Summer In DC Part 1: Work!

So I have been working in DC for the past few weeks at a company called Navigant.  I’ll have this job for 8 weeks so I felt might as well write down what I do at work so I don’t forget it haha.  Overall what Navigant does is help clients with litigations and compliance.  My department is Legal Technology Solutions (LTS) so we do all that previous stuff, but with tech! Personally, I do a lot of SQL programming, but some things the other interns do is document review to see if there is anything useful to court cases in those documents.  I don’t really find that work that much interesting because it is mostly just looking at documents for hours, so I try to keep asking for SQL work. 

There are two other interns in LTS, Meaghan and Katherine.  They are also UVA students and I’m glad they are here with me. They are funny and accept my randomness haha. Whenever we are bored we can message or just turn around and talk.  Another person in our cubicle area (don’t worry I’m not boxed in; there is plenty of open space) is Emily.  She goes to Davidson and is in the Construction team, but she sits with us and completes the square haha.  She is keeping a quote sheet of all the weird things I say, which is kinda scary but also funny.

We all three have buddies.  Mine is Patrick and he is really chill.  Quiet but when he drinks he is a crazy man supposedly.  Though he is my buddy, since I keep asking for SQL projects I work more with John, Arman, and Mason (powerhouse Asian team haha).  John is like insanely chill but learned coding at work, but he always makes sure we are ok so he is a good guy.  Arman is super intense programmer and likes to give speeches about thinking in a “database perspective” haha.  I should really learn a lot from him before I leave.  Mason is higher than them two I think and is cool (I’ll talk about the social life stuff in a different post). 

Was about to type about one of my projects but I am not allowed to so oh well.  I just feel lucky that I have not gotten super boring projects in LTS.  I have to keep pressuring for harder projects since it is summer and they have less work compared to usual, but I just want to learn and be helpful really.   Never expected that I would do a lot more programming than business stuff, but I probably would like this better than doing financial models I guess.  Maybe because it is new for me and I don't really have much experience in professional coding that it is interesting. 

Making others comfortable

I recently watched a video and in the end the youtuber quickly mentioned that many people spend a lot of energy trying to make other people feel comfortable.  It made me want to think about how I feel about that issue.  It seems like an ideal: always trying to make other people comfortable because you care about them.  It also seems like something that cannot be achieved. You can't always spend energy on other people. 

I know for certain groups I definitely try my best to make others feel comfortable.  I find Japanese class really fun and want everybody to be friends in it.  I want to make everybody get along and I will go out of my way to make friends with new students. I did it in Japan and I did it at UVA as well.  So in some situations I definitely do it, but others times I just want to feel comfortable myself and push others to make me feel that way.

This sorta relates to why people spend all this energy on others like this.  Sometimes I feel that I’m doing it just so others can reciprocate.  I know that most people don’t expect too much from me in these terms, but I still I seem to expect a lot of people.  I worry that me spending energy on others makes me expect that others will try to make me comfortable too.  What happens if the actions I do that I think are meaningful for others are not, and then I start to expect stuff that I never deserved?  Maybe I’m just paranoid, but I see it happening.  For example, if I do something for somebody that I consider considerate but that person doesn't, then I can't expect that person to do something considerate for me since in that person's eyes I have done nothing.  My usual way to mitigate this is to understand somebody or just ask them, but that also requires time.  

Maybe I want to make others comfortable to make myself comfortable.  Maybe I have empathy because I have been in situations without friends and I don’t like seeing others suffer it.  Hard to say but an interesting question I got posed. 

Third Year First Semester Reflection

Even though I don’t think about school that much, I think this time I’ll start off with it.  Comm school has been a pretty interesting experience for me.  I was never super driven to do it, but it really does end up becoming a part of you.  The hours doing homework, going to class, and working on projects …how can it not influence you?  Something our teacher told us at the end is that we have battle-hardened confidence now.  Even though it is cheesy, it really did connect with me.  With comm stuff before, I never really struggled with it, so my confidence came from how easy it came to me.  Now after putting so much time and energy into it, I can say that I did struggle with it, but I made it through.  I felt so behind from others because school rarely stressed me, so I didn’t know how to deal with it as well as others, but hopefully now when it happens again I can deal with it better. 

