As I lay beneath the tarpaulin of a make-shift shelter on the very first night of my backpacking trip with the Harvard Outing Club, I felt like my two lives — the one at college filled with immense potential for interesting endeavours, and the one waiting back home in Singapore filled with endless expectations — start to converge. Here, two weeks before graduation and the fever dream of college comes to an end, I decided to start my reflections. Here — bundled up in my sleeping bag in the middle of Mount Greylock Reservation like a cocoon awaiting its metamorphosis, shivering when the night wind dashes through the underbellies of our makeshift tent.
The night outside is pelting down on the tarpaulin in rhythmic crisp drops. I stretch my back against the hard and flat ground and wiggle my toes in their dry warm socks. This was luxury compared to the outfield experiences from the military, and the many more experiences awaiting me. Us five girls were giggling and chatting like it was the coolest sleepover at night. We were in bed at 9pm and had not set any alarms. What a luxury this was! And yet, this was the closest experience I have to the working life I had cultivated prior to college. Perhaps it is this set of unique circumstances that created this sense of convergence, and I finally feel ready to pen down my reflections from college and this chapter of life.
The greatest grief that comes from saying goodbye is the certainty that I will not see any of my friends here again in the next couple years. That feels like a violation of the terms of our friendship. It is also terrifying, because I know that in the coming few years I would have changed irreversibly and become unrecognisable to them. College me is a state of exception, and I have stretched my limbs to boundless limits in the vast society of America that still feels free for me to be who I am. I will start with a couple things that I will miss about my life as Tai Ran Tang, then proceed to find some way to comprehend and reflect upon the flaming situation of the current US political climate and its attack on my Harvard education, and finally conclude with some goals I want to set for the future. It goes without saying that all of these are personal reflections, and is not representative of any institutions or countries.
Intellectual generativeness
Let me start with the nerdiest influence of Harvard. It might not seem flashy, but it had laid sound fundamentals to who I am. Intellectually, I’ve made important leaps and bounds that I hope is commensurate with the cost of my Harvard education, which has given me two things: intellectual curiosity and a capacity to become a knowledge producer. Oftentimes we receive the advice that “learning in college happens outside of the classroom, so don’t study too hard”, which is fair when trying to compensate for the Singaporean tendencies to be academically obsessed. However, I think that oftentimes we dismiss the academic rigour and importance of classroom learning in universities. I certainly fell prey to this extreme mindset, and skipped out on my readings, and prioritised social or extracurricular developments. After a tumultuous Sophomore year that had left me with enough character development plot for a while, in my Junior year I refocused on what it means to be a good student. I regretted not coming to these incredibly important takeaways from Harvard earlier.
If I had studied anywhere else, I am so sure that I would have remained the same type of student who could only have written answers to a fixed question, exactly as Singapore has raised me. However, all my interesting term papers, and my final senior thesis, have all required that I find my own question to answer. This meant that I had to reexamine what I learnt with greater intellectual curiosity, and to ask questions about the way the world works. Looking back, I have written on a wide range of topics, from the use of maps in imperial contestation between China and Russia, to the history of paper and politics in Tokugawa Japan, to the management of death in the Ottoman empire. I am confident that not all of them are well-written or pose well-designed research questions. What was more important was that I wanted to ask those questions, and had to find a way to be confident that the questions I asked were not simply factual inquiry. To give an example, I wasn’t asking “why did the empire collapse”, I had to ask “did the economic and cultural collapse of the empire happen at the same time, and if not, what does that mean to claim that the empire collapsed”. I wanted to ask questions that a Wikipedia page could not answer. I feel like I’ve only recently acquired this skill of questioning with meaningful curiosity, and it is unfortunate that my education here has ended before I can fully develop it.
This curiosity is vital to my capacity to become a knowledge producer. I think that the biggest intellectual leap to make in college is to transform from being mere knowledge consumers to knowledge producers. I have heard a thousand times that education helps us become as critical thinkers and be smart about the information we consume, but it is an entirely different skill set to become someone capable of producing meaningful information. It is moving away from summarising, criticising, and even arguing with existing sources of information. It is trying to add to existing literature with your own arguments. To a certain degree, it is also coming up with my own worldview and learning to apply that to new information. Most professors at Harvard are known to contribute to society through their research work. Being surrounded by the people at the pinnacle of knowledge production does eventually trickle into my own development.
