Graduation

When our first graduation was rained out on Tuesday, I felt the excitement drain. Graduation was supposed to be a singlular, continuous adredaline rush of freedom and responsibility. A wave of sorrow and celebratory joy should have roared behind the procession. As we heard our names shouted across the stadium, the wave should have crashed on our skulls, crushing our emotional and expressive capacities. We should have sniffed at the commencement speeches, screamed for the valecdictorian, and bawled as the floodlights and fireworks burst forth.

But this did not happen, except for the screaming for our valecdictorian.

Instead, the clouds broke open at 6:50 pm, and the rain poured. Our cardboard caps sagged into our mop-like heads. We galoshed through turf and rocks. We desperately tried to protect the essentials - our phones and underwear. Then we took some selfies, and my math teachers made fun of me.

On Wednesday night, I constantly readjusted my dress and smiled as brightly as I could to everyone that mattered. When I was too shy to do more than fumble with my tassle, my teachers waved and smiled anyway. To be honest, I was a little embarrassed. Graduation was not a big deal. 787 people from Naperville North were walking in identical formations, shaking the same three hands. The ceremony occured annually, nationally. There are few American 18 year olds who do not experience the gowns' breeze. But this existential crisis did not matter when we exchanged knowing looks and wholehearted hugs.

A lot of things don't matter when a body of 1600 plus people send students off to the military. Knowing exactly what kind of cliche content that the commencement speakers would present did not make their speeches any less relevant or well-written. Losing all the feeling in my extremeties did nothing to stop my face from stretching between laughter and shouts.

High school is over. The times 6:50, 7:39, 8:35, until 3:10 no longer mean anything. Every structure that math team and senior parking rush hour created is gone. Nothing obligates me to run before or after classes; nothing puts intellectual progress on my desk. When we threw our caps, we threw 18 years of other adults trying very, very hard to mold us into sustainable people. Maybe that's why our teachers smiled - not just because they felt happy for us, like they do for all of their previous students, but because they see the crease they left in our broken clay jars of bodies. And maybe, just maybe, we smiled because as much as they have mattered to us, we also have each left one of thousands of scratches in their hardened vessels.

At my worst, classes had always been a little, annoying saving grace. They kept me awake and open, and often, they spoon fed me knowledge until I swallowed it whole and spit up B- results. We had to constantly interact with people that would have been uncomplicated shadows otherwise. Math team gave me no choice but to get back up again the next morning.

But this is not available to me anymore. The temptation to give up is greatest before you are about to succeed, and now, there isn't a net to catch me when I give up. The next time I visit North, I'll be recognized as a guest. I'll be a graduate, someone who has experienced it all. Call me prideful but I would rather present myself as someone who has chosen a non-destructive path. So I need to stop giving up, because I do have a choice. I can choose between destroying and building myself. It is high fucking time to start doing the latter.

The Modern Great Wall

At awards night, I received recognition as the Most Outstanding Math Student of the Year. My calculus teacher said a lot of nice things, mentionned Cornell, and got me a membership to the Johnson Museum of Art. For the past couple months, the idea of learning and doing math has settled as a safe option - one that will hurt a little bit, sometimes out of boredom, sometimes out of inadequacy. But its safe. Its rising. My parents, my teachers, my friends - they would all see that it as fitting, and all of them, all of them, will know what its like to have a STEM job.

This is not a rebuke. To everyone who finds purpose and passion in engineering, law, biology, chemistry, to everyone who has been lucky enough to conduct meaningful research, to everyone who has struggled courageously against the current of affirmative action, go. We need you - I'm going to need you, to write me computer programs, to protect my freedoms, to save my dying body. I won't ask you to question your choices because I'm almost entirely sure that you have already asked yourself everything that I still ask myself. Is this what you want to do with 40 productive years of your life? Is this what you want to master and evangelize?

Because none of my parents' dreams, my teachers' and friends' expectations, every stereotype for my profile, are mine. My idol figures aren't successful architects, software developers, raging pop stars, or philanthropic doctors. The content that I consume has nothing to do with AoPS Alcumus geometry, Frontline, or Yale lectures. These are interesting, but not lively.

Because every time someone asked me to write down my dreams, I write about doing something creative. When I was in fifth grade, I wrote about being a famous author. In statistics, I talked about graphic design. Mrs. Moore mentionned math tutoring and I panicked just thinking about it. Grace rhetorically posed the idea of being an art teacher, and now I daydream about a basement studio. I'm no better at any of these things than I am qualified to do the sciences or maths, but they are what I want to do.

I'm slowly learning to accept my financial situation. I'm not poor; I'm barely cultured. I am not the wild spirit who can survive without my parent's aid. One day, they'll withdraw their support, and I won't know what to do. But I can't continue to feel guilty for allegedly "wasting" what they promised to give me. Its not that I'm entitled to the lessons and the thousands of dollars that they pour into making me child hidden by the Modern Great Wall. But I'm entitled to my own life, and if Baatarjiguur the camel herder was right, the wasted money and time won't matter so much. The core of life is the same everywhere.

The content I consume is created by artists and entrepeneurs and artists. John Green, Hank Green, Grace Helbig, Hannah Hart, Tyler Oakley, Lily Singh, Josh Sundquist, Bart Kwan, Geo Antoinette, Eddie Huang are some of the best that I've come across so far. The Just Kidding Films crew is predominantly Asian and each member has hurt his family to become himself. They're part of the Asian American movement to balance the massive disproportions, and I have every intention of jumping on that boat.

I'm so scared. But I believe in the power of art, even more in the power of poetry. I'm not talking about rhyming syllables and free verse though; I'm talking about rhythm of life. People read my tumblr quote reblogs and wonder why I label label them with a technically incorrect term, "poetry." Its not because of the literary beats or the sentence fluency. Its for the heartbeats and gushing blood of emotion that they contain. That's poetry.

Conversation and a couple blogs - that's all I have to create this kind of poetry. I don't know if I can do it, but I'm going to give it everything I've got.