I said second year I felt my world was shrinking and I think I can say that even more now.  I cut out even more clubs from my life and mostly used my free time for the ones left and hanging out with friends.  I know I am supposed to be doing something with my college years, but I just felt like I needed to be with my friends more than dedicating myself to a cause.  The comm school teachers told us to not forget who you are so maintaining this dedication was sort of my stand against it.  I hope that next semester I’ll have more time to play guitar and piano, and go to my clubs more often. 

From my Japanese trip I realized some thoughts and struggles I thought I dealt with first year actually didn’t go away, and I think this semester I had to deal with them properly.  Interacting with people made me really think why I believe certain things and if that was the right way to approach something.  Sometimes I overthought situations and got sad, but with the help of others, I tried to come to terms with things and improved.  I have changed mentally in small ways, but overall I think I have a better grasp of my own thoughts instead of thinking too differently. 

To be honest, the things that overwhelmed me the most this semester was my emotions.  Sometimes I knew where they came from, other times they just came.  Sometimes dealing with them hurt more and other times ignoring them to work on comm projects made them worse.  I don’t think I have fully solved this problem, but in the same vein as comm school, I am more confident that if I feel overwhelmed again I can deal with it. 

Over this semester I think my biggest accomplishment is becoming closer to people.  I understand the people around me much better and I hope by me explaining how I feel they understand me better. I always found human relationships to be the hardest thing to navigate and build.  Still, there is something amazing when you are surrounded by people who care about you.  Yeah I’ve gotten pain and disappointment from friendships, but Eva says that if you keep pushing past that, there is much more joy to be had.  While trying to figure out things, along the way I’ve probably confused and irritated people.  Don’t feel I should apologize for it; I can only say thanks for everything. 

Aaaaa I will try to be better ok haha.  I’ll keep trying and hopefully I don’t fall as much as I did this semester.  

Still Learning about Myself

Even though modern psychologists don’t agree that Maslow’s hierarchy of needs go in the linear fashion Maslow described it, when I look at my life in college, it seems it has been going exactly Maslow’s way.  I obviously came into UVA with security and I feel I spent these two years establishing some form of belonging through joining clubs, forming friend groups, etc.  Really just associating with people in the form that I wanted.  Now I have friends that even on bad days I can talk to, or when I am bored, just walk to their rooms and talk to them.  But achieving this step means that the next one is going to confront me and that is what I have been trying to deal with during the last few weeks.

Comm School has emphasized that we have the capability to do great things and we need to build our own personal brand.  I guess I can break this into two categories.  I feel I have already talked about my self-confidence but just to recap: I trust myself in a lot of things, like actions, but with long term goals and aspirations I can’t fathom a lot of things.  When I went to the career fair today, I had to think, “would I actually fit in this company,” because I couldn’t see companies actually accepting me, but instead just accepting the product of me that UVA will produce.  On the other hand, dealing with self-confidence has been much easier for me after accomplishing my study abroad in Japan.  I didn’t think I could actually do it, so I was surprised by my own drive to accomplish it, and because I did, I know I can trust myself to put a huge amount of effort into something that I care about.

Personal brand is much harder because the basis of that is how others perceive you.  As a human I can’t say I haven’t thought about that stuff before, but I rarely think about it.  My empathy level is probably lower than others and I usually just do things that I like, which others see is really weird.  I haven’t really cared about what others think as long as my short term need for enjoyment was satiated, but it isn’t really sustainable.  This attitude of mine has gotten me this far, and it has a lot of good points, but I need to choose which parts to change. 

A good point is that I have heard is that I treat people pretty equally.  I talk to a teacher in the same way I would talk to a classmate, putting my personality in both conversations.  I feel that is the reason that I can so easily talk to teachers and business people because I see them as just other people.  Another good thing that has come out of it is I meet people I like.  People who are accepting of the weird things I do I find are really cool, so it is generally fun to hang out with them. 

