10 Great Things About Coronavirus

At this point everyone is well aware of the COVID-19 pandemic, so I won't bore you with statistics. I'm not a news outlet. This is, however, a record of me as a college student, which means some very interesting things have been happening--some good, some far less desirable.

When the pandemic reached the point where businesses began to close and universities started going online, everything changed all at once. All classes were suspended for three days while professors figured out how to conduct class through the internet, and all students were encouraged to return home to finish the semester if possible, though housing would still be available for those who wanted to stay. About twenty minutes after the email came through, I looked out the window and saw someone walking out of the adjacent building with suitcases in tow, and all I could think was well that was fast. Others followed suit, and for the next week it became commonplace to look out the window and see someone pushing a cart laden with boxes out toward the parking lot. At the time of this post, the initial twelve members of our squad (as described in the Dorm page) have been reduced to five, and I'll be making my journey home as well by the end of the week.

As you can see, my latest grocery trip went just great.

In such a time, with friends leaving across the country, nearly all special events canceled, employment uncertain, stores picked clean and group gatherings discouraged, it's easy to be depressed. Life has been turned upside-down in the blink of an eye, and we can't even find a single good roll of toilet paper to show for it. In my Positive Psychology class, however, we practice expressing gratitude for the good things that come out of any situation. With that in mind I thought it'd be fun to outline a few of the positives; or at least not-so-negatives. Your mileage may vary.

1. Spring Break! (Sort Of): Students have always complained about BYU's single-day spring break, and this year we got classes canceled for three whole days. Ask and ye shall receive!
2. Lenient Due Dates: With everything going on, the chaos has not been helped by the fact that the school's academic website, Learning Suite, has been crashing all the time under the unprecedented load. And school is literally entirely online now. That means late forgiveness!
3. Introverts Be Not Judged: It's socially acceptable to stay at home and never see anyone now, which is awesome!
4. You Can't Stop D&D: Most college students are using Zoom for online lectures now, but you know what else you can use it for? Dungeons & Dragons. A couple of our players are on total quarantine lockdown right now, but that doesn't stop nerds like us.
5. Pass/Fail? Yes Please: Due to the crazy circumstances, this semester we'll have the option to take either our final letter grade or convert it to a Pass/Fail, which gives you passing credit for anything C or above without affecting your GPA whatsoever. So my nasty electrical engineering class need no longer sink my grades!
6. Saving All That Transit Time: With school at home, I don't need to spend half the day tromping around from building to building. Have I used all that extra time effectively? No. Still working on that part.
7. No Lines: We went to the mall to get something to eat, and even though the tables are roped off and the place is virtually empty, about half the restaurants are still open. You can enjoy not waiting in line and even have a pleasant conversation with the employees while they prepare the first order they've had all day.
8. Going Outside is Meaningful: I could literally stay inside all day long if I wanted to, and that means that when I go outside, it's more for the sake of being outside than anything else. I've found it much easier to be mindful of the scenery and enjoy being outdoors, rather than just rushing by on my way to class.
9. Grooming Not Mandatory: If you're not going to see anybody all day, you don't necessarily have to look presentable, right? If you don't want to shave or change out of your pajamas or fix your hair, you can slack in that department! Let alone the fact that most haircut places are closed anyway.
10. Imagine the Stories: As a writer, this is a gold mine. People will be reminiscing about this whole escapade for decades. I've been trying to record as many details as I can, because not only will I tell my grandkids about the Great Toilet Paper War of 2020,  but there's a wealth of inspiration for other stories--what happens in a pandemic, what things disappear from stores first, how the world reacts and so on. 

That's my bright side list for the Coronapocalypse. Not all of these will apply directly to you, as everyone's situation is different, but I hope it helps you to consider some of the good things coming out of this incredibly confusing time. I mean, I'm literally eating pineapple out of a bag with chopsticks as I write this. Nothing makes sense anymore.

