Raging in Beijing: Round 2

So I'm off to Beijing again for the summer in eight hours or so. This is kind of noteworthy as a) I'm going to be there for almost 10 weeks b) Blogspot is banned in China c) I have no idea what I'm doing at all there and d) Beijing is where this blog began.

This experience should be very different than my first time when I came as a wide-eyed 19 year old, although in many ways its not. I still don't speak fluent Mandarin, I'm still in the same part of town, I'm there for just about the same time period, and the Celtics are back in the NBA finals.

I don't have much time cause I really need to get to sleep, hence all the placekeeping posts I just made, but basically I'm excited to go back to Beijing. After the nostalgia of returning to places not seen in 2 years wears off, I hope to have a more complete experience in Beijing. I hope to see many more places in the city, learn so much more about actual Chinese culture and essentially live there like I would any where else. The language need not be a barrier. The food, the smog, the crowds, I'm going to soak them all in.

I say this now.

Wish me luck.

Georgetown as an Asian American

I started this post on May 29, 2010 and now I'm editing it on January 14th, 2011. Perhaps that's some indication of how much I have to say on this subject, or perhaps how difficult it is for me to say it. Without a doubt, transforming my understanding of race, especially my own race, was one of the most important legacies my college education left me. This post is titled Georgetown as an Asian American but it could just as well be titled America as an Asian American, or simply The Asian American Experience.

I would like to say this is not a social critique. I am not trying to make statements I am not qualified to make but simply to explain my own experiences. And on the whole, my own experiences are pretty good. I have never suffered a racist attack, been disparagingly called a racial slur or been directly refused service on account of my race. I don't think my being an Asian American has negatively affected my chances for success in my country and I don't use my race as an excuse for anything.

Growing up, we were taught that race matters.  We were also taught that we are all created equal and to judge a person by his/her character and not their skin color.  However by studying or celebrating race, whether it was stressing the history of Hanukah during the Christmas season or African-American History month, we learned that race matters.  This is good because it does. I’m fine with the education that I had and have issues instead with education that glosses over racial differences.  Ignorance of racial inequality in modern America is inexcusable for US citizens.

However, armed with this knowledge that race matters, our conception of different races would gradually evolve as we became aware of stereotypes. Sure, we were also taught in school that stereotypes were bad, but this didn’t correspond with what we could observe in society. Most of the NBA was black – the stereotype that blacks are good at basketball must be true.  The Asian kids at school were good at math – clearly that was genetic. Even when we saw contradictory examples, our mind ignored them. Stereotypes simplified the big, scary, complicated world and it was easy to choose to believe them.

So coming from a predominantly white town (87%) with a strong Jewish minority (about one third), I went to a diverse but small private high school where there were 3 and a half Asians in my graduating class of 50 – and I’m counting myself as a full Asian. Here I became very self-conscious of stereotypes. I was a strong, unique person, and I didn’t want people to be able to glean details of my life immediately upon meeting me.  Shedding stereotypes was a motivating factor in my decision to drop chess and piano and devote myself to sports.  I worked out obsessively, aiming to make up for my perceived lack of athleticism with hard work. It may seem silly, but I didn’t know if it was possible for me to succeed as an athlete.  I looked around for Asian athlete role models but there were precious few. Even at the ISL level, there were no Asian basketball players. I took this to mean that there was no way I could make varsity basketball.  Now this was true, I wasn’t a good enough dribbler, shooter or passer, but even if there was an Asian basketball star at RL, that wouldn’t have changed my ability.  I had never played organized ball and I didn’t have phenomenal hand-eye coordination – none of that had anything to do with race.  I did see Asians succeed in wrestling, including Milton’s star Ken Lee and our own captain Pete Holland.  I tried to model my own style off of their success, which turned out to be another ill-advised decision.  Ken was a sturdily-built Judo champion and Pete was a flexibility freak – they were not too similar to me athletically, even though they were both Asian.  It wasn’t until senior year when I developed moves that matched my own strengths.