Still there is some bad things about it, such as how I realized that I am missing the respect part of Maslow’s pyramid.  Sure, some people respect me for my way of thinking or my grades, but those thoughts usually occur in spite of my actions.  It is pretty understandable because I like to tease people a lot and don’t usually start deep conversations, so there is never an opportunity to show some aspects of me.  Part of managing my brand is expressing myself so people respect me.  For me that sounds like a very bad statement, but as long as it is still me and my personality, then how can I call it bad?  I’m trying to tone down my crazy and cater how I react to people, but old habits are hard to break.  I’ll see how I decide to fix the way I act while not losing all the good points. 

Sixth Week in Japan

Probably the last blog post that I will do in Japan so yay.  I might as well talk about something concrete since I haven't done that lately.  So obviously I'm taking Japanese here: one a normal Japanese class and the other two are just side classes that are supposed to make you use the language.  Those classes are ok but are not that much fun.  My Comprehensive class however is pretty sweet. We are a really chill class that likes to joke around but still we get the work done and learn.  Our class is heavily skit based which is awesome because people make some interesting skits.  At my UVA Japanese class, mostly I will be crazy and maybe a few others will be crazy independently or with me but here almost everybody finds a way to work in their own humor into the class.

I didn't give the people around me enough credit it seems.  In the first three weeks it seemed to me that Riso, Eugene, and I were the ones being the craziest in class.  After they left, I was worried that I will be left alone to make the class fun, but the first skit of the next 3 weeks where we had to act like we were ordering at a restaurant, almost everybody did something funny, so I was happy that I wouldn't be the only one.  I shouldn't have forgotten that other people had their own desire to make the class fun as well. Inkyu even said that in his first class since many of Da Crew members are in it, they do some funny skits in that class too.  I was happy that even in other classes they were pursuing our mutual goal.

Should also use this time to give a shout out to Da Crew members.  Maybe I got some Asian blood in me but I like this group mentality thing.  First at UVA with KAF and here with Da Crew, it seems that I like being part of something like this.  Things like having signs like our Shaka hand sign to call the group together and doing random stuff after class makes being in Japan not so boring.

They say if you want to have a trait like confidence, you have to fake it until it becomes ingrained into you. In the same vein, I say things like "Da Crew needs to stick together" so that eventually it actually becomes a value of the group.  Even though we were only together for a couple weeks, I think we bonded pretty well given the time we had.  This probably will sound like a farewell but of course I need to thank them all for putting up with my antics and random things I blurt out, or when I say things in order to provide (sorry Nikki haha).  Even though these are things that friends usually do, I'm still amazing that people can put up with so much 迷惑ｗｗ.

Doubt I will see most of you guys ever again after the program but it was fun while we were here.  Probably some will say we met for a reason but I usually don't think that far down that path.  I will just say that I suck at maintaining long distance friendships but I guess a balance of effort on both side can fix that easily.  Oh well that is future thinking.  One week left guys, at least for me, so time to go all out!

Fifth Week in Japan

My program isn’t over for another 2 weeks but mentally I feel I am already gone.  From others I here them lament about how short the program is and how they have fallen in love with Japan, but none of those emotions seem to spring out from me.  Many of those same people, even though they feel sad, already have full exchanges to Japan set up for the future or at least plan on coming back, but I feel it will be a long time before I come back.  I don’t feel that deep of a connection to this place.  I didn’t buy that much stuff except two books and I didn’t really make any deep friendships.  It is probably because I checked out, I’m too lazy to making friends and living in the moment.  As a fellow blogger said, “Some students gave me flowers. They’re plastic so I don’t have to water them. It’s a nice gesture, but lately I feel like those plastic flowers, being there and looking the part but not really living.”

The most obvious way I have noticed this trend is when people from UVA ask me, “how is Japan?” and I answer, “Just a normal life.”  Maybe it is my western individualism shining through but I am me and Japan is Japan.  As long as I am me, the location doesn’t really matter so my life is essentially the same.  I often walk out of class slightly shocked to see I’m in Japan. It is like I forget about it since I’m in my own little world all the time. 