Wash your Hands and Hic Manebimus Optime!

Chinese New Year's Resolutions

I have a complicated relationship with New Year's Resolutions (as many of us do).

Some years, I lay out very specific, quantitative goals that last until maybe March on a good year. Other years I just avoid the whole thing and end up making vague attempts to improve myself for the first few weeks of January before I forget all about it.

This year, I decided that I really wanted to get back on the Resolution train, with only one small problem: it was about January 4th when I reached that conclusion. Normally I wouldn’t be overly concerned about being a few days late, but the real problem is that I hadn’t even begun thinking about  what kind of goals I should set, a process which usually occupies my whole December. I was about to call it quits and just take the L for 2020, when I realized I had another chance: Lunar New Year!

That might sound like a cheap excuse for buying myself a few extra weeks, and back in 2016 I would have agreed with you, but having lived in Hong Kong for a couple years and being firmly steeped in the cultural phenomenon that is Lunar New Year there, I no longer feel that way. In Asia, Lunar New Year is the single largest holiday of the year, utterly dwarfing everything except the second-place Mid-Autumn Festival. Seriously, it’s a big deal. And, if I’m being honest, it probably means more to me now than the conventional new year on January 1st. I love everything about it—the decorations, sights, sounds, smells, and traditional foods (except Poon Choi. That stuff is Nasty with a capital N).

Here are some actual, really good foods I got to try on Lunar New Year in 2019 (not Poon Choi)

So here I am making Lunar New Year’s resolutions, transplanting a tradition of Western culture into an Eastern holiday. Not that you can’t just make goals anytime, but I find that when beginning a significant undertaking, it’s handy to use something to ceremonialize it, like a holiday.

As I’ve taken time to think, I’ve had some ideas about how I approach goals. I’m not going to lay out all the specifics, for a few reasons. The first is that posting about your resolutions before you begin has actually been shown to produce a false sense of gratification which can decrease your motivation to continue, resulting in even more empty gyms by February. The second is that I favor small-scale accountability, so I’d rather only a few family members and friends be aware of my goals and progress. The third is that I find that reading other people’s ambitious goals can lead me to think “Wow, my goals suck; what am I doing with my life?”

I don’t want to do that to any of you, so instead I’m going to share this year’s approach for creating goals, which is probably much more helpful.

I had trouble determining whether I had more success with quantified, small-scale goals or larger, long-term ones. Many people have recently advocated “process” goals rather than “product” goals, meaning success is defined as trying rather than arriving at a perfect destination. On the other hand, I really like having one big destination goal to aspire to. I often find it tedious to do the small things, and I need to think big in order to motivate myself. So I’m gonna do both.

That's me way out on a rock in Shek O in Hong Kong, around this time last year.

This year I’ll be handling goals in three main categories, namely Physical Health, Emotional/Spiritual Health, and Productivity, and these will be split into two levels: Vision and Habit. These are defined more on a time scale than a process-vs-product distinction, as follows:

Vision goals are what I hope to arrive at by the end of the year. They’re big, awesome ideas that I want to work toward. These are the things you put on a bulletin board above your desk so you can stare at them every day and get pumped up.

Habit goals are for the short-term. Basically, these are things you would set a daily notification for on your phone. They can kind of be either “product” or “process,” meaning the goal could represent a checklist of items to complete, or a rating of how much effort you gave. The main point is that they should point you in the direction of the Vision, and help you to build constructive habits that will get you there.

In a few months I’ll return to this topic to let you know how this grand experiment is going—hopefully with some good results! Also, if any of you are in the same camp as me and either forgot to make any goals or have already failed, start again! Chinese New Year is several days long!

Hic Manebimus Optime!

P.S. I don’t mean to offend anyone out there who loves Poon Choi. I just have a thing against boiled pig skin with hairs still attached.

