This week is my final week in Oxford, and what am I doing? I am not studying for my final exam on Thursday, I am not writing my research paper due on Tuesday, I am not spending my last few days exploring the city in which I will never again have the chance to be a student, I am not taking my last chances to hang out with my Oxford friends, I am not bonding with my Stanford housemates….

I am spending all day holed up in my room feeling sorry for myself. Crystal, you never get enough sleep, take a break today, you can work tomorrow after you’ve gotten a nice rest. That’s what I told myself yesterday. Crystal, you should call your ex-boyfriend. I know you feel worse every time after talking to him, but this time it will be different. Maybe this time he will actually care about you. In fact, he probably misses you a lot more than you think.

If someone else were born instead of me, that person would be so much more productive, well-liked, and prettier. She would actually do something with herself. She wouldn’t be me.

When I neglect my blog, that means one of three things:

1) I’m so happy that I either don’t have time to blog because I’m busy enjoying life, or I don’t need to blog to release my emotions

2) I’m so busy and stressed out academically that I don’t have time to write

3) I’m too depressed start writing

It’s been almost a week since my last entry, and as I reflect back on this past week I must say that it’s definitely not option number one. Blogging is just like any habit, once you miss out once, it’s easy to continue missing out, and every day missed brings down my self esteem. Every day, it was just so easy to spend that last hour of my day stressing instead of destressing. Over the weekend, I slept almost twelve hours every day (on Saturday I woke up at 4 in the afternoon) and canceled just about every commitment I had (dance practice, chorus performance, elderly center volunteering, squash game). It seems that I’ve entered a state of stress-induced paralyzation and lethargy.

Some of you may have seen my facebook and twitter status last night: FML FML FML FML FML. Today at four I had a twelve page essay due, for which I had only started writing last night. Halfway into the night, with twelve pages of bullshit and hours of reading left to go, I could not manage to focus my attention on my work and kept watching Taylor Swift videos on youtube. I was also craving chocolate cookies but could not gratify myself. It’s funny how despite the fact that I have less assignments this week, my stress level was higher. Even though I’ve dealt with writing papers of equal length every week, for some reason I couldn’t handle it last night. Looking back, I have absolutely no idea how I went from twelve blank pages to twelve pages of text, and I also have no idea where my 16 hours went. But in the end, no matter how far away from completing your work you think you are, work always gets completed.

As I crawled into bed tonight, with no intention of writing, my mind started to race – as it usually does when I try to sleep – and I could not fall asleep despite having only slept two hours last night. That’s when I decided that I should finally get out my laptop and write down what it is that is bothering me.

I have a friend who has feelings for me, but I don’t have feelings for him. It’s strange because theoretically he is just my kind of guy: smart in a specialized field (biomechanical engineer going to grad school next year), yet cares about receiving a liberal education (takes random classes like psychology), has similar interests (was in my Chinese history and literature classes), and knows how to have fun (is my dance partner in the dance competition). My friend (the green elf) even told me that he sounds perfect for me. But the laws of attraction cannot be explained, and I just am not attracted to him.

This is not a situation that is foreign to me. It’s actually pretty common for my guy friends to like me. My roommate says she can see why: because I’m pretty open and warm to others. Generally though, my friends are pretty far away and I can just let the situation smolder. Additionally, we were very good friends to begin with, so after the fact we can return to being good friends.

However, in this case I only met him at the beginning of the term and am living in the same building with him for the next five weeks. If I deliberately ignore him, a) it will be quite obvious and require significant effort on my part, and b) we won’t just go back to being friends – but will probably not continue to develop our young friendship.

I had the sense that he liked me since the beginning of the term. One night I had a nightmare in which I dated a tall Asian guy who looked remarkably similar to him; in the nightmare, I let myself agree to see the man, even though I didn’t like him and ended up feeling horribly trapped in a relationship I never wanted.

In my wakeful life, I’ve been pretending to play dumb to all his signals. However, I have a feeling that I can’t keep putting it off anymore. He is a pretty forward guy, and it wouldn’t surprise me to hear him confess his feelings for me soon. Today, I heard it through the grapevine that he has been confiding in our classmates about his frustrations over how I don’t respond to his signals. Our dance competition is this Saturday, and he proposed a celebratory dinner afterwards – somehow I feel like he is planning more than a celebration of our dancing.

Sigh:: so what is bothering me is – how do I let him know that I am not interested in him, without hurting his feelings and still keeping the possibility of developing our friendship? What should I do if he does confess his feelings for me?