Maybe this was caused because I kept being told that Japan will destroy my ego and try to reform me.  Since I kept hearing that, I chose to put myself above Japan.  I feel no need to assimilate or even try to assimilate because I’m here for a short time.  I wonder if I was here longer at what point would I let myself be whittled away by this culture. I have seen many people try to assimilate by acting more polite or even talking completely differently when using Japanese.  I am slightly shocked by it, but I would probably end up doing the same if I was here longer.

It is sort of scary in a sense.  In our western, humanist worldview, the self is king.  You are a being that makes decisions and affects the world around you.  It is hard not to have pride in who you are.  I am noisy and loud in class, blunt with the people around me and crazy with people I don’t know.  It is easy to define yourself by your actions and thoughts.  In Japan however, it is so easy to see these traits muzzled for the sake of getting along with teacher and fellow students.  Is our sense of self so weak that it can so easily bend to social customs? 

Life is always throwing stuff at us and we should always be changing our outlooks and ways of life, but for some reason Japan gives the atmosphere that it needs to be done sooner and without your permission.  I don’t know if I should be happy or not that I wasn’t here long enough to experience it fully.  Knowing this could be a part of my hesitation to fully dive into Japan and be as in love with it as others are.  I don’t know if what they are doing is just giving up themselves or living life to the fullest.  They say in Japan there is the うち or inside and the そと or the outside.  This applies to social groups, work relationships, even societal hierarchies.  Before I even allowed the Japanese to choose where to put me, I declare myself as a 外人 and that I am on the outside and will remain there.  Now I wonder if that was the best decision to make.  

P.S. Nikki always be hating that I don't put pictures so here is one ha!

Fourth Week in Japan

As much as I say I’m a practical person, I still hold a lot of idealistic values.  What sometimes ends up happening is I act one way while thinking another way.  Even when I say I disagree with something, I may end up doing the same thing.  An example is when I once asked my friend why she didn’t want to hang out with certain person.  Her reason was she would only be at college for another 1.5 years so her time was precious.  She would rather deepen the relationships with the friends she has than find more.  Maybe because it is rare for people to ask me to do things with them, but at the time I couldn’t agree with what she said.  However now in Japan where my time is limited, I am noticing that my actions are more aligned to what she said than what I expected.

I’m starting to finally branch out and hang out with some Japanese people, but I only expect to meet them maybe once or twice before I leave.  Sometimes Da Crew (a group of classmates who I hang out a lot with) have plans at similar times and I have to make a decision who to hang out with.  I usually choose Da Crew, which means I choose being with my established friends rather than making new ones.  I guess because I have only 3 more weeks in Japan I can’t expect new friendships to blossom easily so it is better to put my efforts into the friends I have. 

Why I realized this was because of a slightly unrelated thing what happened today.  The Japanese program I’m in is 6 weeks broken up into 3 week groups and some people are only here for the first 3 weeks.  Today was their last day and it suddenly hit me that they were leaving.  Riso san I joked with a lot in class; Eugene was the person who backed up my craziness; Kira Kira san I rarely talked to but she gave good reactions to my crazy actions haha.  I felt bad that I didn’t talk to them as much as I could have and before I knew it, it was time for them to go.

I wanted to at least say something to them before they had to go since I will probably never see them again.  Usually after class people stand around the 1^st floor of our building for a bit before going, but Da Crew members were leaving to go meet up with Carmen and Nikki.  I saw Riso san taking pictures with someone and Kira Kira san talking to a group of people.  As I saw my friends leave the building, I didn’t know what I should do.  Should I wait and talk to these people who are leaving or follow my friends? 

Riso and Kira Kira san seemed so busy I thought it was ok for me to leave but as I was walking out of the building I kept looking back.  Finally when I walked out of the building, I took one last look through the glass doors.  Kira Kira san noticed me looking, gave a smile, and waved farewell.  I didn’t expect someone to actually notice me.  I gave a wave and a half smile, then turned to go run after my friends. 

Probably my first real regret in Japan.