As an aside here, I feel like this is an especially important quality to bring back to Singapore. I don’t think I can comment on Singapore’s academia since I’m not part of it. However, I think that in professional and policy spaces, we are accustomed to intellectual recycling and appeals to more reputable sources. For example, we often base decisions upon what politicians say, or provide practical justifications based on learning from what other countries are doing. It is a method of information processing that has its strength but is limited in its creativity. I think that if we want to find relevance at the halfway inflexion of this century, we need to grow up from being a young country always recycling ideas, to being meaningful knowledge producers ourselves. But I digress.
How did I manage to cross the bridge between being a knowledge consumer and a producer? Unfortunately, academia has a much higher barrier to entry than most other forms of content creation (hot take: academia is a creative industry, and I don’t think we should belittle digital content creators when researchers themselves are a type of content creators). Therefore, step 1: consume a lot and imitate other knowledge producers. I think it is impossible to produce meaningful knowledge without first referencing and maybe even plagiarising from great thinkers before us. In a related conclusion from my thesis research, the modern copyright regime and academic integrity framework demonises copying as a form of learning. They are each trying to guard against some ills that arise from it (I’m in no way advocating for academic plagiarism for the record). However, the trade-off we forget is that we first learn by imitation. Think: our first language, how to walk, understanding social cues etc. We cannot start with the belief that we have something important to say. We are not going to add novel intervention to the field when we start learning. I have seen the problems that arise out of that delusion and self-absorption (ie. many of my worst classmates at Harvard). With that intellectual humility, when I retraced the steps of previous thinkers and reconstructed their argument at its best, I began to learn to imitate what it takes to produce something worthwhile.
There is no more step 2 or 3, or at least that I can articulate yet. This is the same mysterious process of language acquisition. At some point in the imitation, I simply learnt to provide something of my own, and it was important that this process was facilitated by an intellectual mentor, who inspire with their own work, but more importantly, who can be frank in feedback. Disclaimer: I don’t pretend to have completed the full process of becoming a knowledge producer either. Growth does not happen in the neat time frames of an undergraduate education. When I first received my thesis comments, I was disappointed in it because it felt like my first attempt at knowledge generation had failed. It was immensely disheartening that I did not end my college education with a magnum opus, and I cannot claim that I have cracked the code to contribute something intellectually interesting. However, revisiting some of my thesis comments, I realised I might not be as disappointed in the feedback as I thought. That satisfaction of intellectual growth cannot be unearned, and the struggle towards it is not without its own fruits. It all goes back to that sense of intellectual curiosity and humility. I feel that if I left college feeling incomplete and excited to know more about the world because I don’t have all the right answers, I must have done something right. This feeling is aptly summarised by one of my reader’s feedback that means a lot to me:
“Most importantly shows both hard work and intellectual excitement, and the author is very promising in their primary research skills. The thesis was a pleasure to read, and was an original and sincere attempt to think through a very interesting problem facing the contemporary [China]…The [feedback] mentioned above are skills to be developed over time, and I strongly encourage the author to continue engaging in history, analysis and research.”
Taking things off a pedestal
The elite of the elite, the cream of the crop, and all these people and institutions we uphold on an aspirational pedestal are all deeply flawed and worse than what our imagination built them up to be. Nothing is too sacred for criticism. This realisation had given me the confidence to hold my own and be even keeled with people who seem socially superior to me.
Looking back on my own educational trajectory, I think I had been privileged enough to be part of the elite. However, I don’t think I have truly been able to make that claim without sounding like a frog at the bottom of the pond until I had tested it in a place like Harvard, where I have met the best and the brightest from all over the world, and the unimaginable wealth and power of elites who are the pulse of America, and by extension the world. This second learning point is fundamentally about how the Harvard experience had enabled me to grow more rooted in my confidence. A secondary aim of writing these reflections is to do the same for anyone reading it: take Harvard off the pedestal and spend time de-mystifying my experience here. I know the sort of effect produced with the reputation of being a Harvard graduate. I want people to understand that the awe and hostility associated with the brand name had tripped me up too, but it doesn’t have to make anyone feel insecure. TLDR, perhaps this is just a plea to interact with me with an even keel.
I struggled (and maybe still do, just a little) with the response I get when people ask me where I study and I say “Harvard”. It is a formidable brand name, and it has definitely inculcated important values and skills in me. However, one of the key things I have learnt from Harvard is the ability to criticise things productively, and Harvard itself is not above criticism. My mother would often be shocked at how negatively I feel about some of the actions and behaviour of Harvard students. She chides me for my negativity: “surely there must be some redeemable quality to get them into the institution?” To criticise the experience is not to say that there aren’t any brilliant and capable people here. However, Harvard is just another system which at some point hit a historical jackpot and snowballed its reputation.