This is what my academic life consists of:

• Smallpox class: taught by a Stanford prof for the other Stanford students studying at Oxford.
• Immunology tutorial: One hour a week of one on one learning; weekly 8-9 (really 11-12) page essays
• Econometrics tutorial: Also one on one, two hours a week, problem sets

For anyone who read a recent blog post, you’ll know my feelings towards smallpox. Stuck in a class that I don’t want to be in, I recently discovered that I’m not even allowed to take the class pass/fail. Now, I just locked myself into doing loads of not-too-useful busywork and going on bi-weekly uninteresting field trips.  When I am able to make it to class, I usually fall asleep because I have been spending the entire night writing my essay. Yesterday, I didn’t even wake up from my 10 minute “nap” that I had planned to take between finishing my essay and going to class.

Despite my misgivings, at least I know that if I do the work, I will get the grade. What frustrates me more is my tutorials. Initially, I thought that this was a great system. One on one teaching tailored to my interests and debating the points brought up in my essay. What ends up happening is I spend endless hours summarizing information to produce a “textbook-chapter-like” essay, requiring no analytical skills except for trying to synthesize a bunch of information into 8 pages (which I always go over and write 12). Then I get a bad grade on it because I’ve not included certain details (or not included the teacher’s favorite molecule). I cannot stand the unpredictability and the mono-voice.

Then there is my econometrics tutorial. The instructor thinks I’m a complete idiot because I can never answer his questions. But it’s not that I don’t know the answers, it’s that I don’t know what his question is. For example, today he asked me “what is this best way of looking at [a certain equation]?” and I wanted to say “with my eyes”. When I say I don’t know, he’ll state something completely obvious and then remark that I haven’t been doing the reading.

You know what I miss about my Stanford education? I miss when not knowing an answer and not being made to feel like an idiot. I miss having more than one voice in the classroom so that the instructor does not dominate. I miss actually trying to write a good essay rather than a passing one. I miss sleep.

Speaking of sleep… since I haven’t slept in two nights…

One of my biggest weaknesses is not knowing when to let something go.

How do you recognize that you’re treading down a dead-end path?

How do you stop lamenting how much time you’ve wasted and realize how much more time you will waste if you continue?

How do you decide to fold when you’ve already put so many chips in the pile?

How do you find the humility to admit to yourself that you made the wrong initial decision and find the courage to turn around?

How do you stop and tell yourself, I’m not happy. And change?

These are all questions I struggle with in every aspect of my life, but especially relationships and academics. I’ll leave relationships to another day, because, as I left class after falling asleep during the entire lecture for the second consecutive time, the question burning in my head was: Should I drop my “Smallpox” class?

I came to Oxford with three goals: meet people, join clubs, do well in class. Well, I think I’ve pretty much succeeded in joining too many clubs and taking on too many classes. Ever since I came to Oxford, I have been sleeping about two hours a night or pulling all-nighters consecutively. Not only has this shown in the quality of my work, but now all of that sleep deprivation has taken a toll on my immune system. I cannot continue this lifestyle, and know that I have to drop something. The first thing that comes to mind is my “Smallpox” class.

When I first met the prof, he made his class so so exciting. He brought in his stuffed animal viruses and told us about all the neat field trips we would go on. What clinched the deal was how his complete support for his students showed in the way he talked about his former students. As an aspiring infectious disease specialist, his expertise was right up my alley, and I hoped to be able to develop a relationship with him. What better setting to do that than in a foreign country where we have to spend eight weeks together?

It took me two weeks to realize that I was not getting that much out of the class. Lots of busy work, weekly time consuming field trips, classes at 9am, (on a related note) constantly falling asleep during lecture, and uninteresting content. The biggest concern holding me back is the lamentation that it took me song long to realize this. I have already done so much of that busy work for the class, attended so many lectures and field trips, and (if I decide to drop,) will have nothing to show for it.

But what do I get out of the class? Another “A” on my transcript? Other students are taking it to fulfill major or general requirements, but I don’t need it for that either. A faculty resource? I’m sure I can find other opportunities. The time I would free up could probably be better used on my other classes or sleeping, and to improve my work with the faculty who actually matter (i.e. who will be writing my med school rec).

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not lazy, and it’s not that I prioritize my extra-curriculars above academics. But if I really loved the class then I think I would find a way to make it all fit.

Wow. That was really helpful. I approached this blank wordpress space torn between two options, and after carefully thinking and recording my thought process, it seems clear what my option should be.