From here I moved on to Georgetown where there were a lot more people of all sorts of backgrounds.  By the end of my freshman year, I discovered that there were two divergent stereotypes of Asians within Georgetown: the white-washed and the fobs.  The white-washed were described as Asians in appearance only, who hung out with white people and didn’t care about their cultural heritage.  The fobs were Asians who only hung out with other Asians and whose mannerisms and interests visibly reflected their cultural heritage.  I found the fob stereotype to be extremely unfamiliar.  At RL, it never crossed my mind to hang out with other Asians.  When there were only two and half others, this seemed bizarre and exclusive.  So who were these people who deliberately sought out other Asian friends? Were they uncomfortable hanging out with other races? But as confusing as the fob stereotype was, I was much more unsettled by the white-washed one.  Clearly, if people were to put one of these two labels on me, they would place that one.  But I didn’t view myself as white-washed – I certainly cared very much about my Chinese upbringing.

Now critics can say that I was white-washed.  Even though I spoke Cantonese and used chopsticks at home and technically was a minority, my social upbringing aligned me much more with the white majority. In outward style, mannerisms, speech and interests, I conformed to that of many white Americans.  There’s some truth in that. Certainly I don’t think the way I was raised qualifies me for affirmative action or that I was disadvantaged.  However, calling me white-washed is a very ignorant viewpoint that glosses over the experiences that all hyphenated Americans share, regardless of upbringing.  An article by Dean Obeidallah reminded me of this.  As Obeidallah writes, whenever an outrageous act of human criminal behavior occurs, minorities inevitably have the same fear: “I hope the guy wasn’t [insert own race].” When Seung-Hui Cho massacred 32 Virginia Tech students, like other Americans I was horrified and saddened. But I was also ashamed because Cho was Asian. I felt the need to prove to other Americans that we as a race were not bad people, that we belonged in this country. And Cho wasn’t even Chinese. I very much doubt that white Americans felt this way when they heard that Jared Loughner was white.  Another shared feature of minorities in this country is our mutual “perking up” of interest when we hear a member of our own race entering uncharted territories.  We naturally follow their careers, but might initially be reluctant to display publicly our support for fear that others will perceive that we are supporting this individual just because we share the same race.

Anyways there I was, not fully comfortable with my identity as an Asian American when I arrived in Beijing on June 1, 2008.  There my conception of race permanently changed. Obviously I saw a society nearly entirely run by Chinese.  Everybody, from the police officers, the street cleaners, the immigration officers, the beggars, the businessmen, the soldiers, the media and the politicians were Chinese.  This struck me because I was used to seeing Chinese people in only limited societal roles.  In the America I grew up in, Asians were either working in restaurants or were successful professionals who had studied hard and done well.  I didn’t know of too many lower middle class Asians or truly influential Asians.  Nor were there many Asians in Hollywood, professional sports, comedy or on the evening news.  But here they did it all, and I was confronted with the simple truth that race was not a physical barrier to any of these professions. There must have been other explanations.  I thought more about the subject.  In my American classrooms, Asians were immediately pegged as nerds.  Here however, there must be Chinese jocks and class clowns and prom kings.

The Chinese people I taught were wholly unaware of the stereotypes we have here in America. They may have had their own stereotypes about themselves, but the fact that they were supposed to be good at math did not affect their life nearly as much as it did mine.  Essentially that summer, I learned all about the power of culture.


In America, many relatively upper class Asian immigrants came to study more a generation or two ago. My mom was one of them. The linguistic and cultural boundaries that they had to overcome was tremendous. My mom wasn't used to learning quietly by rote memory, and was terrified of speaking in class and had to learn painfully how to write research papers before majoring in History.  To that generation, breaking into the white-dominated white collar world was very intimidating.  It was difficult to ace interviews, manage office politics or push people around. It was much easier to study, where hard work paid off in a much more linear manner. And so a lot of Asian immigrants went to law school or medical school, where their degrees were simply too valuable to not merit employment.  I'm forever indebted to my parents, who found success along this path. Perhaps however, this has created both an Asian American stereotype of nerdy bookworms and an Asian American culture of valuing education.  Especially nowadays for poor recent immigrants, education and hard work is seen as the only way out.  As a result, Asians have become so overrepresented at some areas of American life and woefully underrepresented at others.  