And all systems are flawed. Take the admissions process that my mother had seen as an institutional safeguard for quality as an example. Legacy admissions are the most flagrant of the issues with Harvard admissions, but sometimes the admissions board is also optimising for something untenable, like over-achievement to the point of neuroticism. Many Harvard students have also shown some of the poorest forms of work ethics and critical thinking skills I’ve seen. There’s idiots everywhere. The admissions process should be robust, because it feels like so much of the institutional prestige rests upon this. However, expectations do not make things true. There are many systemic lapses in the Harvard administrative from its housing accommodations and conflict resolution, to top-down communications. I think that much of the fear-inducing awe surrounding elite institutions are unwarranted, and no elite institutions or people should be placed upon a pedestal that exempts it from criticism.
To criticise Harvard is inherently challenging, because an elitist system is designed to preserve itself and bind your individual interests to its preservation. By criticising the admissions process, for example, I cannot exempt myself — “Harvard admissions optimised for the wrong qualities and some undeserving people are let in, except for me who rightly deserves to be here”. To take things off a pedestal means to relinquish that selfish impulse to preserve my own achievements when I have also benefitted from the flawed system. Another way an elitist system survives is to alienate its critics with the inevitable feeling that sometimes we are woefully unqualified to be providing criticism. In my freshman year, I persevered with classes that were unfulfilling and poorly taught because I thought that I had to be grateful for even taking classes at Harvard and that I was underqualified to be criticising it. The elitist system preserves itself by requiring its critics to produce some legitimising merits.
If I were to advocate for criticising sacred cows, I must first address this sense of inadequacy. This goes into a more fundamental consideration of what exactly contributes to legitimacy. I think there are two brands of merit that I can now articulate. The first is the affirmative legitimacy that comes from sources that can strengthen your view. For example, the Harvard brand name no doubt would serve as an instantaneous symbol of trust and citing a Harvard professor tends to strengthen a claim it endorses. This is also the type of legitimacy that makes us feel inadequate when we challenge reputable people and institutions. I ask myself: who am I to disagree when smarter people endorse it? I can give some platitude like “believe in yourself and have courage to disagree”. It would be true, but unhelpful. Instead, I have the following argument to make for those who struggle to find confidence in themselves to challenge an idea. In a historical episode that gets forgotten in light of all the other momentous events to follow, Mao Zedong had started a “100 Flowers Campaign” in 1956 to encourage everyday citizens to criticise the government. How did a layperson find the audacity in them to challenge the previously repressive system? It is because they have been endorsed by a greater power (Mao) than what they fear (local governments). It is the equivalent of going to your grandparents to bypass the authority of your parents. So, in the meantime while we all try to find the courage to voice our criticisms, here’s a quote from an intellectual giant John Stuart Mill in his essay “On Liberty” to provide some confidence-for-loan that I had tapped into in my years here:
“The usefulness of an opinion is itself a matter of opinion: as disputable, as open to discussion, and requiring discussion as much as the opinion itself… Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think.”
I will definitely be taking this willingness to criticise with me, because I have witnessed how constructive criticism comes from a place of love. For all the problems of the American culture, in spite of Trump and all, there is still the relative openness to criticism (major foreshadowing!). This is abundantly clear at Harvard, where its own students and professors are willing to condemn its actions against freedom of speech or biased behaviour. For the purposes of my upcoming career though, the most memorable form of critique I encountered are in the books that analysed West Point and the military elite in the US. West Point was held as the pinnacle of military education, and in Singapore we hold it as an aspirational standard to learn from. However, many academics, journalists, and even generals, have scathing reviews of the quality of education. “The Cost of Loyalty” by Tim Bakken, for example, takes apart the entire system and argues that West Point is the origin of many of the problems with the US military. “The Generals” by Thomas E. Ricks is another great book analysing how personalities affected good and bad decisions and had many criticisms against the leadership. Patriotism did not exempt the military institutions from criticisms about its failures in the Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq Wars. The critics do so not out of hate, but because they love and care deeply for the system and country, and they want it to be improved.
Perhaps internally the system finds it hard to find people who can criticise it meaningfully, but there exists someone to challenge and hold them accountable, whether it be academics or journalists. The abundance of archival information in America helps construct this self-awareness and reflectiveness that keeps the system accountable. It highlight how woefully unprepared Singapore is in comparison. We are not particularly good at leaving archiving records and historicising ourselves, perhaps because of the youth of our nation. That is the practical problem that needs to be addressed first in order to foster an environment that could benefit from criticism. Regardless, I want to remember this courage and kindness to criticise things I care about.
