Alternative Value

So I was in the PGCSAB: provost and graduate college student advisory board. The work is boring, we discuss different administrative policies in graduate college (like gradlinks, student insurance stuff etc) and provide recommendations and feedback. Then I really don’t want to do it anymore because of the boring nature of the job, but I thought it’s good to spend minimum time on it and put it on my resume, and it’s a good chance to get to know American public university stuff and observe how American people talk and discuss things under such circumstance. (even for such a meeting, I am trying to be a human behaviorist)

Then I ask myself, with the 2 hours that I have to be in the meeting, what else I could have done with it if I am not on this board? Shit I could have done a heck lot more interesting stuff.

So each thing in the world has some attractive parts to drive you to do it, at the same time there are always more interesting/important things to do. I have been always trapped in tons of tasks that is “valuable” but not necessarily worth the time comparing to the alternatives.

So my conclusion is, in choosing what to do, I should not look at the value of that thing itself, instead I should think about what’s the alternative. Value is relative in this case and I should do the things that have no better alternatives.

So I resigned from the board and start to read tons of books that are piling up on my shelve, how awesomely nerdy I am.

what I want to do with my life

Just figured out what I want to do with my life.

First I am going to become a business management or technology consultant for a big firm.  Then I will see if I want to climb the cooperate ladder or I want to start my own business. Probably the later because of the fun of challenge and freedom. At my spare time (I will try to create as much spare time possible :), I will read a lot books, indulge myself in learning whatever I am interested in learning, making interesting/intelligent friends, get a family (Maybe...), travel around the world,  write books, learn music, and so on and so on. And important thing to remember: I can change or quit any time I like. No pressure with it, it’s MY OWN CHOICE

Well my interest is very diverse, (writing, psychology, philosophy, music, painting, computer programming, linguistics, sports, management, genomics, medicine etc etc.) and I am intelligent enough to pursue any one of my interest as career. But the problem is I also get bored very easily, as is the case in Biology. I can predict that 90% of the chance whatever career I pursue as long as I have to dig into a small narrow area which requires tons of repetition I will get bored very soon. I have been confused at which one to choose because whatever path I take it seems to narrow down my life choice and fun so enormously.

So the reason to choose business/company is that even if I get bored of it eventually, I will not have to worry about money when I decide to switch to another area, say, archeology or philosophy, or art. I have about equal interest in so many different disciplines so why not choose one interest which guarantees the financial safety of my future alternative choices?

I believe this is a very sound logic and right now I am highly interested in business consulting and start-up anyway, because of the challenges, uncertainties, as well as the excitement of learning about different industry and creating new ones. And I am not going to limit my life just in this area because that will guarantee I get bored very soon. Actually life is just an open pool of options and opportunities, it’s ourselves that choose to shut down so much on our way without realizing it. It feels like you are “trapped” in life that’s mostly because you don’t get to jump out of the cliches and really be logical and fearless and think what you want and how to get it, instead you get hooked up on opinions of other people, which really don’t matter.

So back to right now what do I do? I will keep looking for jobs like what I am doing right now, if I can find a business consulting job OK awesome. If I can’t well I can always start with internship, or smaller companies. Still can’t? OK no problem, go get a MBA, or any other business degree, or any other related industry experience. Worrying about being “too old”? what is “too old”, how old is too old? so if you don’t get a degree first you will be two years younger? time passes just homogeneously regardless of what you do.  when you are 30, your friends that are the same age as you are now are 30 as well! it’s not like in the whole world only you are aging! Plus life is about the process not the end result, it is cliche but so true. You can do tons of things during any time of your life and it’s your choice what do you want to do or not want to do or how to spend your time, it’s your choice and your decision, it is completely illogical to decide something and then attack yourself for that decision.

I believe each career has a lot of unique shinning points to offer. as is business consulting and company, you will first deal with the problems of being a small fish, well there are ways to solve problems. ( and if there is no solution then why worry about it at all), as you grow senior there will be the problems of being in the leadership and control position which should be more stressful for sure, and which requires you to learn much more about management and human relationships, which is so fun man!

I don’t know when I will get tired of it but hey, just remember one thing: you are a free-willed human being, and you are blessed with intelligence and competence, which give you so many choices in life, and you can pack and leave any time. In short, you won’t be happy doing only one thing for your life (unlike those bullshitty text book or articles told u to), and you are intelligent enough to do multiple things simultaneously, so why the hell limit yourself in just one thing?

One more crucial thing: there are ups and downs in whatever path you take, when you are in the lows, remember the highs, and remember each path is like this. Human happiness is very complex, sometimes it comes when you know you have no other choice, knowing your flexibility and freedom can give you huge frustration, it’s like when you know you have no way out of miserableness you might as well just turn it into something fun. Knowing that you have alternative choice might lead you to jump from one kind of miserableness to another without a satisfying result. So now you need to unhook your happiness from a particular career or job, instead hook up your happiness with your own person, you are a worthwhile person and you can be happy whatever you do, and of course there are happier and less happy ones so you might as well CHOOSE the happy one.