5/3/3 Feel relieved to have finally come to a decision, hopefully can sleep now (insomnia again, that’s why I woke up to write this post), but very very tired after little sleep and a swim test today.

Update: After that cathartic moment, I realized that the deadline to drop classes was May 4th, four days ago. I guess I’m stuck.

If you haven’t checked it out yet, a piece I wrote was featured in American Goulash, a blog about growing up in a cross-cultural environment.

Also please reply to my poll in the feedback page to let me know what you would like to see more of!

Full moon overlooks Jericho neighborhood

solitary midnight biker

Hotel worker in kilt uniform gets off work and greets his friend on bike

last bus of the night takes midnight commuters home

Street lamps light up a panel of ghost houses

homeless man uses store light to read

Kabob vans serve hungry late night customers until 3 am

a girl, a mailbox, and a sign post

I once heard one of those groaner jokes that went like this:

What did the priest say to the student who lost his 10 page paper after a power outage?

Jesus Saves!

We’ve all heard this before, but I am here to urge you to listen to this advice before you lose everything you have.

If you’re like me, you love your media collection. You might spend hours making playlists, organizing your photo library, and uploading funny pictures to facebook. Over the years, the music and photos I’ve accumulated have taken up the vast majority of my computer’s memory space, making it inconveniently slow. But when I started to store video files, my computer, (named Darling), just crashed.  I recently decided that enough was enough.  I decided to get tech-saavy and bought a 500GB portable external harddrive (named Kiki – after Kiki’s Delivery Service), and moved all of my multi-media. I also used Kiki to back up everything on Darling.

The only thing is I never backed up all the media that I had moved onto the harddrive (dumb mistake number one). The technical ogre that I am, and too stressed out by the 12 page paper that I had only just started and needed to finish that night, I forgot to safely eject the harddrive before taking my laptop away (number two). The next time I started iphoto, all of my pictures were completely gone! Years worth of thousands of pictures, of which some older ones were uploaded online but the newest ones had not yet been stored anywhere else.

I know that I probably shouldn’t tether my life experiences to those pictures, but I still feel like my entire past has been lifted from underneath my feet, that all twenty years have suddenly been robbed from my memory.

Please learn from my misfortune:

• always take the extra ten seconds to eject your disks safely
• back up your harddrive, and your external harddrives
• periodically upload all pictures online just in case (plus it gives you an excuse to procrastinate on facebook)
• don’t be too dependent on technology (I usually tend to distrust it). develop pictures that you really care about.

I stayed up all night last night writing a 12 page paper, and now I have another paper that I’m supposed to write due at 9:15 tomorrow. I haven’t started, but feel too upset and preoccupied to start. What’s one night and one essay compared to an entire life, gone?

2/2/3

Update: OMG I just randomly tried something and I found my photos! I love myself!  I can’t believe I figured it out all by myself! I feel like a little three year old who just learned some easy task, and now thinks she is the smartest person in the world (In fact lots of three year olds are probably better at using technology than I am). All you computer people out there are probably rolling your eyes and thinking that it was such a easy problem. (Heh <== most technologically inept person in the world right here). I am going to run around my house telling everyone about how proud they should be of me! Now I have the energy boost to finish that paper!

7/2/3 Biggest mood swing ever

Update: Finished the paper at 3am. Finally, some SLEEP!

In case this has happens to you, I will post below a detailed description of how to solve it. Don’t read ahead unless really interested —-

The problem: What happened was that iphoto was still running while I removed the hard drive, so the next time iphoto opened and pointed to the library file, it just opened a blank library. Even though my library file was unharmed and still contained all my pictures, the iphoto program was accessing it inaccurately. The problem was compounded by the fact that I use time machine, so I had multiple copies of the iphoto library stored on the external hard drive and in the end couldn’t decipher which was the correct one. Also, I moved various iphotos to and from the trash so often that everything was mixed up.

The solution: I used a program called Grand Perspective to scan my computer and show graphically what files were taking up how much space. I saw large squares representing several different iphoto libraries, but one of them was much larger than the rest. (In case you don’t know, iphoto library is a file that brings all your photos together, it is not a folder with separate jpeg files for each photo). When I opened them, however, all of them came up blank. How can a blank iphoto library have two different sizes? I was convinced that the large one was the culprit. It was storing all my photos but redirecting to a more recent library upon opening. What did the trick was to copy the library to my comuter, eject the hard drive (so that whatever library iphoto was referencing was not accessible), open up iphoto, and manually select the desired library. It worked!

