Essays and Thoughts
This is a warning. I did CS50. It has turned me into my mom, in a bad way. I just can't stop organizing things. I have to delete abbreviations and replace them with full-length words. My clothes now have to be folded. My table aligned with the wall. My folders nested inside other folders (inside … Continue reading Being Changed for the Worse by Coding
Note to Self Don't “get over” the imposter syndrome. There’s nothing there to avoid. Rather than getting rid of the imposter, welcome him into my life. It means that I'm coming out of the oft-too-comfortable shell of what I'm good at into what's new and exciting. A quick mental check Am I feeling like an … Continue reading Hi, Imposter
One helpful mental model Don't choose the average. Do the really easy or the really hard. This is because things have non-linear payoffs. The hard gives you disproportionately more than the average. The easy, hardly less. Examples A) Choosing College Courses Choose either the easy, fun courses, or the hard behemoths. Don't do the mediocre, … Continue reading Be Consistently Inconsistent
We are all supremely lonely. Maturity is our coming to terms with this fact. It is when we realize that loneliness is necessary, just like birth pangs and death (and taxes). For it's within loneliness that we truly see ourselves, with our beauty and ugliness shining through the cracks that loneliness makes on our myriad … Continue reading Loneliness
Beauty is not in the beholder nor the beholden. It is in the subject-object complex, where the two reciprocal rejoind each other in their expressivity and receptivity. It is the same for art. A work of art is not art. Only when a work of art enters humanity (with humans recognizing the mystery and meaningfulness … Continue reading Art Happens
There I was changing into trousers in Central on a Sunday night. The clouds were visible from the intense light pollution. My beautiful polka dot boxers, which Josh—my mejor amigo, a Spanish aficionado, and the most Christian man I know—gave me last night as a parting gift, went on its public debut. It was the … Continue reading Clubbing. The First Night. (Part 1)
He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.Matthew 10:39 Imagine affairs that begin only in their end. Imagine states whose possibilities are their impossibilities. Imagine objects that acquire value only when they’re lost. Imagine truths that are known only through falsity. Imagine things … Continue reading Tragically Comic
Again we leave, Again we die, We do not forsake others, We forsake ourselves. Harvard may be good, but preparing to go to Harvard, with the corresponding necessity of leaving where I am, is a different story. Hope and dread are mixed into this weird fateful resignation that is simultaneously misplaced, adrift, and lost. … Continue reading Heading to Harvard
A Strange Idea: The worst crime Zoom classes are committing against humanity is depriving kids those real-life serendipitous opportunities to fall in love.
Space stills. Atmosphere coagulates. Objects conjure. The hats hang in their densities. The windows refrain from inviting. The doors remain perpetual possibilities, obscured and exhausted. They have known each other. But what is knowing but inopportune misglances? One understands more in a glimpse than hours of mutuality. Time deceives; knowledge, in its safe familiarity, obscures understanding. She … Continue reading Riffing off Nighthawks
Warren's Brain Dumps 