The End

Well talk about suspense. I just realized that I never told you how my job hunt turned out. Despite my concerns that one place would force me to decide before the other possibilities could get their act together, I managed to receive two great job offers and choose among them. A growing biotech start-up presented a great chance to earn a very nice salary with a host of professional opportunities, and my old college offered me a research job at the medical school with a chance to work for some very high quality professors. It was a tough call, and I received a lot of solicited advice from a good sample of everyone I know. In the end, I chose to chase the ghost of my academic career by taking the research job. Three weeks later, I still feel no buyer's remorse. I'm still kind of amazed that things worked out the way they did. Monday will be my first day of work. But today will be the last day of this blog.

I'm not looking to say goodbye to a cruel world. If anything, I've never felt better about myself and the direction in which I'm moving. Those of you who've been reading my little rants know that this has been a long time coming. I've been blogging here for over three years, sometimes sporadically and at other times incessantly. Looking back, I'm not sure that I had specific goals for this space from the onset, but over time it developed into a deeply personal and introspective look at many of my problems. The diagnosis is always simple in retrospect, but pretty much they all stemmed from a general frustration that most other people never seemed in tune with me and never responded well to my interactions with them. Some of these people were just jerks, of course, but a lot of it was my own fault, too. Over the years I've greatly increased my self-awareness and now have a better idea of how my words and non-verbal cues impact people. I've also improved my posture and learned to speak a bit more slowly and less monotonously. Years ago, I would've dismissed many of these issues as stylistic matters that shouldn't have affected the substance of what I was presenting. Perhaps people should only judge others on their abilities and the quality of their ideas, but eventually I realized that achieving many of my goals would require getting other people on board.

At the same time, I never would've identified or solved many of these problems without all of the introspection. This blog was a great avenue for both the serious inquiries I needed and the joyful posts that better reflected what I wanted others to see in me. But as much as the lighthearted writing reminded me of what I was capable of doing and of who I actually was, the deeply personal stuff was almost too embarassing to share. I only ever showed this site to a handful of people I know because I wasn't eager to reveal the perpetual teen angst that shrouded most of my mid-twenties. And that's why I'm giving up this blog. I'd much rather start something new that better reflects my current thinking. Maybe it will be a new blog, or maybe something else, but whatever it is, I want to be able to share it more widely.

Just to tie up loose ends, I suppose I've neglected to mention my dating life for a good long while, and I know you're curious. 2008 was a pretty good year in that regard even if nothing too major really happened. For the first time in a great while, I probably had more positive than negative experiences and felt like I had good options most of the time. At the moment I'm dating a girl I met on JDate about three and a half weeks ago. We are by no means official, and these things are never as easy as they should be, but we have really great chemistry, and I'm cautiously optimistic. Of course, who knows if it will actually amount to anything; she's heading back to school two hours away, and other things could derail us. But maybe this uncertainty is a fitting ending for this little journey of mine. I don't know how any of this will turn out, but at least I'm finally confident that I'm going about things the right way and finally ready to show others my best.

So this is the end. It's really been a pleasure to write here for so long, and I greatly appreciate those of you who've come along for the ride. If I do decide to start a new blog, I will make a point of letting you know.

Timing

It's been a long time, dear reader, and the world outside of school is a strange place. I spent the entire month of September on vacation and the entire month of October underhoused (or couch surfing or homeless, depending upon your point of view). During that time I compiled a list of every company I could think of and embarked upon a job search adrift. I sent out about 30 resumes for positions, spoke to recruiters, and mostly I waited. Some tutoring work kept me afloat and on campus most days of the week. During my vacation, I had all sorts of activities in mind for my free time, most of which have been shelved for the time being.

My luck on the job front has changed substantially in the last three weeks. I happened to make a great contact through a friend who works as a consultant all over the area and seemed way too happy to refer me to a number of companies. Excluding one position across the country who gave me a phone screen, all of my previous efforts before meeting him amounted to two job interviews, one of which is for a position I'd at best consider to be a safety, and the other would basically amount to resurrecting the ghost of my academic career. Meanwhile, my shiny new network has led to one completed interview, several meals plus an interview offer with another place, and still one more interview coming up this week. In other words, I have possibilities. Or I would if timing weren't an issue.

