After oversleeping my meeting with my academic adviser, I spent my morning procrastinating by reading CNN and the wikipedia page about the Manson Family murders. I’m guessing that most of my generation has never even heard of the 1969 slayings, but from reading comments on other sites it seems like it was one of those unforgettable and horrifying events.

A quick summary for those who don’t know: A satanic cult led by Charles Mason and consisting of Tex Watson, Susan Atkins, and others, committed mass murder on two consecutive nights in LA in 1969 (known as the Tate/LaBianca Slayings). The more heart-wrenching murder was at the home of actress Susan Tate – her husband director Roman Polowski (the guy I associate with the Pianist and hiding from a statutory rape charge in France) was in London at the time. Eight months pregnant, Tate begged for the life of her child, to which Atkins replied, “We don’t have any mercy for you, Bitch”. Now, Atkins has terminal brain cancer, cannot live longer than six months, is an amputtee and confined to a wheel chair, and has petitioned the court for compassionate release so she can die in the presence of family and friends. Even Bugliani, her original prosecutor, supports her petition. The court unanimously turned her down.

For anyone who has heard my opinions about the death penalty, you will probably know what my opinion is. I really want to know what other people think about this, so please leave your comments!

4/5/3 Depressed by all the news,  Jack Johnson’s The News solemnly playing in my mental sountrack – A billion people died on the news tonight. But not so many cried at the terrible sight

Crystal’s First Grade Textbook:

I love procrastinators. I love movies. I love people who procrastinte by watching movies.

I love entrepreneurs. I love money. I love entrepreneurs who make money.

I love entrepreneurs who make money by procrastinating and watching movies.

The thing I love about Stanford is how amazingly smart, and amazingly lazy, people are. I resent everyone (parents, teachers, advisers, snobby know-it-alls, geeks who never leave the library even though they really need a shower) who says that laziness is not the way to success. That is why I am so in love with Hello Movies. Yeah, the interface looks nice, the service is useful (especially the database of free online movies), and the developers are hot (just kidding about that one..), but the real reason I love it is because it proves all those granny-glasses wearing crankies — who always seem to have one hand smugly stroking their chin and the other cramming that stick up my ass — wrong.

Why shouldn’t we get rich doing what we love to do. When its what we love, how can we call it working hard. Work becomes play, especially when  play means getting rich off of all your expertise from watching movies. Working hard has become a thing of the past, and the new wave of lazy entrepreneurs has come: from the web-saavy facebook app developers and bloggers to the down-to-earth garage band musicians. This economic situation especially has woken us all up to the fact that you can study and work for years to acquire your skills, only to get laid off; but people will always procrastinate.

Fmylife.com is a must in any procrastination toolkit. Usually I just laugh at how stupid most people are and click on You Deserved It (because they usually do). Unless it really does fuck up their life for real, in which case… its kinda funny that the first thing they think to do is to post it on fmylife.

But today when I was browsing (and trying to make productive use of my insomnia), I stumbled across this post:

Today, while at the Golden Gate Bridge, I spotted a large group of asians trying to take a picture. Trying to be a diplomat, I slowly say “You… want me… take picture?” while using hand motions. The man looks at me and says “No thanks asshole. I got it.” in plain english. FML

Of course, everyone knows the obvious initial response. The fact that it is 69k to 3k YDI to Yeah that sucks! is evidence enough of the outrage this has caused, not to mention reading the biting comments.

I’m here today to write a defense of Daftly Racist. Yes, we all know that what Daftly did was pure prejudice, rudeness, and idiocy. It’s the kind of thing that we don’t tolerate among our self-respecting, morally superior, unprejudiced folk. Thank god we never have to be judged by millions of internet procrastinators. We can guilt-free click the “You Deserved It” button and smirk at our purer moral composition. Because amongst our class, prejudice doesn’t exist and we operate in a judgment free world.

Isn’t it funny how we are taught to not judge, but those same teachers repeat the maxim that “first impressions are everything”? We can never free ourselves from our judgments (see this post for a fuller explanation). Isn’t it better to acknowledge those prejudices and do our best to mitigate them, rather than brush them aside and claim to have conquered them? How can we combat the enemy within ourselves and others if we don’t force it to the border of our inner psyches?

