2.5
from january to march
Noah texted me today that I hadn’t written all of 2025. I told him I was ~500 words from finishing a gargantuan post that encompassed my time in Taiwan, the Middle East, and interviewing a local union organiser. 1 Yet I doubt those 500 words will arrive anytime soon, and so here are the small things I’d like to tell you about in between, amounting to roughly 500 words.
I initially had some kind of advice/reflection structure sorted. But this blog wouldn’t be complete without that advice coming from some kind of recent happening. As such! Here are some happenings.
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I studied for a midterm (somehow one of very few —) Actually, let me say something about that. I take basically no conventional classes. Is that bad? I have one mandatory large lecture. Other than that, my courses are: a writer’s workshop focused on illness narratives; an experimental dialogue course around Israel & Palestine; and an internship about oral history. So my schoolwork last week, for example, was to write a story about my father and his driving, hear from a doctor who had just returned from Gaza, 2 and listen to the aforementioned union organiser tell stories about his grandmother’s impromptu food drive in the 60s.
I say all this to say that maybe I’m doing school horribly “wrong”. Eventually I’ll have take some normal classes, to do things like get a major. Yet the nice thing — and I think this is the real thing I wanted to write about — is that my experiences would seem, to myself last semester, like pure magic. Which is ironic, because that past self was the person who registered for these classes. Yet what I’ve been able to see — the conversations I’ve been able to have, the people I’ve met, the experiences I’ve done — was previously unimaginable. Notice that I excluded “things I learned.” I definitely learned things; many of which are not as compressible as “a derivative” and the rest of which are too compressible (e.g. did you know that doctors keep bleeding patients calm because if the patient moves, that could increase their rate of death?)
Oh yeah — the midterm, I studied for it in a very short period of time, and did okay. It’s truly fascinating how powerful flashcards can be for “fill in the blank” style questions.
Let me say more on magic. Sorry about exceeding the 500 words.
I’ve increasingly appreciated this way of seeing the world, because it seems to just fit. The more temporal distance that I put between myself now — who feels very “normal” — and my past self, the more unrecognisable the two lives are to each other. I don’t say this to brag, or act as if I’ve “won”. I think I wake up every day somewhat unhappy with my progress — I know how much further there is to walk. I wish I felt like I won. I think I just count myself extraordinarily fortunate. I get to hang out with some of the coolest people, occasionally flying for no other reason than to see them, and I do so while getting to learn things I like, within a heavenly springtime environment in the American South. I’ve been lucky in joining organisations I like, and generally get to do interesting, fun things.
To be frank, the most interesting manifestation of this is that my previous semester, I was writing similarly reflective college posts about how I kind of disliked my college life. A number of things have changed since, many in small ways. I now feel like my capacities are somewhat stretched thin by capacity-renewing items. This creates a fun duality of doing hard, exhausting work that’s rewarding. That’s, of course, the dream — and I’m not sure I’ve achieved it, but I think I’m — somehow, magically — closer to it than before.
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Other things I’ve loved recently: Raymond’s naming convention of drinks as playlists; pickup volleyball; the committed; lavender & rosemary in my lattes; Fred again. And, eternally, you, dear reader, for sticking with this.