This bothered me a little bit, and I tried to live my life as best I could the way I wanted, and defy as many stereotypes as I could along the way.  However, I didn't realize how much effect this could have on young Asian-Americans growing up.  It was my senior year in college on an outreach day to a public high school in Arlington, VA that had hundreds of students of Asian descent. I saw many kids who had grown up like me feeling limited by the stereotypes in our country, but felt even more burdened by them because they were often not of the socioeconomic class that they were assumed to be. Unlike me, many of them felt pressured by their parents to work towards a certain esteemed profession, or rebelled against the high academic standards expected of them. I sensed some teenage angst from kids who felt misunderstood, partly since they couldn't understand themselves. I felt kids who didn't feel like they could complain because they were supposed to be the "model minority." I realized how damaging that term really is, to both other minorities implicitly belittled in the title as well as to the people supposedly exalted by the designation.  I realized then that the environment that Asian-Americans grow up in is extremely varied, evolving, prone to many different responses, and not studied nearly as much as it needs to be.  But culture isn't just about how you're raised, it's also about how society treats you, which is why Asian-Americans do tend to share similar experiences, whether they are wealthy immigrants of Filipino descent or poor 3rd generation Korean-Americans.

The environment in which we grow up is so instrumental to who we are. I now believe that culture is significantly more meaningful than genetics.  Both ultimately have a lot to say with how we look, act, think and believe.  However, lost in this discussion is perhaps the most important trait that defines us as individuals: our individuality. Excuse this recursive definition but I don't know how else to describe precisely those traits that can be wholly attributed to neither genetics nor culture, neither nature nor nurture.  These are the traits that may ultimately determine whether you are a good person or not.  Everyone is an individual first and foremost and should be treated as such.

Georgetown as an Ultimate player

I didn’t know much before I entered college of what life there would be like, but I knew before my senior year of high school that I wanted to play ultimate in college. To understand my ultimate experience in college, you have to realize what it was like in high school and before.

My brother D.J. went to the summer camp CTY where apparently throwing the disc is the thing to do. He came back and threw with me and taught me to throw a forehand. Once I learned the grip, I actually managed to make it fly straight immediately.  Though I’m so far from being an athletic savant, as a 9 year old, I learned to throw a forehand, or flick, quicker than many new college players. It simply came naturally to me, and has been a better throw than my backhand for as long as I’ve been playing. I even tried to show off and threw a flick from our hill onto our neighbor’s roof, where it got stuck.  When I went to summer camps, there were invariably some games of Ultimate Frisbee and I always played. At Camp Coniston, we had a formal team and I threw the disc almost every day.

My high school Roxbury Latin (RL) was small, with 50 boys in each graduating class. With a culture where just about anyone that can play a sport has to, there really aren’t too many free athletes come springtime.  Ultimate at RL should never really exist.  Nonetheless, the indefatigable Luke Joyner (’05) was an absolute Frisbee nut. He went through the painful process of creating a team from scratch, and armed with a few devoted friends, managed to get a bunch of games on Sundays and days before exams after spring sports had ended. I went to a few of those games as a sophomore and then just about all of them as a junior and realized that I loved it. The level of play was atrocious, we had no concept of a stack offense and thus no offense at all, and only a mild understanding of zone defense.  My skills and athleticism thus were shockingly very high for that level. In high school I had worked hard to try to excel at a sport, from basketball to tennis to wrestling to track.  You have no idea how happy I was to be playing well in ultimate.  Not only that but the sport is just an intrinsically fun one. Nowadays, having played over 2,000 hours of ultimate in the last 4 years, it’s funny to see how much I looked forward to playing games then. I often didn’t know when I would next get to play so when I got the chance, I attacked it with absolute voracity.