Wow. I feel like Sherlock Holmes.

One hour ago, I sat down eager to write a new post with the most interesting updates about my time here. At 12:52 AM, I am still sitting in front of a blank document. Instead of viewing this as time wasted, I thought I might turn it into something productive by making my filler time the subject of this post because it gives quite valuable insight into my daily life.

I finally sat down and got around to answering (almost) all of my emails. Ever since I arrived, I have been flooded by emails, most of them advertising events on campus which are immediately archived without a second glance. The next group comprise a fair number about Oxford that need reply. These come from people I’ve contacted to see if I can join their club (Competitive Ballroom, Croquet, Cricket, Crew, Board Games Club, Choir, etc.), take their class (immunology, economics), or observe them at work (doctors at Oxford hospital to ask if I can join them at work for a day). During the week these emails are starred to deal with later, and since the weekend has come, I’ve finally managed to clear them.

Finally the most treasured yet most painful emails are from friends asking how I’ve been doing. For obvious reasons, treasured because they come from friends actually interested in how I’m doing; painful because when I receive them, I can only star them to mark for later reply when I have the time to give it the full and proper response it deserves – then that day never comes. From setting up activities and classes, to researching new activities to join, to actually doing homework, I have managed to leave my old friends behind in the dust.

I wrote before about the troubles I have with my email. Someday I’ll be able to break free of this constant struggle to maintain a clean inbox. In the meantime,  please be patient, a response will come and it will be well worth the wait!

I also uploaded the latest video diary and a recap of my spring break (I tried to condense it into 27 seconds so it won’t take long)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiloNZZSo1Y[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qiqx_QsqAIo[/youtube]

5/4/3 Feel very bogged down, with so many things on my to do list, and let’s not even mention school.

Part of the Oxford experience is the academics, and trust me – in at least this one respect I can be confident that I will have had my share of Oxford culture. However, I’m not so sure whether this one class can be considered reflective of Oxford academic life. Every term, a Stanford prof teaches a class at Oxford to the Stanford study abroad students, and this term the class is called, “Smallpox: Lethal Legacy, Forbidding Future”; a wild and crazy class taught by an equally wild and crazy (though lovable) professor (safaris in Egypt, sky diving in volcanoes). Part of the course component is to post current events about related material to a “New and Hot” blog. Since my “New and Hot” is an issue that I am  passionate about and hits quite close to home (literally), I want to share it with you all.

-Enjoy!

As a lifelong Washingtonian (having been born in Crystal City), there is no lack of material for me be proud of. We believe that the whole world revolves around our demure, yet dignified, city, and I am constantly finding myself holding my nose up when surrounded by the less politically cognizant. Sometimes the Redskins have a pretty good season too..

However, while doing reading for my New and Hot, I stumbled across some surprising news in the New York Times that forced me to retreat in embarrassment: Washington D.C. has the highest rate of HIV/AIDS in the country (I always assumed it was San Francisco). According to the D.C. 2007 Annual AIDS Report, 1 in 50 D.C. residents are living with HIV/AIDS; compare that with 1 in 7000 nationwide. Heterosexual transmission, especially among adolescents, is increasing, underscoring the need for for effective sex education. Meanwhile, MTC (mother-to-child) transmission has increased as well, which is especially disconcerting considering that these cases are easily preventable with routine testing and drugs. Even though blacks account for 51% of the DC population, of the 12,400 PLWHA (people living with HIV/AIDS), 81% are black.

Concurrently in the Times, Tom Friedman laments racial disparity in our schools and economy (link). The disproportionate infection rate among blacks is a sad and brutal reminder that in a city with the most powerful people in the country, racial inequality still plagues its neighborhoods, and the consequence is life or death. It also warns that the problem is not as easy to solve as the superficial “Free Condoms for Everyone!” approach, but that much deeper social issues need to be resolved in order to truly address HIV/AIDS.

Changes need to happen and they need to happen fast. Fortunately, HIV/AIDS has become a more pressing item on the political agenda;  Obama’s first days brought some sorely needed change to this country’s AIDS policy, including allowing federal funding for clean needle programs and comprehensive sex education. We will see if America can clean up its act — for my hometown and for America, I will keep my fingers crossed.

5/4/3 Updating my blog right before time to sleep is such a great way to end and reflect on the day. However, I have  never felt more tired in my life.

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.