Man one more thing, oh it’s so subtle to explain....well, there is a giant difference between the happiness of indulge yourself in your instinct and the happiness of exerting your will power (power of choice) . Sleeping, eating, sex these are fun but only to that particular moment, Things like achievements and learning could be boring or even painful but could lead to greater happiness/satisfaction, we have limited time, most times you have to choose between different kind of happiness. It’s a very difficult and subtle art which requires a person’s lifetime to master. But hey whatever happens, remember you can CHOOSE. No worries, no fear, and no regret.

Book review, March 2012

Three books:
1. The last lecture by Randy Pausch
2. Gifted grownups--the mixed blessings of extradinary potential by Marylou Kelly streznewski
3. Smart girls, gifted Woman, By Barbara A. Kerr



1. The last Lecture
by Randy Pausch
a computer science professor at CMU got pancreatic cancer. he gave a "last lecture" talking about how to live. The video got very famous then he wrote this book.
It's a semi-autography, about his childhood dreams and how he adventures to achieve them. also something about how to live his life.
There are two parts that's really special unique meaning to me,
First, of course it's about how childhood upbring determine the course of a person's life, which is the topic that I have always been interested in. His parents are both very curious and "nerdy" person that encourages exploration and gaining of knowledge, and so on and so on, I am not getting into detail here.
Second, it's about how he faced his cancer; he is so fucking practical! he basically planned how to spent his rest of the time to better benifit his family. He sold their house, and moved the entire family to virginia, where his wives family is. And then he did various things and basically lived a normal life. the way he looked at death is basically "oh well, now I have to do a lot of things in a short amount of time", a lot of things are impossible to do, for example watching his son growing up, but others that could be done, he tried to do them.
Yeah so it is practical, but so what, that's the whole point of death, we have a limited time in the world and how we spend it. He just have a shorter time in a sudden notice. Essentially we are doing the same thing.


2. Gifted grownups--the mixed blessings of extradinary potential
by Marylou Kelly streznewski

It's one of the most awesome and awakening books I've read.
Everything about the book could be seen from the title, and I want to stress the word "Mixed Blessing", which because I have been suffering from so far, and this book is certainly one of the keys to avoid a lot of the suffering.
So the author interviewed about 50 very gifted children and talked with them after they grow up into their adulthood. She presented their stories and summarized the common feelings/frustrations originated from extradinary potential, as well as ways to counter them.
So the book has three parts; I: what's the characteristics of gifted grownups, which I strongly identify myself to. II: the experience of a smart kids growing up, for instance, bored at school, family problems, loneliess etc etc. III: some specially interesting topics like personality disorder that's essentially giftedness, how they finding similar minds (friends and lovers), gifted woman and underachievements.
it bascially addressed a hell of the problems I have been confronting, some of which I didn't even know I have or I attributed to other reasons. This book puts a lot of my concepts and views in place. For example, I have been having a hard time in team work, because I am always impatient, I feel others are very slow and stupid and low efficient. But If I expressed my feelings nobody will like me, if I don't express my feelings I will suffer a lot during the slow and low-efficient team work. before reading this book, I thought it's all my "fault", that I should have been more patient and repect/appreciate others more, blabla, but hey, over the years I have been trying to be more patient and appreciative, but really it's not that I am wrong, it's just that I am smarter and faster than most people. Realizing this fact (instead of blaming myself) is a huge step to better function as a person and in a team, as well as in making some of my life choices.
Another example, I have been feeling "different" from all others for my entire life. Then I blamed myself for being different, and strange, and unable to fit in. the book pointed out all gifted adults have been feeling the same and the reason that it's hard to fit in is just that more gifted mind could be threatening to others and could make yourself bored very easily. Then the book talked about how to find the "alike" mind, which is of tremoudous help for me to find friends that I can truely relate to in a deep and intense level that I always wanted, instead of trying to hang out of normal people and "adapt to" the normal life style, which will never work.
Well in summary, knowing all the facts of the giftedness and knowing that people similar to me do exit are giant spetacular improvement of my view about myself and the world. I should have read this book maybe back in middle school, and that would have saved me so much trouble and frustrations.