So after Luke graduated, I agreed to keep the program running. This involved being in touch with the Boston Ultimate people running high school leagues, setting up a schedule, getting uniforms from the athletic director who was otherwise unaware of us, and most importantly recruiting players.  People at RL are busy and think they’re busier, so even some people interested in playing would turn down the opportunity. Furthermore, the people who weren’t interested in playing thought ultimate was a complete joke. I constantly faced a stigma associated with the sport – it was seen as a nerd game, not a real sport for real athletes. This is a big problem because you need real athletes to win at ultimate. You need people who were some combination of tall, fast, skilled, coordinated, agile or explosive.  So I spent a lot of time trying to convince my athletic friends to play, and somehow kind of succeeded. In our first game against Arlington we put out a really good team and trounced our opponents. In another game against a good Belmont High squad, we lost by 1 after two of our best players had to leave at halftime.  The rest of the games were a struggle trying to scrape together 7 people to put on the field without subs, regardless if they had any of the above physical characteristics.  I had to cancel many games because we simply didn’t have enough people to come. It was very stressful and sometimes depressing. I found better success playing in organized summer league but my ultimate experience before entering college was unsatisfactory.

 I arrived as a freshman super eager to play, emailing the captains and attending their first practice even though freshmen hadn’t really been invited yet. I thought I was good because I had good throws and I ran track, so I had to be faster than these schmoes. With that mentality, freshman year was doomed to be a disappointment. Though I had 2 years of organized ultimate experience, I didn’t realize how amateurish the level of play had been.  I still didn’t know what a stack offense, the most basic offense, was which befuddled our coach. I clearly didn’t make a good first impression with my undeserved cockiness. Playing time, which I would complain about for all four years, was justifiably minimal that year. I had the makings of a good forehand huck then, still my strength, but I wanted to throw it all the time. I really didn’t know how to manage the game and I couldn’t guard a chair.  Also as a freshman, I always had the worst seat on our long car rides and invariably slept on the floor of the cheap motels we’d book.  The lowlight may have been a day tournament at UMaryland in early spring, where it inexplicably began snowing. We were all inadequately dressed but our team at the time was quite small and so most players stayed warm by playing. Rooted to the bench, I nearly froze to death. I had to leave and go to the bathroom during the game in order to warm up. All my digits had gone numb and even if I was allowed to play, I wouldn’t have been able to do anything.  Nothing about that day reminded me about ultimate, the fun sport I had always loved.

I was so mad at the nonexistent playing time that I actually didn’t go to the second day of sectionals, citing a brutal paper.  I seriously reflected on whether I wanted to continue playing.  As negative as my experience that year had been, I still knew that it was what I wanted to do. I still loved the sport and I loved that we got to practice 3 times a week and that we played, and I played, every practice.  Coming from high school where the sport wasn’t even viewed as legitimate, it was still great to be surrounded by people who dedicated themselves to becoming better players.

My coach that year wrote us all an individual letter on how to get better over the summer. I read mine 50 times and took it to heart. That summer, despite teaching tennis in the mornings and working downtown in the afternoon, I played ultimate two or three times a week and worked out one or two more times.  I joined a summer club team that turned out to be a ton of fun and found consistent pickup games to go to.  I ran whenever I could and jump roped whenever I couldn’t. That was also the summer I did Air Alert, this brutal workout that increases vertical leap. Actually writing this all done, I’m really stunned I was able to do that. I must not have hung out with friends too much.

So sophomore year was a lot better. I hit the ground running much improved and really saw playing time all year.  During our spring break tournament to High Tide, injuries and odd circumstances had left me as the only experienced handler on the team. For three days, I split the handling duties with 3 freshman.  I distinctly recall playing 8 or 9 points in a row at times and I may never have been more sore. Combined with the Vietnam War beer pong we played at the beach house that we trashed, that was still one of the most memorable experiences of ultimate and indeed all of college.  Also during sophomore year was Trouble in Vegas, another 3 day tournament in Las Vegas dubbed “The Best and Worst Idea Ever.” What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but that was also one of the highlights of college.