However, the second type of merit is something I am more concerned about at my time here, and it is provocative legitimacy. How do we think about the legitimacy of sources that directly challenge our believes? What happens when a source disagrees and does not fit into my world view? And the most important question that had been posed to me by Professor Robichaud from the Harvard Kennedy School (haha, my appeal to affirmative legitimacy): What constitutes evidence that could change my mind on a very controversial topic? It is tempting to answer that “I will know it when I see it”, because how else do we define the benchmark for changing out mind? Would we be convinced if people produced statistics and data? That’s too simplistic a standard, because even the anti-vaxxers have VAERS, a site of self-reported data about vaccine problems. There is something to be said about the rigour of data collection too. Would we be convinced if the idea has been peer-reviewed by a legitimate source? That certainly underpins why we trust reputable journal publications, but firstly that polices and marginalises the gatekeepers of trust (ie. the educated elite), and secondly, there are enough academic scandals of dishonest peer-reviews or simply broken systems that accept bullshit publications.
If we do not find an answer for ourselves about the standards of legitimacy we hold dissenting sources to, we are at liberty to shift the goalpost when it makes us uncomfortable. I will not know how to treat criticisms, and it becomes really easy to fall into the same liberal echo-chambers here at Harvard. Harvard had previously come under fire for freedom of speech on campus because political policing had reduced intellectual freedom and vitality. I think it made me especially aware of how easy it is to fall into echo chambers – it is not only Trump supporters who fall victims, but even the educated elites are very much too stubborn to change our minds. I don’t know many people in the liberal echo chambers of Harvard who are willing to change their minds on affirmative action, immigration policies, and even less politically polarised topics like the American drug policy.
Debate and discourse without needing to convince the other person is of course important, but at some point, we keep spinning our wheels and the disagreements get exhausting. It is time to start wanting to convince people with our arguments again, and not default to the “it’s just my opinion bro”. To do that, we have to be willing to be convinced in a two-way dialogue too. I feel like I have changed my mind about a number of subjects like the merits of test-based admissions, the extent of freedom for gender and sexuality, the merits of activism and social movements, and a variety of topics ranging from the banal to the polarised. They have been uncomfortable, but important conversations. The soundness of mind and ideas cannot be its own defence. An unwillingness to change our minds on difficult topics undermines the rest of our believes, because then that intellectual confidence is unearned and becomes snobbishness.
Democracy
Since we are on the topic of criticism, there is the obvious elephant in the room – the Trump administration’s attack on Harvard’s funding and right to enrol international students. It is just my luck to be able to graduate and leave relatively unharmed by the policies, but I think this huge change had drastically changed the flavour of my time at Harvard. I cannot pretend that the Harvard experience will continue to be the kind I have experienced, and I don’t want to briefly nod at this or hide it all behind a nice smiley Instagram post. I want to spend a little time unpacking what my reflections mean in light of the recent changes in America. I feel compelled to reiterate once again that these are my personal opinions. If there is one thing Harvard managed to change my mind on, it is learning to differentiate between being principled and being an activist. I don’t think now is the time to be making inflammatory campaigns, but neither is it time to stick our heads into the sand and keep quiet hoping the crossfire misses us.
Firstly, I think a disclaimer is necessary: despite the spate of democratic backsliding incidents, there isn’t a State of Fear in America. Many of my non-Harvard friends who I have not been in contact with for a while had reached out to check in on me. The funding freezes and attack on Harvard’s ability to enrol international students were shocking and headline-worthy. However, for all the shocking threats, I don’t think there is a particularly real threat against my personal safety because there is no strong state to really execute on the policies. State inefficiency had only increased with the DOGE cuts, and the anti-intellectualism wave left does not inspire competence. There is still the ever present challenge of VISA status at customs and immigration, but each attack had been restrained by checks and balances – legal injunctions and halts – which proves that the systems of the state are working (albeit being tested heavily). Compared to the attack on Harvard’s international students and researchers, so many other Trump policies require that concern for personal safety – immigration raids, deportation, and funding cuts that directly affect people’s livelihoods and pensions. For anyone wondering how to react to the plight of international students, sympathy for the fear of the future uncertainty goes without saying, but panicked speculation and commentary seems out of proportion.