Some interesting books and ideas quoted from this book:
the making of Americans by Gertrude Stein, a gifted woman
the cinderalla complex: fear of success and desire of being cared for. "like cinderella, woman today are still waiting for something external to transform their lives." Woman caught up in the Cinderella complex are "too angry to stay behind and too frighted to move ahead

3. Smart girls, gifted Woman
By Barbara A. Kerr

a similar book to the "gifted grownups" but specifically talking about one gender. the special part about this book are two:
it talked about the stories of a few famously successful woman in history and discussed what's the special characteristics to make them more successful than other similarly gifted woman, as it is very common for underachievement to happen in this gender because of social influence. So the two points that I remembered the author summarized, are: 1. having a unlimited/financial well being while growing up. So they feel free to pursue their intellectual interest. 2. the second part will go to the next point
what kind of relationships that gifted woman have. So the best man you could have just exact opposite of the popular standard. A macho confident protective handsome popular successful man is exactly the one you should avoid. for the reasons that you need a man's nourishing and understanding to give you chance to fully develop and utilize your potential, while this popular Standard man requires your nourish and support while ignoring your blazant talent. the most painful thing for woman like you is that your talent get ignored and muffled. So the book is telling you to look for caring nourishing man that understands you, which I totally agree with my previous experience and logic.
but the sad thing is the social expectation and such, women are considered to be "successful" if they manage to "capture" a standard popular man, thus a lot of gifted woman spend tons of time getting the man that doesn't give them things they need for full growth.

Finally, I am totally familiar of the "fear of success" that the books decribes. For example, when I am writing this book review, I feel I have so many thoughts pouring out of my mind that I don't even have time to type them up, and a lof of them are so brilliant and more is coming, that I am so scared. For the reasons of: 1. where am I going? I am like standing in the nobody's land intellectualwise, only I have been travelled there in my mind while nobody has reached, it felt so lonly and scary  2. what am I going to do with all my brilliance? I am so fast, I am so deep, I am so intense, I can do so many things at one time and my mind is running like a fast burning machine, what do I do with it? will people realize what I really am? apparently so far no one really know my potential. it's a feeling of lost and lonliness, combined with a sense of high. together, they lead me to be scared of myself, and scared of possible success, because somehow success is like too much of a burden and even very lonly. (even though I am very lonly anyway with or without success)

Thoughts about passing of time and patience

When I am reading my "toxic parents" book recently, I noticed that I have two contradicting feelings: first, I really read it slow because I want to write down a lot of my thoughts, reciprocation and questions related to the reading so I can get maximum from reading it and get to express my thinking; second, I want to finish it fast so that I can read other books and get even more information. It's a very interesting contradiction, both originated from my curiosity and desire to get more knowledge. the later is also motivated more external motivation of reading tons of books.

I decided the first way is the way to go. Why? Because reading is just one-way communication, people forget what they read all the time. After thinking and writing about it in my own perspective, I incorporated the ideas into my own life, I examined the idea and decided to accept it or reject it. This way I am not just brainwashed by the author, instead I had a conversation with the author gaining deeper understanding with different ideas, and I get to be analytic, thoughtful and creative in the process, which is what I wanted. Just blindly rushing from one book to the next is just too superficial and doesn’t give me what I want.

However, an even more interesting phenomenon to examine here: why would I feel the urge/hurry to finish the book faster than the most productive/creative pace which is slower? I see my similar behavior in other aspects of my life: trying to finish a chess/card game quickly while sacrificing the chance of winning; Wanting shortcuts; don’t have the patience to plan and reevaluate plans; when I do plan I make sure my schedule is completely full that there is no zoom for turning around and think; In a hurry to do nearly everything.

Well the result of these facts is that I keep repeating the same pattern over and over again without realizing what I am doing and content at the fact that “I didn’t waste time”.

So behind my behavior there is a belief: “the more I do in a certain amount of time, the more I achieve thus the more time I SAVE”. Now this belief could be true at some instance but it could also be false if misinterpreted because:

The passing of time is homogeneous and it’s not depending on what you do with the time. There is no way you can make the time pass faster or slower. There is no way that you can “SAVE” time and use it later.

When you do labor chores that requires minimum reasoning/thinking, (i.e. cleaning), and you finish a task faster then you have extra time to do other things, in this case you “saved” the time.  But when the whole purpose of your activity is about reading and thinking and reasoning and planing, when you skipped the thinking and reasoning part, and only go for the “finishing task” part (like finishing a book, finishing a chess), you missed the real purpose of spending your time.

That is where patience comes in. In my old idea, patience means “waiting for boring tasks to finish or waiting for stupid people to catch up”. Now I think my old definition totally don’t get the essence of it. Patience should mean a peace state of mind to settle and to do meaningful activities without superficially rushing the forms from one activity to another. It also involves a deep understanding of the reason why you do something in the first place and confidence to keep doing the things you set your mind on. The feeling of patience is almost meditative and philosophical, like those ancient Chinese philosophers proposed the “inner peace”.

Oh my god I am getting so deep now I am going to stop right here to leave the idea explored the way it is right now, because there is always a subtle line of “having an epiphany” and “let your mind wonder into non-provable nonsenses”.