Sophomore year ultimately ended with a disappointing sectionals tournament, in which I played particularly bad and was rewarded with less playing time. That summer and fall though, when I went to Beijing and Dublin, would not only permanently change me, but also change the way I saw ultimate.  A random introduction in Brown actually gave me a Beijing ultimate friend before I even arrived, and combined with a simple Google search, it was not hard for me to find the one weekly pickup game (though I did get disastrously lost the first time I went) and joining the one league which played on Sundays.   So I played twice a week in the smoggy Beijing air and loved it. Mostly an expatriate group, there were a growing number of Chinese natives playing with us and we often had to conduct stall counts bilingually. The group was also very outgoing and friendly and both games were often followed up with dinner and drinks.  When I sprained my ankle at the end of the summer during a game, I had three people calling up and checking in on me. I had never realized how much of a social tool ultimate could be but it provided me with a great group of friends in a totally foreign city.

Dublin was an even better example of the social power of ultimate. As a study abroad student only there for a semester, it was surprisingly hard to make real Irish friends. We didn’t live on campus (and neither did they for the most part) and were generally in very different stages of life. Many of my American friends never really made any Irish friends.  I wouldn’t have either if I didn’t join Chilly O, UCD’s club team.

Ireland is such a small country and ultimate such a new sport that the level of play was very low, which I thought amusing.  Our team captain, who was quite a good athlete but didn’t have a fully reliable flick, was actually on the Irish National Team. The 2008 Cork Open had basically all the best players in the country and I looked around and realized I had some of the better throws among them.  Besides the ego boost, the other great perk for playing with Chilly O was partying with them which was also an eye-opening experience. Let’s leave it at that.

The rest of junior year, American side, was very disappointing with my developing tendinitis in my ankle, a vestige of my flat foot combined with the sprain.  Contrastingly, our team that year, led by the twin towers Logan Rhyne and T.J. Ryan and the not so towering Alex Laws, became our best team ever. Our program had never made it to Regionals, always stymied by either the University of Maryland, the Univeristy of Delaware, or the hated George Washington University. Still the best game I’ve ever participated in was our game at 2009 Sectionals against GW. The winner would make regionals, the loser would have to win two more games to qualify.  In a tight battle where every offensive possession was tense, we found ourselves down two breaks at halftime.  In the second half, down 9-6, we finally got our break on what amounted to a Hail Mary pass that Nick Corey managed to come down with, over at least 4 other people. From that point on, the intensity on the sideline became immense, with the B team and the women’s team arriving from their games. Every yell helped change the outcome and we had this amazing momentum that I have not felt before or since. We ended up winning on a long huck by Logan that two of our players could have gotten.  Alex Wilson took charge and layed out through to fully secure our first ever berth to Regionals.

With such drama, Senior year would be hard to top. But personally, there was no comparison. One of the greatest parts of being part of a student organization for four years is the leadership you’re given towards the end of your run. Even though I wasn’t elected to any positions, by default I had a lot to do. For example, we needed 21 year olds to rent the cars (and throw the parties) and as such, I was much more privy to the organization behind our exploits that I had just taken for granted as a freshman.

Every ultimate player I know has independently “created” a personal highlight video in our heads, that we play whenever we want to pump ourselves up.  A lowlight video could also be assembled but that would just be depressing.  The highlight of my highlights are both games that took place on campus.  As seniors, we managed to host the national-contending UVA team in February.  On a Saturday night at Harbin field, about 150 fans attended the game, about the average size of the football crowds that also assemble there.  For me, it was the culmination of everything this sport has meant to me. With our friends actively cheering us on, it was a confirmation that my involvement with this silly game had achieved recognition.  I didn’t play that well in the game, but I left with a highlight which is all I need to take away. Catching a continuation pass on the backhand side of the field, I immediately looked for people going deep. Forced forehand, this was not a good position to huck. Nevertheless I saw Mike Drost streaking deep, several steps ahead of his man. Reacting entirely instinctively, I let the pass fly and was shocked by how straight it flew. When Mike secured it in the back of the end zone, I experienced a high of a lifetime.  If nothing else, all the practices, sleeping on the floor of dirty ends, suicides and track workouts that made me throw up, games in terrible weather – if all of that made that moment possible, it was worth it.

Georgetown as a Catholic

There are a number of facts that surprise many of my friends and acquaintances at Georgetown. For example I took Spanish freshman year. I used to be able to touch the bottom of a basketball rim. I used to teach tennis. I used to work as a vendor at Fenway Park.. I took piano lessons for 9 years. I am estranged from my best friend in high school. I am not half-white. And amazingly, Kerry Burke did not realize that I played college ultimate until January of this year. Also, I am a practicing Catholic and go to Mass perhaps 3 out of every 4 Sundays.

