by Halley

2010

All of a sudden 2009 seems so dated. Here we are at the turn of a decade and honestly, it feels just like another new year. The rush of need to come up with novel resolutions in the hopes of becoming a better person consumes me while I secretly wonder about the practicality and meaning of this ritual. Then I look back at 2009, and wonder how I can best generalize the last 365 days into a few insightful conclusions.

It was the best year I have ever had in terms of GPA, but I wonder why it does not translate into any sense of accomplishment. To be honest, 2009 seemed a bit disappointing. I suppose I grew up somewhat, but the idea of really growing up still terrifies me. It’s strange, but I sometimes wonder what the hell have i been busy pursuing the entire year? The papers, and projects, and problem sets that consumed my days at Duke lead to nothing but a 4-digit number on ACES. The knowledge and skills, if you could even call them as such, that I’ve acquired only quickly fade away as I board the plane on my way home. So I’m left with a number that I can’t complain about, but nor do I feel particularly accomplished. Maybe I just need to do something practical and see my knowledge transformed into more material than a number. I think my sense of lack of accomplishment comes from the fact that I don’t really know what I’m good at, I mean really good at. For much of my college career all I wanted was to get that 4.0 while also taking classes I found interesting and useful, and now that I have for the entire year, it all seem so meaningless and insignificant.

Maybe I’m outgrowing this whole college thing. I guess it’s really time to graduate.

by Halley

mid break

This morning I left the sunny Atlanta and was greeted with a 20 degree drop in temperature and lots of snow Cle. As I left the plane, a blast of cold air welcomes me back to the good old Cleveland. I stood in the cold waiting for my gate-checked bag and I knew I was not in Atlanta anymore.

The days in Atlanta were spent between spending time with mom, Han, and being a lazy bum in general. My outings consist mainly of battling my way through the endless traffic around Mall of Ga and cozying up in a comfy chair at a corner of B&N or digging an ever bigger hole into my bank account at the adjacent stores. Life at home was pleasantly slow, cold, and full of yummy food. For xmas eve, we invited our neighbors over and had hotpot and made spring rolls, lamb kabobs, and finished off with an amazing cake to die for 🙂 It ended with the three of us (me, mom, and Han) watching Road to Perdition (not the typical Xmas movie, but it was good anyway :).

Post xmas was the typical outlet shopping, and then the three of packing and leaving in a roll; starting with Han on the 27th and ending with my mom who’s on her way back to China as I’m typing this. I still hate leaving and being left. I will probably never get used to it no matter how many times I go through it. The only consolation is that as time move on, I get closer to seeing them again.

When I arrived in my dad’s apartment, my first thought was the appalling amount of dust that has gathered on my furniture. The room really looked like it has not been lived in for a year. So I spent couple of hours cleaning up the room and unpacking. Once the room looked the way I remembered it, I suddenly something…or rather someone, was missing. Memories of last Christmas and Han are still hanging in the air, but he’s not here. It’s amazing stubbornly people and things ingrain themselves upon your memories and your life.

But there are new places to go, new people to meet, and new memories to make. This break has been a good one thus far and I know the second half will be just as good. I look forward to seeing the friends that I haven’t seen since last break, starting tomorrow.

by Halley

holiday melancholy

Every winter break, I’m invariably plagued with the symptoms of having too much time and doing too little. These include becoming inexplicably unhappy. The specifics can vary from week to week or year to year, but it can be summarized into a general dissatisfaction with life. Be it the excruciating longing for the people who are not here, or the endless waiting for what is to come, the bittersweet nostalgia of what used to be, or the useless wishing for what could have been, they are all because I finally have a little time on my hands that I don’t (or want) to know what to do with. So I sit here and allow my mind to wander, and that always leads to these insidious thoughts of unhappiness.

Thoughts of escape eventually take over, and I become obsessed with the need for a fiction or a party. Being productive is always a nice option, but if seldom becomes anything more than just that, an option. So I drift between states of holiday melancholy, happy laziness, desperate escapades to bookstores and therapeutic shopping, and attempting productivity. I still love the holiday music constantly bellowing out of the speakers at the mall and the beautiful lights on the neighbors’ houses.

‘Tis the season to be, I dunno, you tell me.

by Halley

coming to a circle and beyond

After a full semester of intense work and endless complaints, I finally get some reward for it all. However, I’m hesitant to say “hard work pays off.” It does, for sure, but not always in the way that you want it to be. The lessons I learned freshman year will stay in my mind forever. It’s not enough to just try hard and give it all you have, to succeed, you actually have to know your limits. Sure, it’s great to test your limits and stretch it a little especially when you are still growing. But like creating a good investment portfolio, you have you have to know how to balance the risks. The best results, or the greatest success, come from a combination of hard work, gamesmanship, and luck. To disregard any one of them is to be blind to some parts of reality. These are the lessons Duke has taught me so far, and I plan to take them with me to law school and beyond.

P.S. I have finally recovered to the GPA I started out with (and a little above), but I don’t think it’s possible to graduate cum anything. Oh well :\ At least I’ll have 1-2 honor’s thesis(es)…