Daftly’s courage in posting is aptly refreshing. In a society where to exhibit the slightest bit of prejudice is cause to raise noses (and ironically, form judgments), to have the balls to admit fallacy in prejudice should be applauded, not condemned.

4/2/3 Insomnia mostly, but still proud that I can voice a semi-cogent argument at 6 in the morning.

Special Olympics Ad

This Special Olympics ad highlights the emotional charge that the “r-word” carries (www.r-word.org). The campaign to eliminate the use of the word retarded rides on the coattails of Obama’s highly publicized derogatory comment about the Special Olympics.

I’m not trying to be morally superior. Today I was at Castro Street getting dinner with a friend, when I made a comment about how “retarded” I was. I quickly realized my mistake, apologized, and replaced it with how “stupid” I was. Everyone is prone to it, it’s been so much a taken for granted part of our casual lexicon, but the point is that once we become aware of our choice of words, we can eliminate and replace harmful words in our vocabulary.

I didn’t realize that language could be so powerful. Like many, I thought that words were just meaningless, and that there could not possibly exist the hyperbolic attitude so vilified by disability advocates. However, while reading the forum I stumbled upon a very insensitive comment on the r-word website that exemplifies the exact kind of attitude that they want to combat. I would like to excerpt a bit here:

..those who fight so hard to have people stop saying [retard] is, well, … retarded..Don’t you think we could use our time and resoucres to attack a larger issue in this country. I mean what about the economy? you talk about intolerance, we just voted in a black president for christ’s sake, what planet are you from to say we need more tolerance for people who are “mentally challenged, or metally reatarded”, use your time and resources to counquer something more productive instead of fighting something that doesn’t exist, you freakin retards… (read the whole thing here)

I’m sorry cptwinks, but your comment exactly brings sympathy for the cause you berate so much for its “vacuity” and “insignificance”. I wasn’t fully a supporter of the r-word campaign until I read your comment, because now I realize what kind of bigotry and insensitivity pervades our society. The first thing I did was to look up the denotation of “retard”:

retard verb |riˈtärd| [ trans. ]
delay or hold back in terms of progress, development, or accomplishment : his progress was retarded by his limp.
noun |ˈrēˌtärd| |ˈritɑrd| |rəˈtɑrd| |riˈtɑrd| |ˈriːtɑːd| offensive
a mentally handicapped person (often used as a general term of abuse).

Even my apple dictionary is more sensitive than cptwinks. For a moment, let’s grant the dictionary definition and examine what we usually mean when we say “retarded”.

He’s so retarded: We don’t actually mean that he is mentally handicapped; when’s the last time you heard someone comment about a student with learning disabilities, “This is my student Peter, he’s so retarded”.  What we mean is that he is as stupid as someone who is mentally handicapped, and we mean that in the most derogatory sense. The implication is that the only characteristic of mentally handicapped individuals is their stupidity, and we mean that in the most derogatory sense.

I had a neighbor who was born with Down syndrome. He was one of the sweetest guys I ever met. When the phrase, “He’s so retarded” will come to mean “He’s so sweet” is when I will agree with cptwinks in affirming that the word “retarded” is inconsequential.

We do not accept the use of the phrase, “that’s so gay”, so why do we tolerate “retarded”? We respect the feelings of gay people, but not the feelings of the mentally handicapped. What’s even worse is that, our use of the word “gay” is usually deliberate; we are aware of our offensiveness and deploy our labels strategically. When we say “retarded”, we don’t even realize the impact we have. That the mentally handicapped are not even a group of people whom we consider to be worth insulting speaks volumes towards showing how much we actually do care about their feelings. To not even be a recognized group that we include in our sphere of decency; that’s the biggest blow of all.

Finally, although this might be a bit of a tangent, I want to address another false assumption in cptwinks’ comment. To claim that because we elected a black president means that we’ve somehow managed to rid the entire country of prejudice (not even just racial prejudice) is just ridiculous. I’m sure that if Obama knew that him winning the election meant forfeiting the fight against prejudice and declaring it won, he would have given up the presidency. To rubber stamp all battles against intolerance and insensitivity as useless because of one victory is completely counter to the entire progressive ideal. Instead of facilitating progress, victories insert a huge road block. To me, this is just an excuse for laziness and a justification for tolerance of our intolerance.