I think this clarification is important because it is self-sabotage to wallow in fear. That is exactly what Trump intends – to strike fear and sow doubt to strengthen his own position. I do not wish to trivialise the stress that every international student is facing now that all their hard work and education is jeopardised by political attack; the fear of authoritarian consolidation should caution against the destination of America’s trajectory if this continues, and I think there is always a possibility for this to threaten us in the future. However, the fact that outrage is a commonplace response to the news highlights how criticisms have not yet reached censorship. It is reductive and inaccurate to compare Trump’s current policies to authoritarianism the likes of Xi’s China, Bukele’s El Salvador, or Asaad’s Syria. Americans, and even non-Americans, feel empowered to resist and call out such blatant bullying, which at its core testifies to the fundamental difference between a waning democracy (but a democracy nonetheless) and an authoritarian state. Trump does not need the imagined fear of his extensive reach and mass hysteria to feed his sense of power.
Secondly, on a more personal level, the current attacks on Harvard changed how I would have answered a question on my college admissions: What would you do with the Harvard education? I would have written something along the lines of “change the systems around us”, which is still a noble goal, but now, I think I would be a lot more unabashedly direct: I am going to use that privilege of a Harvard education to get into positions of power. All our commencement speeches circle the same point – go do something, go realise our potentials. It is not simply enough to be armed with optimism and the courage to speak up. Activism is not the only way to address the problems of today’s climate. I aspire towards the positions of power now because that is the only way to make what I say matter, and I want to be the one making the right decisions.
The Harvard experience makes it easier to remain apathetic to troubles that do not directly affect me, because it feels like I have more to lose, and that the brand name is associated more with glamorous things than grappling with the dirt of daily life and the labour of exercising empathy. The Trump administration’s attack on Harvard shows how easy it is to be selfish, and how that would be the wrong path to pursue. However, these attacks also highlight how that aloofness is an illusion. We have not, in fact, “made it” by becoming a student at a highly selective college. It is normal to be first and foremost concerned about our own interests, but the attack on international student enrolment is only going to weaken us if we only look out for ourselves. In the days that followed the news, many group chats were created for a more exclusive handful of the affected international students to provide more direct support. There is this sense of security from knowing that an organisation and country with much more resources than myself has my back. While I am glad to enjoy that Singapore scholar privilege, I think this fundamentally misunderstands the nature of the problem. There is a certain equality in how every single international student is affected by the policy.
To ensure that an aspiration for power does not become noxious, I have to actively resist that instinctive selfish scrabble for self-preservation. It is a privilege for me to shrug and think: whatever happens, I will not bear the brunt of it since I have graduated. It is normal to breathe that initial sigh of relief, but it cannot be normalised to keep my gaze averted from how problems affect others in vulnerable positions. It meant something that many American students here are strongly opposed to the actions of the administration. It meant something that Harvard stood up against Trump’s administration in spite of the penalties (if we’re not being cynical). We are beholden to an institution exercising its power in an unselfish way, and I now understand how terrifying it is to be powerless, hoping that those with power will not abandon us in apathy.
Realistically, there is little tangible difference I can make right now, and I think it is self-soothing bullshit to merely stop at “I’m here for you to talk to” type of platitudes. To any international students affected by this, I know that your Harvard experience looks very different from mine, and it sucks to be a helpless political pawn. It affects your hopes and dreams, and you will only be faced with more uncertainty and difficult decisions between completing your education and sticking with Harvard. I have no better words for the potential feeling of “why me why now” in this shitty situation. All I can do, and perhaps what you can do, is to nurture a resistance to apathy and use this Harvard education to get to positions of power to do something when History inevitably repeats itself. Something something “first they came for the Communists…” We all know that poem about the Holocaust, and it is time we learnt that we cannot just look out for our own interests. Remember this experience, even if it is not quite the “transformative experience” promised by Harvard.
I had gotten the front row seat to watch the American democracy fall in slow-motion. I have experienced the benefits of the climate of freedom here, and the democratic norms of America had enabled me to reach the reflections thus far. However, I have no idea what to make of the current reality where all of that is undermined. What is my history and political science degree for if I cannot describe or analyse the chaos? If I choose to be generous with myself, perhaps it is time for a different type of education to start to help me reconcile formal education with real life (perhaps it is time for practical work experience?) I hope that this is some comfort that graduation is not a neat journey where all reflections are complete and all loose ends are tied.
Looking forward: back to Singapore
I have graduated with a view that college should not be a means to an end (ie. to be trained to succeed at your job), but an end itself that nourishes who we are and out internal worlds. As such, for this next portion where I learn to pack Tai Ran Tang up, and move ahead as Tang Tai Ran, I don’t want to forget about the type of person I have grown to become and want to set goals that apply the strengths that I have come to like about this version of me.