The situation as it currently stands is that I've had interviews with one company plus the safety job, the latter of which I am unlikely to take. The company brought me in for a six hour interview last Wednesday, and I think things went really well. As far as jobs go, it would probably be great. It might even be the best of the 5 places I'm considering. They just happen to have a timeline that might preclude this consideration. Basically they're going to let me know within the next few days. They typically ask people to respond within a week. The CFO also told me that they don't negotiate on salaries. Her reason for this is that it supposedly creates an adversarial relationship between the employee and the company right off the bat, so she'd rather just offer as much as they think I'm worth right off the bat. The problem with this is that it gives them the power to lowball me. They have inadvertently created exactly the problem they were looking to avoid. Worse still, the one-week response time basically means that I won't even be able to get through the interview and offer process with the other possibilities before I'll have to decide, especially with the Thanksgiving holiday this week. The other places might not even want to hire me. It's a strange situation. A friend likened it to being forced to marry the first girl who goes on a date with you before you've even had a chance to see how interested the other four are. (She happens to be her own employer, so I guess she's married to herself.) You can't necessarily disqualify the first one just for being first. Unless the first place says no or throws a lot of money my way, I'm going to have a lot to think about in the near future.

It's not just limited to jobs. There's also geography and friends, of course. I did most of my couch surfing in the city in part to finally try out living there, and I was surprised by what I found. With a few exceptions, most of my friends who live there, the people who had repeatedly urged me to move closer so that we could hang out more, didn't actually follow through once I fulfilled my end of the bargain. I also thought that I wouldn't need my car very much, but if anything I've found myself driving more than ever before. The unfortunate thing about a lot of these jobs is that they might force me to drive 30-60 minutes while my friends are 30 away in a different direction. All five job possibilities include several scenarios for where I might live and what I'd spend my time doing. I'm not even sure that it amounts to a simple list of pros and cons. And I might have to make up my mind soon without all of the information I'd like to have. The first thing I'll do if I get an offer this week is to ask for an extension on the response. Other than that, I don't have much of a plan.

What We Deserve

I think I've finally stopped enjoying being a bum. It's now been over two months since I graduated, and I been back from my vacation for about three weeks. I was under the distinct impression that more of my city friends would want to hang out more regularly now that I've sort of moved here (if couch surfing counts.) The job search has been slower than I expected. I submitted a big pile of resumes and am officially playing the waiting game. It's somewhere in this time that the dream of a high paying, self-actualizing job will probably defer to the reality that I'll have to take whatever I can get. Even then, whatever I end up with won't be bad; it just won't necessarily be what I deserve.

The friend I'm couch surfing was telling me about one of the technicians he used to manage. This guy is what they call a super tech; basically he can build anything but doesn't have an engineering degree. And so, over the last 15 years, he's been responsible for quite a bit of the construction and design of devices that have resulted in many successful businesses, one of which is now worth in the hundreds of millions of dollars. His efforts haven't gone unrewarded, but he's been given comparatively little stock compared to any reasonable estimation of his contributions. In other words, these companies are probably ripping him off and justifying it because he doesn't have a college degree that says he knows what he actually knows. He isn't getting what he deserves.

A friend of my own has been going through a rough patch for quite some time because he puts too much emphasis on his dating life. I don't want to go into too many details, but suffice it to say that he's tried asking out too many girls within the insular friend group, some of whom ended up dating his friends, and now he's out of options. Another friend diagnosed his problem as one of finding out that courtship isn't what he expected it would be. And while I would probably do things differently if I were in his shoes, it's not like anything he's done has been a complete train wreck. Most people who have good things going for them eventually do OK. They work out for most of his friends, anyway. So he probably thinks he deserves something comparable.

The problem here isn't one of high expectations. It's that these expectations aren't really based on a solid understanding of what might happen and why. We all think we deserve things because we're good people, or because some of our friends with seemingly comparable backgrounds already got similar results. But too often what we get doesn't seem to match up with what we deserve. It's not meaningful, and it's not predictive of what will actually happen. It's just an indulgence of our fancies.

Do Not Want

I got back from my vacation at the beginning of October, and yet today was the first time that I felt like I really had some free time. Doing nothing is very time consuming, but between birthday parties, Yom Kippur, and my college reunion, I guess I'm not surprised. The job and apartment hunt has been slow-moving to the extent that it's even gotten off the ground. I went for a long walk, ostensibly to check out the area around the place I'm crashing but really kind of hoping I'd either bump into someone I know unexpectedly or meet a new friend passing by on the street. With everything in my life revolving around processes I can't control right now, I wanted something, anything, so long as it was unplanned, to happen.

Unfortunately, just about everything fun requires that you bring your crew with you, but sometimes it's nice to start a new branch in your social tree. I've noticed some of my friends trying this lately. One joined a sorority on a whim, another goes to bars by himself several nights a week, and still another cruises online dating websites on a daily basis in spite of the fact that she lives with her boyfriend. (She is clear that she's only looking for friendship, but still.) I don't really need any new branches right now, but I also wouldn't have minded if one had presented itself on my walk tonight.