If you care about this issue, there are a few ways you can help:

1. Start catching yourself whenever you say “retarded”, and do it out loud so your friends hear you too.
2. Start correcting your friends whenever you hear them say it. They might find you annoying at first, but they will soon start to catch themselves.
3. check out www.r-word.org and sign up for their community if you’re interested!

4/2/3 After writing my opinions, I’m a little less upset about the contents of my last post. I am however, still deadly tired.

Have you ever had those moments when you know that you did something wrong, you feel like a terrible person, and there is nothing you can do to make up for what you did?

Over spring break, all the students who are studying abroad next quarter had to move out by the beginning of break. I am staying in my friend’s room while she and her roommate are away on break. Another friend needed a place to stay for a night, and since there was a vacant bed next to mine, I let her stay there.

Now, I know this is where red flags should be going off and my brain (or my conscience) should be telling me: Crystal…

1)   You don’t know her roommate very well

2)   Her roommate doesn’t know your friend at all

3)   Why didn’t you just ask beforehand, you obviously have no respect for other people’s personal space. Just because you don’t have a sense of personal boundaries doesn’t mean everyone else has the same standards as you.

To make matters worse, I am an extremely messy and disorganized person. Thinking that I was the only person to occupy that room until school starts, I just lived there as if it were my own room, planning to clean up before anyone came back. I know that I wasn’t very organized about keeping my clothes properly stored in my suitcase, and I probably just threw my towels on the ground (mostly on my friend’s side of the room but its possible that some of my mess spilled over onto the other half of the floor).

I stayed off campus for two nights, and when I returned at 7:30 this morning, I was surprised to see that all my stuff had been randomly thrown onto my friend’s half of the room, including my other friend’s comforter that she had left on the bed and I had no idea who it belonged to.  Although the roommate was not there, I could tell that she was pissed by the way she returned my belongings to me. I wrote her an apologetic email acknowledging that what I did was stupid and disrespectful; she writes me back a passive aggressive email listing grievances including dirty towels on her stuff, food on her desk, and someone having slept in her newly washed sheets. She ends with asking when I am moving out.

Ok so maybe I am a coward. So maybe the only reason I care about this is the dread of having to go back to that room. I’m already chickening out; I decided to move out tonight, at least I won’t have to spend an awkward night with the roommate. If I never had to see her again, I know I would tell myself, “Crystal, you did all that you could have done. It’s ok if she doesn’t forgive you. Just remember next time so you don’t piss someone else off.” But I know that I need to go back and apologize in person. Even if she is really pissed off at me. Even if she doesn’t forgive me.

In the end, I’m a bit thankful that this happened. I need to learn to grow up, to be less self-absorbed. I made my mistake because I was not considerate of other people’s feelings. Can you believe that I am already 20 years old, and this is the first time that I’ve had to seriously apologize to someone that I don’t know very well? Realizing that you’ve still got a lot of growing up to do is not easy.

Here’s the plan: I’m going to buy her a plant (her room is full of plants that I had been watering while she was away). If she doesn’t want it, I’ll tell her to just give it to her roommate. I’ll buy a card too explaining how terrible I feel, and if she’s not there when I go back tonight to move out I’ll just leave it on her desk. If she is there I’ll talk to her about it. I hope that’s not too cowardly…

3/5/4

I broke my vegetarianism last night. I was out with my friend getting shabuway hot-pot at Shabu Shabu, and I ordered the beef plate. These were my thoughts when I was considering whether to get the beef + veggie or the double veggie plate:

1) I’m going to China soon anyway, and when I go to China I am not going to keep this diet up because meat in China is sooo good and not as unhealthily cooked as in the states

2) Shabuway hot pot is just meat + boiled water, no oil or any of that yucky stuff

3) Just vegetables won’t fill me up

However, not only did the beef fall below par of my expectations, the vegetables tasted much better and I would have preferred to just get two plates of veggie instead of one beef one veggie. Also, now I have a huge blister on my lip, I’m not sure if its a result of the meat. [Sigh] Karmic Retribution.