Professional Goals:
- Balancing relatability with professionalism. Many people have told me that it’s important to have a snapshot in my mind of the outcome of my first command tour. So, here’s my vision: I want to teach the young men how to take care of themselves especially in areas where most people don’t have someone to teach them – I’m thinking doing skincare together, vetting and writing their CVs, going through some how-to interactions, like asking someone out or how to small-talk. I want to talk to everyone one-on-one at least once, and to sit with them at mealtimes. There is no fixed way to do things, and I want to make sure everything I do is thoughtful. That way I can be formidable in a way that challenge the fastest and brightest to grow, and dependable in a way that uplifts and supports those struggling to adjust to the new environment. Importantly, one aspect that I had neglected prior is also the outcome with my peers and superiors. I want to be able to stand up for what I believe in without troubling others and without people-pleasing. I want to be put to work to help achieve someone else’s vision. This is also the one chance in my early career to find people who are willing to disagree with me.
- Lead as a woman. One of the biggest changes in my conception of leadership in the years I spent away from service is realising that gender does affect how we lead, and it should be a strength to be harnessed rather than a divisive play for identity politics. Prior, I had internalised a lot of rhetoric about having to prove myself equal to men, that I must be manly in order to succeed. That is an idea of leadership that is inherently rooted in insecurity, and I think that servicewomen need better role models than that. I want to be able to lead with emotional intelligence, to cry in front of others, smile and be friendly instead of using fear to gain respect, indulge in the whimsy of “feminine frivolities” like dressing up by booking in and out with a great outfit. I hope the confidence I have gained over the four years will allow me to resist cramming myself back into the box of expectations. It is easy to treat a minority group as homogenous and forget that there are so many other ways we might differ beyond gender. I want to be friends with the servicewomen not merely because we are all women, but because out of everyone, we are best able to see each other as individuals.
- Finding military’s relevance in today’s world. I don’t think that intellectual work should pause just because I am on a ground tour. This is the best period of time to reflect and find areas where ground realities are not being feedbacked to higher echelons. It is the job of staffers to grapple with the operational and political relevance of the military, but I think that my first and foremost challenge as a ground commander to find military’s relevance is a social one. How can we justify conscription in today’s world? How can we deal with the changing texture of soldiers in a way that isn’t going to lament “back in my days”? I hope that I will be able to find those answers myself, not just for policy writing, but also so that I can stand before my soldiers and be answerable to them too.
Personal Goals:
- Make sure my job is not the most interesting part about me. I want to have a life outside my job, even if it is challenging to only have weekends outside of camp. I want to maintain that sort of romanticism in my life here at Harvard, because I think that this version of me has dealt with burnout way better than I had in the past. I want to keep doing kendo and get better at it, because good clean kendo reflects the kind of heart I maintain. I want to find ways to keep dancing either by going to social dance spaces, or taking classes, because dance had built up my confidence and I want to maintain that. I want to get back into creativity and do more comics to blend visual arts with writing. This might be too greedy of me, and I know I will probably fall short of it, but I hope these goals gives me a good start to make sure that I still live a good life.
- Fill the dinner tables. Cooking has become such a big part of my life in the year I lived off campus, and I want to continue doing that for my family. Being able to make food together with my mother, for people I care about, is important. I have taken for granted the daily routine of eating dinner together, so I want to put in more effort in making sure to eat at home at least for one meal per week, and to engage fully in conversations around the dinner table.
- Read habitually and write about it in Hebrew. I know for certain that the only way to maintain the sharpness of mind is to keep reading, and I also know for certain that to maintain a language, I will need to use it. Therefore, I want to combine the two habits I wish to nurture and make sure that the skills I picked up at Harvard will not weaken. It was one of my regrets to not have done much reading outside of classes, and I don’t want to make the same excuses during work. I hope to read a book a month, and to engage with the ideas in it by writing a book review in Hebrew.
I am going into this new phase in life where there is an equal part dread – from losing the current lifestyle I enjoy – and anticipation – for the more direct impacts I can bring. I suppose that is the normal experience of graduating and being thrust into the world again with the inescapable expectations of being an adult. I don’t want this transition to be one that I will look back on with regret. I don’t want to be swept up by the tides of time. I remember younger me articulating that my goal in life is to never be mediocre. I sure hope I don’t let her down, especially not when I have only just commenced on this journey of making her proud.
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