To Conclude

Last night Jack said: "We're done with research!"

This morning I woke up feeling relieved, open, and just incredible grateful for everything--the research class, the experience, and most importantly, the classmates. Although till last night I was still a bit upset and embarrassed about the fact that I did not win any award, this morning I just can't stop thinking about what a incredible weekend I just had--what a incredible three years that just passed. On NJRSF, I got to see some truly insane (insanely smart) people, some really quirky people, some really nice people. And that just reignited my faith in our generation. And then I looked back on the past three years. The seven people in our class would have been good friends anyway but science research brought us together like a family. We genuinely support and appreciate each other and that is just so precious.

Ah, I'm getting so Xinyi style cheesy (as opposed to Jack's style). Buh anyway, to conclude, I wish all seven of us, Jackie, Robert, Christine, Bahar, Gene, Jaimes, and me keep in contact with one another and be friends for life!

亲爱的反面教材

亲爱的反面教材,

首先，只有幼稚的人在争辩最后才会总想让自己成为说最后一句话的人，好像就因为他说了这最后一句话他就胜了一样。通常我不会跟这一类无聊的傻子一般见识，但是介于你每次说的那最后一句话都是一样的—— 一样的话，一样的错误，我觉得我有必要来回应一下：

请您不要动不动 就说什么我小时候没有管教，有的只是溺爱。跟你这个脑子不正常，情绪动荡不定的人在一起的这几年对我精神上没有半点帮助。我从你身上学不到如何处事待人。 我看到的只有对外人和善，对家人高高在上，暴躁易怒。我从你身上学不到如何面对成功挫折。我看到的只有一个自以为事，对已见万分执着，对异见一概否定，对 成功高傲自满，对失败。。。啊，你没有失败。你永远是对的。幸好我的童年赋予了我智慧，所以对你这些违反常理的行为我只看不学。每次我想到万一我的童年接 受的是你的“教育”我就感到异常的可怕。是这样的话，我现在早就会是一个像你一样阴阳不定，是非不分，高傲自负，心胸狭窄，心理幼稚的变态。我不是在说你 是一个不称职的父亲，我说的是你是一个不称职的“大”人。你肯定认为没必要，因为你认为你的人格是完美的。但是我认为你有必要尽快做一些心理咨询，因为任 何人用脚都能看得出你全身上下，从里到外都充满了问题。

所以，我很欣慰我有一段被懂得如何做人的人围绕着的，充满爱的童年。至于你？我真的真的很感谢你一直以来作为反面教材的存在。


:),
一个正常人

Scholastic.

"first of all, for the category of personal essay and memoir...Stephen Kim."

We clapped. We smiled. We waited for our names to come up.

"second person, also in the personal essay/memoir category..."

Now I think of it, it was pretty surprising that my mind wasn't "formatted" at that moment. I did have a strong feeling that the next name could be me. Nonetheless, I was stupefied when my name, in the distorted form of "Gin Yi Lin," was actually pronounced aloud. I must have looked really dumb. I didn't know what I was supposed to do in situations like this--what facial expressions I was supposed to have, what emotions I was supposed to show. My face might have shown no emotion, but my mind was hyperactive at that moment: "wow, of all people, I won? But I can barely speak proper English. All these people here are much better writers than I am...Chris, Jess, Jack, and Reem who wasn't present. What am I supposed to do? Show signs of joy? How?"

When I get high scores for science league and things like that, I always show signs of joy. For some reason it was really hard for me to show sign of joy when I just heard my name. I guess deep inside I didn't think I deserved it. I didn't enter the competition with the intention to win. I wasn't even planning to enter before Big A asked me because I've always felt very, very inferior when it comes to English, or just language arts in general.

Anyway, I guess what happened yesterday was a huge confidence booster--plus, the sense of inferiority is probably a good thing because it keeps that confidence in check.

No Love for Psych

Before I learned about psychology, I had "fantasies" about it. It seemed so amazing that human personality can be dissected, analyzed, and predicted. But after I start taking the Saturday course on Psychology, for some reason, I grow more and more disgusted by the whole idea, or purpose, of psychology, to say the least. Perhaps my disgust roots partly in the uninspiring teacher we have for the course; perhaps it is the very same idea that human personality can be dissected, analyzed, and predicted disturbed me. Almost every class, the teacher (ugh, I just can't bring myself to call her a professor for 1)she's probably just a graduate student; 2) she's too boring and dull to deserve such a title) would let us do one or two psychological "quizzes" and then, no matter what the turnout is, always conclude with "well, the majority tends to do this and not that because of this and that" as if she personally knows what we think. I mean, I know this is not her problem--if I were to teach the class I probably would have done the same, and that's why I said I am opposed to the idea of PSYCHOLOGY and psychology alone.

Psychology loves to give names to all these miscellaneous humanly processes as if humanly emotions can be categorized that easily. Psychology loves to group people and call them X if they exhibit A, B, C, D, and E. I can't stand that. When the teacher talked about superstitions and the like, she denounced them all so "scientifically" and unemotionally that she seemed like a soulless robot reading off of the textbook. I think studying psychology makes people think that they can analyze the composition of human mind; it's like taking apart a complicated gadget (brain) and lays all its individual parts (cerebrum, medulla, etc.) in front you. The mystery is gone.

I believe in two things: 1) everyone is special in their own ways; it's not possible to categorize a person under a label; 2) when a person believes wholly in science and rejects all the unexplainable mysteries of nature and human mind, then he or she is also rejecting human creativity and imagination. I think that makes him or her not "human".

Although I begin to hate psychology since the very class, I did not have the motive to write a blog entry until I read a comment for a Japanese novel that I just read. The English translation of the book's title is something like "losing the qualifications to live/no longer deserved to live." The main character is really weird young man who basically thinks very differently from "normal" people. His mind is incomprehensible by others just like others' minds are to him. As you can imagine, living on this world is very hard for a weird but very sensitive person like him.

One of the comments said that in modern terms, the main character is severely depressed and autistic. Well, the commenter is probably right but I just don't feel you can characterize all his peculiarities, idiosyncrasies into two words: depressed and autistic. I rather use the term "weird" (for the third time) than "depressed and autistic." Beneath the depressed and autistic external body, the main character is incredibly expressive and thoughtful. It's true that he perceives the world in a rather depressing and gloomy way (he considers "living" a tragic term whereas "death" a comedic one) but that's because he thinks differently. He was born thinking differently, perceiving the world differently.

Why do we always like to use simple terms to describe people? In this case scientific terms like depressed and autistic, in other cases statistic numbers like test scores. Men are not simple beings. Judgment of men is supposed to be subjective and descriptive (but, of course, not in the scientific sense of descriptive). Is it too hard of a task?