Instead it occurred to me on my walk that I've spent my entire life wanting things to happen and working to make it so. It's a source of both gratification and disappointment. I have achieved a lot in many aspects and am probably happier now than I've ever been. But it has its costs. Some things will never happen, even if they quite reasonably could. Some friends I'd like to spend more time with now live far away and may not ever come back for good. And I'll eventually find a job, but it may not be the one I want. I'm very aware that a piecemeal solution is the best I can do.

I know other people who consider themselves to be quite happy largely because they do not want very much. I guess they're a modern version of people who talk about the weather a lot. They eat, they sleep, and they don't mind a little company, but really anything is fine. Some of them are quite intelligent but don't necessarily feel like they have to use it all the time. They're like poker players without any strategy who inadvertently play to stay in as long as possible. People like that are impossible to read because they want very little and don't differentiate their tones very much. Nonetheless, they're very happy, and in the end things usually work out all right for them. I just don't know what makes them tick. I should sympathize a bit more considering my relative anti-materialism. I don't particularly want stuff, but it only serves to redouble my desire for achievement, intellectual fulfillment, relationships with other people, and the like. They just don't appear to want anything. I don't understand it, because they still choose to go to college, get a job, date someone, and the like. My guess is that they do want some things but are just very reluctant to state it outright. I don't understand these people at all. Nonetheless, I've tried to borrow a page from their book by being a little more selective and practical about the things I want. I can't be disappointed when I don't get things I don't want. I'm just not sure how far this can go without feeling like I'm settling too much.

I Didn't Go to College

I celebrated my 27th birthday one week ago, but lately I've had ample reasons to feel much younger. Multiple people have mistaken me for 23 lately in spite of my hairline's best efforts to remind them otherwise. Maybe you really are only as old as you feel, and in many ways I feel like I never went to college. It's an odd thing to say for someone with a PhD on the weekend of his 5-year college reunion. It was weird going back; I've been there a few times since, but not with everyone else around. I suppose that place will always be my frenemy in some ways. My first year didn't go so well. I've often said that good college clubs function more or less identically to religious cults, and yet in some ways that's true of my college as a whole. I was always a bit at odds with the superficial culture and arbitrary rules. My freshman dorm was terrible, not because of anything that happened while I was there, but because the institutional culture of the university had convinced everyone on campus that certain dorms were terrible places to live, and a widespread desire for conformity ensured that no one would upset the establishment by having a good time in an unacceptable dorm. Seemingly every interaction was colored and complicated by this need for everyone to do what they were supposed to do, none of which made the least bit of sense to me. The general rule of thumb was that you had to join a group of 4, 6, or 8 friends from your freshman dorm, live together in perfect multiples your sophomore year, and cast everyone else aside as secondary friends. Ideally you'd date someone in your hallway, and this person's group of 4, 6, or 8 friends would serve as a feeding pool for your friends to find dates. Then you, your friends, and your sibling group of friends would ride off into the sunset of an incestuous friend group. And all you have to do is avoid asking yourself whether your best friend's girlfriend's best friend is really your dream girl or just an arrangement you can't get out of without greatly upsetting the order of things. And this didn't work for me. College was a weird place because of this tension. I had to do a lot of things on my own, and to some extent I feel like a lot of people, those who were initially very friendly but quickly made it clear that they only cared about their little circle, had largely missed the show. All I can say is that I made my attempt to contribute to the culture of my university. Maybe it wouldn't have been much in the best of circumstances, but I still feel like a lot of people there missed the show.

I really wasn't sure what to expect going into the reunion. Of course I planned to hang out with the 10 or 15 people I keep in touch with and hoped to reconnect with a few others but was largely hoping to avoid getting wrapped up in the conflicts of yesteryear. As it turns out, there were some pleasant surprises. In particular, for a class of people with a very high percentage of spoiled rich kids, it was nothing short of refreshing to see that the working definition of success seemed to only involve some combination of travel, graduate school, romantic relationships, and working jobs that were intellectually fulfilling or helping society. The reunion committee put together a class book in which everyone submitted a page with photos and updates, and it was nice to hear that some people had actually read what I'd written. Of course, that same book was a microcosm of many of my earlier complaints; there are so many people who could only respond to the "best college memory" question by stating "there are too many to name just one!" while I offered up a synopsis of the time a friend and I caught a squirrel in a dorm room with little more than a trash can and a hockey stick. And of course there were so many people who had gotten married, some to people who lived down the hall years ago. I guess college worked out pretty well for them, but I found myself feeling extremely thankful that I had taken the long road. I always suspected it was the right thing to do, in spite of all the institutional pressure against it, and it's only now that I can confirm that I largely made the right choices way back then.