I Promise I'm Not Dead

So what even happened to 2019? I'm sure a few of my regular readers were a little bewildered that I was negligent enough to only post three times during the entire year, and yes, that is entirely on me. Here's what happened:

Remember that awful math class I talked about back in September? The one I was panicking trying to review calculus II for so I could pass the pretest to even stay in the class? Well, truth be told it never got much better than that. I suppose it was a little stupid to take a class that was two high-level math courses smashed into one, especially after a two-year hiatus from all math. The schedule was brutal, and combined with the rest of my classes I had little time to do anything aside from homework, eating and sleeping, and most of my other hobbies went out the window for a couple months (along with, occasionally, eating and sleeping).

The good news: I did pass! That math class was without a doubt the hardest academic battle I've ever endured (which is saying something, if you remember how statics went freshman year). By the end of the semester, I was calculating how well I would have to do on the final exam to pass the class. I felt pretty secure in my ability to score 12% and end up with a D-, however I only have a small buffer of allowable D credits and I wanted to save that for future emergencies. I would need to get 46% on the final to squeak out with a C- and preserve my buffer of permissible D's, and that was legitimately cause for concern. I had actual doubts about being able to get 46%, which I think given my academic reputation is more of a commentary on the flaws of the Math Department's methods than anything else. I could rant about that to no end, but fortunately I don't have to because I got a whopping 50%, earning myself a flat C.

This was the lowest final grade I've received in my life, and I shed tears. Of joy.

It's remarkable the kind of perspective shift that happens when your goals change. In high school and even into freshman year of college, when I still needed to apply to my program, the only acceptable result was perfection, and anything less than an A would be considered disastrous. Now, safely in my program, the goal was to simply pass this hellish class, and if I got a C- that would be gravy. A pure C was better than I had even hoped, and as a result I was ecstatic--despite the fact that it's the worst grade I've ever had. Perspective is lovely that way; it lets you be happy with what you have. I need to work on applying that idea more consistently, but I take victories where I can get them.

Thus endeth the year, and the decade. Now is the time when you're probably expecting to hear all the mushy, nostalgic decade-in-review stuff or optimistic dreams and goals for the new year, but the fact is I don't have all that ready yet. Something about being in a stress-fueled death spiral for a few months really saps your creative energy, you know? So next time, I promise. Until then, I'm just happy with my C.

Hic Manebimus Optime!

One Week to Re-Learn Calculus

Mechanical engineering majors take a long time to finish. In order to help with this problem, the department has been kind enough to compress three math classes into two, eliminating any parts not directly pertinent to the major and thereby allowing us to get them done a little faster. The first of these Frankenstein Death-classes, known as Math 302, is essentially linear algebra and multivariable calculus smushed into one class--there should have been warning bells going off by this point, but despite my natural reaction to flee and hide, I'm registered for it anyway.

Come to find out, there's a pretest in 302 that all students must pass in order to remain in the class. The pretest concerns the material of Math 113, which is essentially the same as AP Calculus BC. I did well in Calc BC--got a 5 on the AP test and everything--but that was four years ago. Not to mention I haven't been doing anything remotely math-related for the last two years in Hong Kong, and in that time my math ability dwindled to nearly zero. Put all those facts together and you've got an intimidating proposition.

This is an old picture, but it was too fitting.

So the week before classes officially started, I was spending three hours a day sitting in lecture (the department is nice enough to organize a 'refresher course' every year for those of us who have forgotten all our math) and the rest of the day studying by myself in the library, doing practice tests, etc. I essentially made a full-time job out of reteaching myself math.

I flopped into bed at the end of every day with a serious headache, but the calculus started coming back. In fact, when the time came to take the test, I was feeling pretty good about it. We had the test from 2002 to practice on, and I felt confident that I could do everything on it. There were 30 questions, so I needed 21 right in order to make the 70% pass mark.