Alright, so I slipped up. I’m not going to give myself crap over it, I’ll just continue even harder on my vegetarianism. I went to the grocery store afterwards and bought entirely vegetarian meals for the week. The one thing that I can’t decide on is whether I should still be vegetarian when I’m in China. I would really love to get your feedback on this one. It would only be a 10 day hiatus from the diet, which I will resume when I go to England. What do you all think?

4/4/3 blister + lonely because everyone has left for break and I’m still here; at least I have my roommate’s fish for company

When I started this academic quarter, I wanted a fresh beginning. I broke up with my boyfriend who I had been dating for the first quarter, and was determined to handle the break-up better than I had handled my previous one. In most aspects, I really am proud of myself for my emotional maturity. I reached out to my friends and made new friends; I started exercising and eating healthy; I joined the chorus; I took the hardest and most classes and excelled at them; I started to feel better and better about myself each day.

But there is one part of me where I still haven’t grown up, and that is when it comes to guys. I let my mood and my self-esteem depend too much on the guys that I like. To start, if I don’t have a guy in mind, then I feel very empty, like I don’t have anything to govern my behavior. Thus, if I don’t like a guy anymore immediately I have to find a new target. I can’t be satisfied just being my own single self. If my crush doesn’t like me back, it makes me feel unattractive and worthless.

When I confessed my feelings to my current crush, I thought that nothing would change. I thought we could still be friends, but as the weeks went on, everything became more and more awkward. Every time I talk to him, I feel as if he might think that I’m just trying to get him to like me. I definitely spent much more time together with him before. Once my roommate told him that he should come to hang out in our room more often, and he agreed; he never once came to hang out in our room, but I always saw him in the room across the hall from me. Over spring break, I am living in the room next to his because I had to move out of mine. I always go say hi to him and his roommate, but he will never come talk to me. It’s not so hard is it? I even made it easier by moving to a room closer to his. Sometimes he is super nice to me, and others he just ignores me. It  pisses me off when people are rude to others, regardless of the feelings between them. One time I confessed to one of my best friends from home that I liked him, and he decided to ignore me for two months. Why should you treat a friend differently just because they happen to like you? I think I learned my lesson; despite everyone applauding brave girls who just are straightforward about their feelings, I don’t advise it if you still want to remain friends with the person.

The first day of class I had Chinese lit and Chinese rituals back to back through lunch on Tuesday. I noticed this cute guy in both of those classes, and we introduced ourselves after class. Since both of us hadn’t had lunch, I asked him if he wanted to eat together, and we had a great conversation over lunch. We found out that we have very similar interests; he is a Chinese major and wants to go into Chinese medicine, while I want to practice Western medicine in China. Thinking that we could make getting lunch a weekly tradition, I was looking forward to the next Tuesday, but he just left class quickly without saying anything to me. I decided to give him up. One time after class we happened to be chatting next to our bikes, and remembering how much I enjoyed our conversations, I asked if he wanted to grab lunch. He said he had to go, but that we would get lunch next week. Next Tuesday, I excitedly made myself look nicer in anticipation of our lunch; he didn’t come to class. Thinking he was sick, I forgave him. Next class, he never mentioned it. Not one “sorry I was sick”, “I forgot”, or “can we re-schedule?” I decided he was a douchebag. Last day of class, he runs up to me to give me my wallet which I had forgotten in class, and we start chatting again. Stupidly, I asked if he wanted to get lunch and he said yes, but this week was bad can we try for next week after finals? When I called him, he said he had too much work, and already had dinner plans for all the meals until he left for break. He was surprised to hear from me and didn’t even seem to remember what he said last week. He said, “we’ll definitely get together when I come back from break”. Yeah right. I’m not going to call him again.

