This Sunday morning, I was up early to post flyers on the Berkeley campus. As I was walking, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of relief and calm. I am so used to daily wading through a crowd of 35,000 students. It’s been a while since I strolled through an empty campus, and without the people, I could appreciate the crisp, cold air, chirping birds, and general beauty of nature. It was refreshing to be alone.
I think in our hectic society, we are caught up in always doing something or being somewhere, with no time to spare. Often, doing nothing becomes under-appreciated. Yes, hanging out and being around others is exciting, but I’ve found that I notice different things when I’m by myself. Away from external distractions, just take some time to enjoy life… alone. I find it refreshing, and perhaps you will too.
Being tall feels different from being short.
Through all of elementary school, all of middle school, and half of high school, I was one of the shorter kids in my grade. In school pictures, I was usually in the front row. Day after day, I had grown accustomed to the perspective of always looking up toward the world. Little did I know, my life would soon dramatically change. My adolescent growth spurt finally came and I sprung from 5’5” to 5’11”.
It’s hard to understand the difference that half a foot makes unless you’ve actually lived in both worlds. Almost six feet tall, I gradually gained a newfound and seemingly natural self-confidence. I’m not really sure why it happened, and this may sound artificial, but just something about “being tall” made me believe in myself more. Over the span of a year, going from literally looking up to people to looking down to them, is pretty crazy if you think about it.
Being tall definitely has its pluses and minuses.
(+) It’s easier for you to reach things that are high above, and you can see above large crowds. People also seem to give you more respect when they meet you.
(-) Others ask you to help reach things that are high above, and sometimes you get labeled “the tall one.” You also have to duck out of the way of many more low-hanging tree branches.
It may seem odd, but I think there is definitely a difference in the way people treat you depending on your height. In his book Blink, Malcolm Gladwell polled about half of the Fortune 500 companies and found that the majority of their CEOs were tall, white men who averaged just under 6 feet tall (The average American man is 5’9”). That’s a fascinating statistic, because height should logically have no affect on corporate success. But the poll indicates otherwise. Gladwell goes on to say that “there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that height — particularly in men — does trigger a certain set of very positive, unconscious associations.” Perhaps this is the reason for the drastic change I felt when I suddenly grew tall halfway through high school.
In a society that constantly discusses racism and sexism, it’s interesting that, though heightism may be the most basic prejudice in man, it is the least talked about.
Look what the downpour of these past several days brought back… a poem I wrote in January 2008.
Drip, Drop
By Stanley Quan
Drip, drop
Raindrops fall
Each droplet full of life
Unrelenting rain with nowhere else to go but down
Forming a great rush of water
Nature’s full charge
Finally liberating all it had held in before,
A sense of relief-
Only to die in the gutter:
A wasted tear
Perhaps next time, a strike
Maybe, just maybe
Drip.
Drop…
Where FML gives you laughs, GMH gives you hope.
I recently came across a website called GivesMeHope, which allows people to share their most hopeful, uplifting moments and allow others to draw strength from their experiences. It was created in response to FMyLife, where people tell stories explaining how their day was completely ruined. Optimism or Negativity? The choice is yours.
When you’re having a downer of a day, I encourage you to read a few of GivesMeHope’s inspiring posts, which will surely turn your frown upside down :( –> :)
Without hope, what else is there?
I recently read an interesting article called “The Disadvantages of an Elite Education” by former Yale University Professor William Deresiewicz. It’s quite long, but his insider take on elite education is worth the time.
To those of you who currently attend or previously attended an Ivy League or other elite private school university: Is this true? Do you feel that your college focuses on cultivating careers, rather than minds?
Looking back, I think I’m glad that I wasn’t accepted to an Ivy League or Stanford, my dream university ever since middle school. Seeing those rejection letters was failure in my high school senior eyes. I had worked tirelessly to get those almost perfect grades, take all those AP classes, and participate in all those extracurricular activities. “With this application, how could I get rejected?” was the thought that crossed my mind so many times in the days following the rejections. I had failed. At the time, U.C. Berkeley felt like the consolation prize to me.
But through my experiences here at Cal, I’ve come to realize that my failure two and a half years ago was one of the best things to ever happen to me. I may have initially took on my high school extracurriculars of cross country, track, violin, viola, journalism, and youth leadership council to pad my resume, but in the end, I stuck with them because I loved them. I got the chance to run miles and miles with an amazing team of friends, express my feelings through music, voice my opinion on the school’s public forum, and organize a holiday toy drive in which I got to pass out gifts dressed as Santa. These became some of the most memorable experiences in my life. Now, two and a half years removed, I still run. I still enjoy playing music. I still enjoy writing. And most of all, I still enjoy helping others. All along, it had nothing to do with my college application, and everything to do with my heart.
I used to have a huge fear of failure. A fear that, if I failed a test, I would be wasting the opportunity that my parents gave me. But while in college here at Berkeley, I’ve gradually learned that if I’m afraid to fail, I’ll be afraid to take risks.
The reason I have grown to love Cal so much is that everywhere I look, I see students who are passionate about ideas, students who see a problem and believe that they can create a solution. They believe that they can transform society. Individually, each student has the powerful mind and daring spirit to believe. But as a collective whole, they form an environment of social transformation. That inspires me.
In the past, I’ve thanked and admired my parents for working so hard to provide me a better life and the chance to gain an education that would allow me to make more money than they ever could. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that my parents actually gave me something that I truly treasure: the opportunity to learn and pursue all the things I believe in. I get to do work that I love.