Then the actual test came, and I was in for a rude awakening. It was already stacked against us that we couldn't have any sort of 3x5 card or equation sheet, let alone something as miraculous as a calculator--interesting how the point of this test is to make sure we remember the material from Math 113, in which you CAN use a notecard and calculator...
Aside from that, the test was just plain harder than all the practice tests, and covered a couple of concepts that never even came up in the practice material (they should've warned us about Arc Length; not one but two questions). I harbor some deep-rooted frustration with the department because the 2019 test was so much harder than the 2002 test, and here's why: the class material is the same. No new math has been discovered in the last 17 years, and the curriculum remains accordingly unchanged. Even if the class had become more competitive over the years, this is a pretest we're talking about; hardly the time to impose a tyrannical guess-what's-in-my-head ordeal to clearly identify those among us who don't have photographic memories, but I digress.

Anyway, I sat staring at the test sheet with 19 bubbles filled, all the ones I confidently knew how to solve. I was left to get at least two of the remaining eleven right through guesswork, which is statistically doable but still risky with five available answers per question. I rolled up my sleeves and applied my best fake-it-til-you-make-it multiple choice skills and came out with a final score of 22, bringing me to 73%.

I'm going to try to ignore that this is supposed to count as a midterm, but hey--I passed!

Hic Manebimus Optime!

Possibly the Worst Week on Record

Once upon a time there was a job that I really wanted. I had dreamed of it for years, and at the time I'm not sure if there was anything in the world that I wanted more. I had the qualifications and very little competition, if any (speaking Cantonese is not a very common skill). I went down for an interview, and it went well. Then there was another a couple weeks later, and then a third, and then a fourth, and then finally, after an arduous two months of interviews, screening and suspense, I got a phone call saying that I had been denied the position.

This is all sounding very familiar. We're getting right back to the roots of this blog: rejection! A few years ago it was the grueling several-month waiting process and eventual rejection that started me writing in the first place, and here we are, in the same situation. It's almost like going home...if home is a place where your dreams habitually disintegrate.

This turn of events prompted a whole mess of thoughts and emotions--what was I missing? Was there someone better than me, or did they just hate me so much that they rejected me without even having a backup option? Then that brought on the regret--I should've somehow displayed more confidence, or never broken eye contact, or shined my shoes--and those thoughts don't help, either. Eventually I was just left with the daunting notion that I was still out of a job, and this unfruitful process had devoured my entire summer of prospective working time before the semester.

A few short days later, things got worse. 

Way back in 2016, in the earliest days of this whole blogging venture, I purchased a machete. It was a good one, made out of 1055 carbon steel and sporting a sweet black powder coating. For years it served me well, everywhere from hiking in the mountains to bushwhacking in my own backyard.

But then one day my hand was a tad too high on the sheath as I drew it. Something didn't quite feel right, so I looked down and immediately thought oh, that's stitches. The edge of the blade had run along my clenched finger as I unsheathed it, slicing deep.

It was at about that point that my lifeguard training kicked in, and I calmly walked to the bathroom before it started bleeding and proceeded to drip helplessly into the sink, staring curiously at my new wound while waiting for my sister to return with the gauze pad I'd asked her to fetch.

Then, maintaining a death grip on my gauze-wrapped finger, we had to go upstairs to explain to our parents how I now needed to be taken to the emergency room--not what you want to hear right before bedtime, but they kindly consented to take me while I sat in the back, keeping pressure on the wound.

Lovely, isn't it?

I came home with six stitches and a splint, and was left to pursue normal life without the full functionality of my left hand. This brought a whole new set of complications like duct-taping a plastic bag around my arm to shower, putting a pause on my efforts to recover my long-lost piano skills, and just trying to type with that humongous splint.

All things considered, it was a pretty terrible week. But the thing was, it just kind of reached the point where it was funny. My misfortune and each new complication that emerged from it became the topic of humor, and before long I was smiling at my plight. It made me appreciate the little details of this odd experience, like when they took the stitches out and glued the little fabric strips over the wound with this pine-scented medical glue, and I had to go around with my hand smelling like one of those tree-shaped air fresheners for the rest of the day. 