So it turned out that the reunion was just fine, and yet what most people took away from it was an overwhelming confusion brought on by the sheer volume of the familiar faces of people we now know nothing about. There were hundreds faces I recognized accompanied by only the faintest traces of how I might have known them. A few of them at least had a class or activity with me. In some cases I knew people's names and also realized that I had never talked to them. Others were probably people whom I passed in the cafeteria every day for a year or who sat in front of me every day in a class. It makes me wonder why there were so many missed connections. But I also realized at the reunion that it was only at my college that I could say hello to people without their even acknowledging me. All of those people in the cafeteria really believed that they weren't allowed to hang out with people from other dorms or that they couldn't have a conversation unless it was about which part of LA they grew up in. In a very real sense, these people are the ghosts of my college experience. It's no wonder that I feel like I didn't really go to college.

PhD

I turned it in today. It's 2 days under 4 years from when I started. And that's about all I have to say about that.

The Final Lesson

Greetings from the past. My television and internet service have been out for over 24 hours. The repair man is scheduled to arrive tomorrow, and this post will go up shortly thereafter. It’s of course extremely sad that I have nothing to do without my precious internet, to the point that I’m mulling over calling up a friend on the pretense of checking e-mail somewhere. At least all this free time and waiting around has given me some time to think.

I’ve spent a lot of this year dealing with situations that were out of my control, both for me and those around me. Some of these problems were relatively minor, like how my TA thought he was Batman and believed he had to go outside of established policy to uphold the policy’s ideals. Other areas have included major fiascoes at work, with friends, and in my dating life. The lesson is always some variation on the idea that I shouldn’t let people hold any power over me if they can’t be trusted to use it wisely. And so I’ve cut some people off, and with others I’ve drawn very clear boundaries. I don’t trust new people the way I used to. I also have a very long memory. When I go out dancing, there are certain people I won’t approach because they were rude to me a year ago. Sometimes I can’t even remember what went down, but I’m not going to flatter them with attention they don’t deserve. I don’t particularly like that I have to do any of this. Some of those people who were rude to me when I started dancing probably found it beneath them to stoop to my level. Some of those same people I’ve since surpassed, and they would probably be all smiles now. I’m not actively mean to them, but I just try my best to avoid interaction.

At the same time, I really don’t want to maintain a perpetual black list. Some of these people just fall off the map and it’s not a big deal. Others are there on the fringes of my work life and social gatherings. I used to wonder why I bothered with these people. If I had to call them out on their behavior and draw boundaries for our friendship, they probably weren’t worth my time. But recently it seems as if some of these people are actually getting it. I’ve rehabilitated some sort of relationship with my adviser and reestablished friendships with some people who have really screwed me over in the past. It’s possible we’ve all just grown up, or perhaps my tough love actually did the trick. I’ve spent so much time trying to prevent anyone from having any power over me that I forgot that there are people who deserve that power and will use it wisely. It’s the final lesson. All I can say is that I’m finally willing to trust them again. They’ve earned it.

The Honest Answer

The last several years have been all about self improvement. It's been a largely successful operation, but it wouldn't hurt if I could learn how to take a compliment every once in a while. Lately I've been congratulated a lot, for reasons that should become apparent within the week. Beyond a simple thank you, I never really know how to respond. Everyone is so excited for me, and when they ask how it feels, I invariably try to downplay my accomplishments. When pressed about why I'm not so enthusiastic, I'll try to explain that big goals are only achieved over a long period of time, and eventually every little challenge along the way shifts from mysterious to mundane. Everything is retrospectively obvious, and everyone else only sees what I've done in jumps that I know I actually walked. That's part of it. The rest is that, to some extent, I'm just not very impressed with my achievements. This stems from my experiences growing up as a big fish in a small pond. It's not easy to explain to people that at the age of 11 I was winning statewide academic contests and putting up 25 points in the championship game of my youth basketball league. It's not easy to explain to people that in some respects I peaked as a human being at such a young age. Looking back, I don't see how I could've possibly done those things any better. Ever since I went to college, I've struggled, I've met people who are much smarter than I am, many others have worked significantly harder, and I've increasingly taken pride in pursuits that will never be included on a resume. The honest answer I of course can't tell people is that while I'm proud of my work, it's in many ways not what it could have been. I suppose I should just smile and feign enthusiasm. All of this time I've been trying to convince myself that I'm not nearly as achievement-oriented as I used to be, but if that were true, it'd be easy to pretend that these things are a bigger deal than they actually are.