Most of the facts are relatively secret because they are not typically relevant in everyday life. It’s hard to make that same argument for religion. If it’s not relevant in your day-to-day life then you’re not religious. I think for me, I’ve just never been super comfortable discussing my religion. As a result, I have really kept that part of my life private and never had a problem with that. Georgetown though gave me a great chance to expand my faith, both internally through self-reflection, and externally through discussion with peers.

First off, Georgetown is an interesting school because it seems to try to brand itself as a great resource of a dichotomy of services. On one hand, it is one of the best schools for international study in the country, served by its location in the uber international relevant Washington D.C., the Walsh School of Foreign Service and the well renown Government departments, the presence of Bill Clinton as the school’s most prolific alum and the large international student population and study abroad program. On the other hand, Georgetown is also seen as one of the best, if not best Catholic universities in the country with a steep Jesuit tradition. These two characteristics may not seem contradictory but let me show you some interesting ramifications.

All students apply to Georgetown because of its academic reputation, but many do so without even realizing that it is a Jesuit University. I’d imagine that at least 75% of the incoming freshman class would not be able to explain what a Jesuit is. I barely could and I went to a Jesuit church at Boston College for all my life. The name Georgetown University, unlike say St. Michael’s, does not imply anything religious. Thus to many high school seniors, Georgetown is on their List alongside many Ivy League schools (by rule having no religious affiliation) or schools like Duke, Tufts, NYU. Georgetown is probably the only religious school they apply to. For me, it was only one of two, with Villanova being my safety school. For many other students though, Georgetown is on their List precisely because of its Jesuit heritage. I met many a Midwesterner, to pick on a region, who went to Catholic high school and applied en masse to the likes of Notre Dame, Boston College, Villanova, Fordham, Santa Clara etc. There is nothing wrong with either of these two “approaches,” and neither are these two mentalities indicative of even a majority of Georgetown. It is simply a pattern that I have empirically noticed.

One of my other best friends from high school, Greg, went to Notre Dame. Through talking with him and studying abroad with him and his Notre Dame friends in Dublin, I am very well aware that Georgetown and Notre Dame are completely different schools. Though rivals on the Big East basketball arena and for those top Catholic students, the two schools approach their religious identities very differently. Specifically, Catholicism is a very public and ostentatious part of life at Notre Dame. At Georgetown, Catholicism can be a very present part of students’ lives, but normally I think the school keeps it rather reserved. If you don’t look for it, you might never even realize it existed. At Georgetown, Catholics, especially practicing ones, don’t even make up a majority. At Notre Dame, they completely dominate. These different student pools represent a huge divide. The vast majority of Catholics at Georgetown are white, and I think it’s safe to say the same for the Notre Dame (perhaps the least diverse of the top American universities) Fighting Irish. I’d even guess that I think Hispanics are underrepresented within the Catholic sphere, but I can’t support this with any data. Georgetown admissions is only trying to find more diversity and I’d imagine that there is a mentality that we don’t want to be seen by minorities as a big white Catholic enclave. Furthermore, Georgetown also fancies itself as a setting for interreligious dialogue. There is a strong Muslim community, who are well supported by the school including a communal living area in Village B. I know that some Muslim kids chose to come to Georgetown because they heard from the older students they met that Georgetown was a good place to practice their faith. The way Georgetown incorporates students of different faiths is a great embodiment of their mission to promote intercultural understanding as well as Jesuit ideals of tolerance and peace.

Greg tells me that evening Mass is one of the bigger social events on campus and that bringing a date to that Mass spawns a lot of gossip. Georgetown has a few Masses that are an important part of a social calendar, notably what became the 7:30pm Mass, and a lot of people do go with friends or in groups. For me though, I was generally more comfortable going alone. I was also used to going to Mass in the morning, and Sunday mornings at Dahlgren Chapel surprisingly have as many adult outsiders as students. I never found one set Mass that I consistently went to, kinda jumping around. I did sometimes sit with my friends when I saw them too and in my last 2 years I would arrange to go with a friend or two more often. But I don’t believe that going solo was too unusual, simply from observing the congregations. There were also plenty of times that I’d make a surprising discovery that a friend was Catholic. So basically while I may not represent the norm, I don’t think my experience was too unusual.