There was another person that I liked this quarter. For a month, whenever I went out the dorm I would walk down the hall past his room (even if it was out of my way), or I would go visit my friends in that side of the dorm, to increase the chance of bumping into him. If I heard his voice in the lounge I would go and pretend to be going to the dining hall. Sometimes he was really nice to me and others, he would be very unfriendly. I quickly got over him because I knew that he just didn’t care about me, but then every time he was nice I forgot and the cycle would start all over again. He would lean against me, tickle and poke me, and give me all these signs to make me think that he liked me. But I quickly found out that he is just a very touchy-feely person. He also only ever hung out with me when my friend from high school was visiting.  I lost interest in him and started to like the other guy who also doesn’t like me back.

I know that I should have self-confidence, and that is what guys find attractive. I know that I should love myself before I can expect others to love me. But when you go from being interested in guy to guy to guy, and none of them find you attractive, how can you tell yourself that you are attractive? It’s so easy to think, “nobody likes me”. It’s so easy to feel lonely. I just wish I could be independent and feel good about myself again.

Sorry if this blog post is a little less coherent and a bit more rambling than usual. I tried to not impede the flow of my thoughts and just wrote down whatever I was thinking.

I just gave My Crush a gift I bought from China. He didn’t even say thank you.

I think I’m slipping back into temporary depression. All my friends have left, I won’t see them again for 6 months because I’m studying abroad in Oxford next quarter. This quarter I got to know My Crush really well and we became friends, but I think I undid all of that by telling him I like him and now things are super awkward. I think its impossible for two people to maintain a purely friendship relationship if one of the parties has feelings for the other. I guess I just feel like I don’t really matter to anyone. That I can just leave, and no one really cares that they won’t see me for a long time.

Is there even anyone at school that really cares about me? I feel like I don’t have any really genuine friends here. I can’t think of anyone at school who I would call if I ran into an emergency. Everyone is too tied up in their work and can hardly spare time to pencil me in to their busy schedules. Whenever I eat with anyone, I can sense them itching to leave and return to their work. Being a college student is such a lonely experience. You are surrounded by a higher concentration of similar aged peers than you will ever enjoy in your lifetime, but yet you cannot make a deep connection with a single one of them.

That’s why on a Friday night I am alone with my computer listening to the Sleepless in Seattle soundtrack.

Maybe going abroad will be good for me. I will finally get out of this Stanford bubble; maybe the British  aren’t as self-absorbed as American college students.

2/2/2 bad day at work + little sleep + nobody likes me

Dear Crystal:

Congratulations! You have successfully completed the Finals Week from Hell (FWH) program. Along with several of your accomplished peers, you have fulfilled the basic requirements to be considered an FWH scholar; over three days, you have endured two final exams and one research paper, relying on only eight hours of sleep total. You should feel especially proud of your accomplishment, as we accepted only the most diligent procrastinators into our program. Additionally, I am pleased to inform you that your exceptional performance qualifies you for the FWH honors program. Our faculty have recommended you based on your extraordinary motivation to sacrifice sleep two nights in a row. We fully believe that you demonstrate the highest virtues of a FWH scholar: unrestrained procrastination coupled with disciplined and high threhold for self-torture. As an FWH honors scholar, you will commit to upholding the virtues of FWH throughout your academic career and other aspects of life. You will also educate and spread FWH values to the next generation of promising scholars. We hope that you will appreciate and take full advantage of your exclusive membership to the FWH honors community.

Wishing you the best of luck in everything that you hope to accomplish (you will need it),

The Finals Week from Hell Committee

We are currently accepting nominations for the FWH scholars program. If you would like to nominate yourself or a friend, please leave a comment with:

Name:

School/Company:

Reason for nomination:

This is it. I just gotta hold my breath and dive. Tomorrow begins my hemorrhage of exams, colloided together by doubleshot and cheetos. First is physics, from 3:30  to 6:30 pm, followed by an all-nighter cramming session to study for Human Physiology at 8:30am the following day. Afterwards, I have exactly 23:30 hours to finish my research paper about classical Chinese childbirth rituals.

Although I should be epileptically terrified, somehow, I’m actually filled with an inner peace. At this point, I know that I’ve pushed myself to my limit to prepare. Whatever happens, happens, and there is not much I can do at this point to change the road ahead. These last few days are the final 100 meters of the marathon, and I have to push extra hard at the end. There is always that glorious feeling of crossing the finish line ahead of me.