We also decided that since my machete has now tasted the blood of man, it was time to officially name it, as befitting an instrument of destruction. Its new name is Sarga (pronounced sar-ya), the Swedish word meaning to lacerate. Because what else? Ordinarily I'd say my Viking ancestors would be proud, but honestly they would probably just laugh.

So at the end of it all, I've racked up a lot of stories to tell, received a healthy dose of perspective, started to regain flexibility in my finger, and applied for five other jobs.

Now all I need are chainmail gloves.

His Manebimus Optime!

Global Repositioning

Hey y'all, I'm back!

As promised, I'm not dead and I haven't forgotten about you, my dear readers. About two months ago, I returned home from Hong Kong after serving as a full-time volunteer missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for two years. Granted, a two months is a long time to be home and not be writing, but two years is longer still, and I felt I had earned a little time to decompress.

I'll probably talk quite a bit about my time in Hong Kong in the future, but for today I'm going to focus on a question I've been asked many times since I've been back: "do you miss it?"

The answer is, of course, a resounding yes. But that question is similar to another I got asked all the time in HK: "do you miss home?" to which the answer was also yes.

How does that work? I go there and miss it here, then I come back here and miss it there. That might sound like a pessimistic refusal to be contented, but I think it's something else. It seems as soon as you become immersed in another culture, you'll spend the rest of your life missing something. That isn't a bad thing, either; it just means that you have developed a love for multiple places and we, unfortunately, can only be in one place at a time. Wherever we are, we ought to be in the moment, but remembering where we've been is equally important as we continue to pursue whatever direction seems to be "forward." So let's find out where the future will take us, shall we?

Hic Manebimus Optime!

What Survives Us

In life, nothing is more constant than change. Things are going to change around here as well, because the time has come for me to face the next big chapter of my life.

For the next two years, I will be serving as a full-time missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Hong Kong.This means I won't be around to write new posts for a while, but rest assured I'll have some good ones cooked up for June 2019. Start your countdown timers.

Although I won't be personally curating this dear blog of mine until I return home, I may occasionally write posts from Hong Kong and have them posted for me for you readers back home. While I will be quite busy and cannot really promise any degree of consistency, I'll try to drop some breadcrumbs to fill the gap between now and 2019.

Now, as for what I really want to talk about today, I'll tell you I got some inspiration from the obituaries in the newspaper. It sounds a little depressing, but I promise that's not the direction this post will go. I noticed that at the end of an obituary, it is commonly stated that the deceased "is survived by" his or her relatives. This phrasing made me think, and although in a literal sense it means nothing more than the fact that the living relatives are indeed still alive, I think it implies something more. It means that the deceased lives on, or in a sense "survives," through those left behind.

I could go a lot of different ways with that notion, but I'll stick to the one that speaks the most to me (I'm selfish like that). The people we leave behind act as an extension of us not necessarily by blood relation, but by the stories we leave them with. We survive by being remembered. Some are remembered for good reasons, others bad, and a tragic few are not remembered at all. I say this not out of a lust for fame or a desire to be remembered, but as a critique of my own "survivability," so to speak.

Each of us is the protagonist of our own story. I really don't think it's my place to judge whether my story deserves to be known far and wide, but I've come to realize that I want it to be something I would enjoy hearing. If I were a stranger picking up a book about some dude named Will, would it put me to sleep? I should hope not. In a perfect world, my story would be something I would find interesting, or perhaps even thrilling. Whether this is the case is determined by the small choices I make along the way.

The idea isn't too complicated, but to me it hits home. If we are the subject of our own story, why not do everything we can to make that story mind-blowingly awesome? Take a chance now and then, walk the road less traveled, as my pal Robert Frost would say. Make a story that will survive past you. I'm taking a step into my next great adventure, and I hope you can find yours, too.

Carthago delenda est!