The turning point of my Catholic experience at Georgetown was clearly Junior spring when I went on an Agape retreat. I had been aware of these retreats (Christian in nature, though open to all faiths) for some time but I had never seriously considered going. Weekends at Georgetown are always so packed with events too. Nevertheless, my friend Karina Ramirez, a leader on that trip, urged me to go (bribing me with a chocolate chip cookie). You could say she caught me the right time – not only was that weekend free except for the Super Bowl that we’d be back in time for but I was also struggling to readjust back to Georgetown at the time. I really wanted to reexamine what was important to me as well as meet new people. Agape did not disappoint.

It’s extremely difficult for me to write about the Agape experience because it felt like a different world. We broke into smaller groups and talked about our faith, our different experiences, our shortcomings, our triumphs, our hopes. I met many fellow students who were very willing to discuss to faith and how it affected their very relatable lives. Some of the people on the retreat described spiritual journeys unlike anything I had ever heard of. From the retreat center is rural Maryland, everything at school seemed so simple. I saw that I wasn’t living the way I wanted and I saw that I could change that. I’d treat my friends better, I’d waste less time and get my work done and I’d act much less selfish because God always came first. It was very easy to be so idealistic there, and if I’d measure the rest of my college career from that, then it was a complete failure. Getting back into the daily grind of the college work week, the lessons and guilt trips from Agape gradually faded.

Yet it did leave a significant imprint on my life. I recognized when I was being selfish, when I wasn’t being grateful enough for all I had, and I admitted that I had been living too much like a hedonist. I also knew that that simply wasn’t who I was. I wasn’t raised to take the easy path, nor to neglect people who deserved love, nor to live without a care. Though I may rarely mention His name in company, God is a very important part of who I am. Subconsciously I think I became a much better person senior year.

Honestly I’m surprised how much I was able to write on this subject.

Georgetown as a Math Major

So I'm going to write 4 posts about my experience at Georgetown, through my eyes as a Math Major, Catholic, Ultimate player and human being. The last one will be difficult because I've actually been an alien masquerading as a human to see what this whole college deal is about, but I have confidence I can pull it off. So let's talk about math. If you don't want to read numbers or puns, I'd suggest leaving this page immediately.

Studying mathematics at Georgetown required me to solve many, many problems, but perhaps the most difficult problem I faced in my major was in explaining my major. I was asked what my major was over an estimated 250 times during my college career, and each time I truthfully responded. Perhaps 80% of the time I got a response similar to one of the following: "Oh wow that's impressive" or "Ah I hate math" or "I'm so bad at math. You must be so smart." I think that as far as majors go, Mathematics may be one of the more provocative ones. If I had told people I was majoring in Linguistics, people would be like, "oh that's cool" and move on, intent on not letting their ignorance in the subject show. Similarly, many random observers may have no opinions on Anthropology or International Health or African American Studies, and will politely nod and similarly move on. A major like English or History on the other hand, will almost certainly lead to further questioning. "Oh what are some of your favorite authors? What kind of writing do you do?" or "What regions are you studying? What time periods?" Very relatable majors are likewise very conversation friendly.

On the other hand, I strongly feel that math is an extremely conversation unfriendly major. Everybody has an opinion on math and knows what it is, even if they have no concept of higher level of math. However, a typical liberal artsy individual will have not contemplated math in the slightest for several years and will inevitably find it difficult to relate to. Oftentimes they will transfer this incomprehension to their understanding of me, as if my major says everything about me, and treat me as a foreign enigma. These always created very awkward scenarios which over the years I attempted to diffuse by either saying "It's actually really not too bad, there's so little work" or "Nah, it's as easy as pi" or "Math isn't hard. You're just dumb." Just kidding on the last one. Maybe the most offensive comment I ever received was "But Georgetown isn't well known for math!"

