that it is impossible to get it all. 

Drinking from the firehouse: Part II
The rest of my years at MIT required great dedication, but I was able to take all the required classes, get a double major (in Math and Physics) and a minor (in Management Science), I worked as a grader and Lab Assistant (great opportunity to make some money) and I also had the opportunity to do research with great professors (including a brief time at the Higgs group at MIT!) I was also able to get a decent amount of sleep, probably more than the average MIT student, was able to play soccer in Intramural season, and have fun in general.

The main lesson that you take from here is that you have to be balanced. You cannot possibly do it all, and you must accept that. Don't put more on your plate than you can eat. This is just how MIT is, you always have to give something up. Do your work, study, but also go out to eat, go see the Boston Symphony Orchestra, walk around Boston, visit Harvard, go to parties, and you will have a great time.

MIT is a great place. It is very challenging, but you will make great friends, and learn more than you have ever learned. I would not change this opportunity for anything.

I hope this helps to paint a picture of MIT for people that haven't had a chance to come here!

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The IISC Experience

Not all expectations are the same.

Do you expect the other person to send you flowers at work? To always be the one who pays the bill? To spend all their time with you? Do you expect the other to accommodate your emotions? (I feel jealous of your women friends so you can’t see them.) Do you expect the other person will be responsible for your happiness?

Reconsider those.

Do you expect to be treated with consideration, with respect? Do you expect a certain degree of empathy, understanding? Do you expect a mutual trust? Do you expect another to be interested in your life? Do you expect the person you are with to follow through on what they say they are going to do?

-Dushka

Unfair and difficult things will happen to you.

People will be mean to you. Loved ones will betray you. You will not get closure on ended relationships.

You will lose friends too soon. People who don’t deserve to get sick will get sick and leave you. People deserving of punishment will enjoy a life they didn’t earn.

Strangers will be nasty to you and you will never see them again. Very bad things will happen to some of you.

Life can be a burden.

It isn’t for wimps, the soft, or the faint of heart. It’s a raw game that dishes out raw deals on a daily basis.

But if you can accept the burdens willingly, if you can choose to learn from them, not to become bitter, to move forward, you will grow and find purpose.

If you can be strengthened by the series of storms that come your way, you will find that you have a life that is well worth living.

You will find there is an abundance of happiness right there waiting for you if you choose to accept it.

-Sean Kernan

Their are some arguments that signal the end of a relationship as :

1. ARGUMENTS OVER LIFE GOALS

A long-term relationship usually involves two people who both respect each other’s goals and desire similar things out of life. In committed relationships, a couple has usually already discussed where their lives together are heading. They have a general idea of where they want to be, and that future always includes each other.

But suddenly, you’re starting to fight over your life goals. Your ambitions don’t seem to match up anymore. You find yourself wondering if you even can still see your partner in your future ten years ahead. If those goals don’t align anymore, you may no longer be compatible. Some affected goals may be:

• Where you want to live or work
• Whether you want children, and how many
• Religious or spiritual beliefs
• Financial management
• Lifestyle goals

Long-term couples don’t need to have everything in common when it comes to their future plans – but they should share a similar overview or idea of where they’re going. No amount of positive thinking will help you if you spend ten more years with someone, only to find that you reach an impasse after you’ve sacrificed so much to give in to their goals.

2. WHEN YOU ARGUE OVER INTIMACY

Many people discount the influence of intimacy over the health of a relationship. But since good intimacy is often about good communication, if your bond is breaking down outside of the bedroom, it won’t be long until it falls apart within the bedroom, too.

It’s not unusual for partners to have different interests, kinks, preferences, and libido levels when it comes to intimacy. But when you start to argue about your differences in the bedroom, you’re heading right for Splitsville. This also indicates that at least one of you is unsatisfied physically, which is not healthy and can cause romantic relationships to feel platonic.

Intimacy should come naturally. Neither partner should feel forced or guilty regarding what goes on – or doesn’t go on – in the bedroom. If you begin finding fault with each other’s bedroom habits, you are no longer physically compatible.

Physical communication is just as important as verbal communication. If you find yourselves stuttering and struggling in bed, you may have overlooked some serious relationship problems everywhere else.

-Jonathan S. Perkins

Will you start by “listening” and starting to read TODAY?

 “You’re too young to start a business, Son! There are no shortcuts!” my dad told me before I started my parking lot business outside my college campus.

“Come on! It can’t be that difficult, Dad! I’ll figure it out!”

I failed!

“Son, hard work is not good enough! You’ve got to work smart and stay disciplined!”

“You're telling me I’m stupid, Dad? What’s wrong with you!”

A few months later, still during my College years, I tried my second business … I purchased a Xerox machine to sell photocopies to students in an apartment building.

I failed!

My dad patiently was watching me fail.

Humiliated, I finally started listening to him.

“It’s not just your hard work, Son; It’s how smart you work!” he insisted.

What do you mean smart work? I asked offended.

“Son, in life you either learn from others’ mistakes or you learn from your own. It’s cheaper and faster to learn form others’ mistakes! You need to develop the habit of reading and listening to others!”

“Reading? That’s boring! Listening? I can hear you, Dad! I’m NOT deaf!”

After several years I finally understood the lessons my dad was trying to teach me.

“Never minimize the power of a book, Son! Books give you the experience of a lifetime in just a few hours. Imagine living 100 years in one year! What would that result in?”

“What do you mean, Dad?”

“If you develop the habit of reading, you could read 100 books in a year! That’s 100 years of knowledge!”

For the first time, I listened to him and I never forgot that!

Books are amazing! There may be thousands of books in a library or a book store, but their abundance will NEVER be a commodity. Never minimize the value of the wisdom each book contains!

1. Wealthy people develop the habit of reading.
2. Wealthy people develop the habit of listening to others, the reason they surround themselves with the best advisors in the world.

Will you start by “listening” and starting to read TODAY?

-Hector Quintanilla