2025

winter

Do you believe that life comes in seasons? I heard this phrase a lot in 2025, and trivially, it’s probably true as some things rise to the forefront and others fall away; but substantially, and in practice, I think it’s just a way to justify whatever is happening at a given point. We never fail to relish in assigning significance to things. And how long are these seasons? For I feel like this season had been going on for too long — not in an angsty way, but more that surely at some point, things will have to change — and that things have become too easy.

One remedy is to go where the seasons are different. And so I did this, in Taipei, in the Middle East, in DC. For the most part, I did not write about these trips, and on the surface they were useless bricks in the sense one could not tell what building was taking form, but I now see each cemented what the gap year began. My takeaway is that growth is actually not contained to boundaries of time like “one semester”, “one year”, “one month”, despite what the structure of time suggests, despite how beautifully simple the idea would be if it was true, despite how badly the brain wants to understand change as such. Improvement is not completion-based; there are no KPIs and no limits. I know how many countries I’ve been to, I know how many flights I took,¹ but none of these can approximate the flow of how I feel every day and how I see the world. There are no thresholds — once I go to X countries or speak Y languages, I will be different in Z way — there is only the gradual, there is only the accumulation.

spring

The best way to describe Chapel Hill is idyllic. Generally, this is a positive characteristic. I think it’s probably positive when applied to one’s college environment as well. This relaxed gratitude just oozes from every cafe, bar, and classroom. We set arbitrary challenges, complain about them, and then complete them nonetheless. Most in-state students at Carolina have dreamed of coming to Chapel Hill since they were in Tar Heel diapers, or whatever, and you feel it in the air, this sense of completing a major life manifestation. I studied a lot freshman year, and then Opus 4.0 came out. I took a deep breath, opened my eyes, and began seeing this idyll for what it was. Plot twists I never could have imagined came and went, and I realised that deep down, I had guessed these things would happen. I enjoyed the winters with limited bite and the long, cool nights filled with laughter and hugs and an optimism that this was all of life, and nothing more was to come.

One given Saturday, I was walking outside the DKE² house, talking to my mom, when a group of DKE-type Southern guys/girls walked by.³ I made room for them on the sidewalk, and a guy wearing fishing sunglasses around his neck drunkenly slurred a slanted ni hao as the girls laughed and the guys pulled him away. The whole thing just felt, well, unfair.⁴ I spoke perfect English, I was tall(er) and strong(er) and had some status on campus.⁵ I had been to sorority cocktails and I had gotten frat bids and I had only been using my poor Mandarin to practice. It hadn’t been the first comment or “experience” — the kind you contrive to share in American college classes and reflective circles to receive the subsequent mandatory universal acknowledgement — but the whole episode was so short, so unbelievably mundane, that it stuck with me. In that moment, I wished I could repeat what my coastal elite classmates said. I wished we were in Tokyo or Paris. I wished they could see how useful Mandarin was in Toronto. I wish they knew my GPA, my cost of attendance, my LinkedIn. I write about this single remark because I want to imply something about the undertones; but I’m lying. I write because I want to soothe my ego, to reverse the reduction. I don’t know them, they didn’t know me. None of the above really mattered. After all, we were in the South. We were in their land. I was a tourist, even at home.

I thought a lot about my identity this semester, and I initially relished in this reflective process. But, surrounded by people who didn’t have to reflect, I realised my desire to reflect was rooted in insecurity and discomfort rather than mental strength. I left early and escaped to the world, where idyll was attached to people and feeling rather than location. I craved the objective; and I craved an objective. I didn’t think about these people until writing this. I tried not to think about how we were probably one degree of separation apart. I wondered if they had known who I knew, whether the outcome would have been different, whether the remark would have just been thought instead of verbalised.

summer

The need to self soothe continued. I didn’t know how to compress what I had seen, where I had been, why I saw the world the way I did, to these newfound roommates and colleagues. Cleveland was almost enough of a city, but it felt hollow, or perhaps too car-centric. We went to events and dinners and that felt more fitting. I realised that America’s salaries were without equal and, at least in the Midwest, what Americans did with their salaries was unlike anything else.

I ate steaks and eggs and ground beef; I looked up and realised I wanted more of a system and I wanted to leave. I went to San Francisco and the Sierras and I saw some of the aforementioned mutual friends go to Switzerland for the first time. I hung out with adults⁶ and felt more like a kid, a welcome inverse of what happened earlier in the summer.

fall

I studied a lot this year, and then I saw scores I had literally never seen before, particularly for subjects like math. I then started testing the fabric of idyll. I read 10, then 70, then 100 pages at a time in the mornings. I stopped chewing the caffeine gummies, instead making a double shot of espresso, then another, then a full Americano, and sometimes another one. Savar asked about the date range of two weeks and came for the entire two weeks. We took long lunches and bought chips with the Asian American affinity group and played cards outside. I wrote the paper and I marvelled at how, despite nothing going particularly wrong in freshman year, I felt like Chapel Hill had become much clearer.

I purposely stayed put this time around. I averaged a little under one flight a week last semester, and it was time to try the other side of the barbell strategy. I rode my bike a lot. I wore earplugs on all the evenings and I traded basements for long dinners. There were many moments of stress over life responsibilities and many moments of solitude. I put off talking to that one girl, running the event I had decided to, all the small things, because the semester timeframe seemed endless, until the end came. Two hours after my last exam, I went to RDU. I said goodbye to this little college town for a long time, and now, ~15000 kilometers away, I wonder about the little happenings that people would tell me about over the benches behind Lenoir; I wonder if things are as I left them. I enjoyed the steady maintenance of atrocious flaxseed protein shakes and books from Davis Library. I can feel the cramped sauna and taste the Grey Squirrel rosemary syrup. Chapel Hill trades worldly influence to be its own little universe. In some ways, it feels like a well kept secret; I miss the routine but life is a lot more than routine.

In the early morning, before the clouds arrive, Lake Atitlan merges with the sunrays that manage to climb over the surrounding mountains. A few of my Chapel Hill friends were visiting after me; some of my international techie friends were on a similar mountain; friends from the past had likely been. I had, against general consensus, elected to drive myself across slippery roads; and despite the initial confusion about shifting gears/the clutch/everything else, I was alone and I figured it out. And I smiled, because I didn’t know if anyone would fully understand how I was feeling, or believe what I had done. The lake was my only witness.

Life came and went, in seasons and semesters. Things had changed. I had gotten better and I had gotten worse. I longed for wherever I wasn’t and loved wherever I was. I didn’t know where home was. I didn’t know where home would be. For now, the lake would do.

Happy New Year. Thank you for reading.

Footnotes

1. And also how many flights my friends took. Thanks, Flighty. ↩

2. A frat. ↩

3. There are frat guys, and then there are frat guys. These people were the latter. ↩

4. Not that it can be fair, etc etc. ↩

5. Not that it’s relevant or deserved. I just wish to tell you what happened, and how I felt. ↩

6. I know I’m technically one, but like, come on. ↩