Besides the way other people view my major, I also took some classes and hung out with people of the same major. This was a whole new scenario. First though, I should in fact explain how I became a math major, and it has nothing to do with the fact that both Calculus and Calculator start with Cal, although I do love things that start with Cal. I actually gave this a lot of thought freshman year, after coming in tentatively as an econ major and almost immediately hating it. I took a long look at the list of possible majors and was shocked at the paucity of suitable studies. Alphabetically down the list it was like "American Musical Culture: no. American Studies: no. Arabic: no. Art History: no. Biochemistry: no.... English: ehhh maybe...Government: ehh too cliched....Mathematics: maybe...Sociology: no. Theater and Performing Arts: no.

So actually my decision came down to English and Math, which is almost as ridiculous as it looks. Yes from the viewpoint of an alum, I cannot see myself ever majoring in English. English majors simply see the world differently than I do, in an artistic meta-narrative where they search for the deep feelings to express in the most poetic ways imaginable. I just use the same big words they use to try to create a pretense of acute acuity.

But to me as a freshman, I was coming from a high school where there was definitely an emphasis on learning for the sake of learning. Our school didn't try to prepare anyone for a career right after high school - we never could learn anything substantive. I mean, Ancient Greek and Latin were 2 of the 3 languages offered. However, I do deem the knowledge that Roxbury Latin bestowed upon us as somewhat profound. When I went to college, I saw all these departments and classes that seemed to teach a very specific, superficial study. Nowadays, I would very much respect a class on Depictions of the United States within New Zealand Literature, but as a freshman I would have completely scoffed at that course (which is being offered next fall). Why would I want to study a random, specific viewpoint of someone else? A different chain of events would have led to different viewpoints and a different class. Essentially history is the study of what other people have done. Along with the social sciences, these studies are determined by the makeup of human society. On the other hand, math and the hard sciences were pure subjects (but I hate science, little known fact). Even if humanity never came into being, the derivative of e^x would be e^x. I saw math as the type of pure knowledge that one could only learn in college. Where does English fit into this? As a major where most classes involve reading what some other people have written, it really doesn't. But I've always loved writing and have always wanted to improve my writing, and majoring in becoming a better writing seemed quite noble to me.

But I knew I was better in math and that may have been ultimately what drew me into the major. The class had been my strength since I figured out fractions before everyone else in 3rd grade. I felt that in high school I had challenged myself but not playing to my strengths, devoting my efforts to the wrestling team, not the chess team. Now was a time to get a major GPA that'd be higher than my regular GPA.

Senior Week

So I was completely done with undergraduate coursework, 4 days away from graduating and anticipating a full week of planned debauchery that is Senior Week.  Thursday night at McFaddens was one of the best nights of the year and somehow I still managed to graduate with honors. So basically life was perfect.

And then somehow I found myself with mono, strep throat and a stye in my right eye that prevented me from wearing contacts. I was forbidden from consuming alcohol or engaging in physical exertion, and given an odd ointment for my eye.  Senior week became a drowsy, sober, and glasses-donning ordeal that really wasn't much to write home about. Really, my ill health could know no worse timing - the sheer amount of fun I missed out on could probably fill books.  My mono affliction also came with typical jokes, along the lines of "was it worth it?" although I most likely contracted mono from sharing cups or something equally mundane.

I did finally manage to publish the Crossword anthology, which was a lot of fun and came out really well. It's called "Georgetown Without a Clue" and I guess I'm still selling them for $9, but you have to find me.  I'm also on a new MacBook Pro, which my parents overgenerously gave me for graduation, and it is absolutely amazing. Since my last computer was about a cubic meter in volume with a battery life of 50 minutes, I'm basically ecstatic to have a computer about an inch thin with a 6 hour battery.

On Sunday I head back to Beijing, the birthplace of this blog. I still remember when I first arrived in that city 2 years ago, and was so flooded with new thoughts, impressions and emotions that I just had to write them down and so this site began. And it's kinda still going, so I'm happy about that.  But first I'd like to reflect on college in the next few posts and try to explain how Georgetown affected me in all different aspects.