a good day overall. aches and pains. love, and a soft lucid dream during a nap. some things to record…

1) i’ve begun to truly understand an important element of who i am. i’m realizing that it takes incredible rationality–a highly disciplined, cold mind, if you will–to achieve the kind of high-level, elite success that many people strive for. the people who rule the world – it requires the brilliance of mind over matter. the necessary fiscal conservatism required of a company CEO, the clarity of conscience that a Commander in Chief needs to make military decisions he knows will result in many deaths. even to be the head of an institution that saves lives – a hospital, for example. you need to keep your eye on the prize, and that often means efficiency over equity. (not that efficiency isn’t important. it really is).

but me, my life has had and will continue have a very different kind of depth. i’m emotional and empathetic sometimes to the point of incapacity. sometimes it hurts so fucking much that i’ve often wished this quality away. but fully loving myself means embracing this part of me as a gift from god. i get to experience love so, so deeply. i need to look out for myself and protect myself, but i’m also learning to understand the richness that loving so much brings to my life. what’s hard sometimes is the competitive track that i still find myself in. i’ve been tracked since i was a little kid. i was one of the main reasons my parents decided to send me and my sisters to an elite private school – apparently my parents wanted to make sure i was pushed rigorously enough to fulfill the intellectual potential they saw in me as a kid. i’ve been surrounded all my life by “over”-achieving students, who as we grow older are becoming even higher achieving scientists, politicians, and businessmen/women. many of my peers don’t think twice about the privilege it takes to be in this elite pool – why should they? take it and run – and for it they’re becoming world leaders. me, i spent my freshman year doing a very different project from the research and the internships my peers were taking on. i was pouring hours into documenting the oral history of Fely, the Filipino nanny my parents hired to raise me and my sisters. a beautiful woman that i consider as close as my mother, who will rarely be recognized by society as an adequate mother to either me or her own children. i wanted to tell her story, i wanted to give her a voice, i wanted us to talk about what our relationship means, to really face it. i wanted to confront this relationship that cannot help but built around pain, inequality, and yet, somehow, love. we cried a lot, and we spoke, we hugged, we laughed, we sighed, and things continued exactly as they are. it was important to me. i would never ever undo it. there was something great about the project, privately and painfully meaningful.

i’m honestly placing no value judgments on either “the way i am” or the way many of my seemingly more rational, cut-throat peers are. i am genuinely very humbled by the brilliance it takes to be that dedicated to excellence in such competitive and important fields as economics, neuroscience, etc. i think it’s no better or worse than the brilliance of my own composition. there are cynical things to be said about both “types” of people – i could be seen as an inefficient, guilt-ridden, bleeding heart as much as some of my high school peers could be seen as cold-hearted, neoliberal elitists. neither are truly true. such statements rarely are. people are complex and deep, our world is so painfully rich with detail and diversity that way. i can’t be dogmatic in a world that i recognize to be so complicated.

anyway. i’m thinking about all this because i need to be who i am. there is excellence, too, in a cumbersome heart. there is meaningful and excellent work to be done with my qualities, even if the work won’t be famous or win a prize or make me lots of money. embracing who i am, as i am, helps me to see through the competitiveness.

what does worry me: the complete and total and raw and consuming devastation that i’ve been coping with post-breakup makes me scared of how destroyed i could be if i really lost someone i really love very deeply (to death). the pain of a stranger can make me weep. what will i do when my parents pass? much more scarily, what would i do if they, or any of the other people very close to me, passed before their time? i’m genuinely scared i could never recover. the experience has revealed to me how sensitive i am and how low my tolerance for pain is. i felt like dying yesterday. i don’t know. the world scares me sometimes. all i know is, i can’t fight the sensitivity of my heart. i imagine life’s trials will toughen it, but there’s no need to try to do that on my own. i just got to give it some rest sometimes.

2) today i got a grilled cheese sandwich from blue state coffee. this was no ordinary grilled cheese sandwich. it was such a fancy little thing oh my godddd. it was really high-quality, sharp cheese melted perfectly into such tasty pieces of olive bread – crunchy ciabbata bread with tangy kalamata olives woven into the dough. ahh. so good (i have to keep these purchases rare if i want to keep finding such joy in them ^_^). anyway i got to visit my favorite barista – this really soft-spoken guy that i talked two once for two hours instead of studying for my bio class. i love those little interactions, friendliness between strangers. i think that’s such a great thing.

3) on a whim i stepped into this academic event that quyen invited me to. it was this performance studies phd student from berkeley presenting her research on political readings of cai luong – traditional, “melodramatic,” folk songs from Vietnam. holy shit face. the room was filled with about a dozen other academics. the language was crazy. so theoretical and high brow. way over my head. yet i enjoyed the experience because i felt so proud to see a vietnamese woman rockin the academic humanities, writing about really cool interpretations of an old tradition of my country. i donno, it was such a bizarre experience. none of the other academics were vietnamese, so they were genuinely interested in her theories, readings of the state and state control and culture and yadiyadiya in vietnam. it just felt so LEGIT. (and really inaccessible and annoying…but LEGIT. excellent. great.

so, those are some of my thoughts on empathy, cheese, and greatness.

hi there…

so i’ve been trudging my way through various bouts of confusion all the while feeling pretty excited about life. in the end, even my confusion is of an extremely blessed variety – i at least know for sure that i am headed toward medicine, and i at least know for sure how i excited i feel about it. in a way, maybe i’m just trying to figure out how to best make the most of my time until i get there…

but at times it definitely feels more confusing than that. i made a really important break-through last night (through many tears, on the phone with b)…which is that i finally realized that I HAVE BUILT MY LIFE AROUND A POLITICS OF SELFLESSNESS FOR FIVE FUCKING YEARS AND NOT ONLY AM IN INEFFECTIVE IM NOT VERY HAPPY.

i don’t know why it took me this long to realize that i know very few people who place at the center of their lives activism/social justice/”what is right/what is fair.” as a student, at an ivy league institution no less, i am surrounded by people who place their careers and their happiness and their health and safety and allgoodthings first (mostly their careers) and who, when they have time, do find joy in helping others. not to mention the fact that many people i know are studying for careers that help people in some capacity. i’m constantly thinking of how to put others before myself – as though this were a virtue. i am at last questioning if selflessness is really a virtue. (yo man – it’s not)

the only thing you owe anybody is to…DO WHAT YOU LOVE

now, for me, as for many people i am sure…doing what i love is very much tied up in interacting with people and in being able to help people. but moderation is key. i came to college to grow – and honestly, i’ve gotten quite a lesson in how to think with my heart. this blog is called “soul ache” for god’s sake, something i was born feeling, and something that diving into history and literature only made deeper. but thinking with your heart…i donno – do u really come to college to learn to think with your heart? i’ve kind of forgotten about simple intellectual curiosity. so now i’m taking a good balance of course requirements for my major and classes that aim to answer such questions as “how does the human brain work?” and often end with me saying “whaaaaat? coooooool”

sigh. i know i must sound crazy to people. even when i was seventeen and had formed an amazingly fun pop band, the pizookies, with my best friends…i couldn’t just make music for music’s sake. making music was soooo much fun, seriously…friday nights in ben’s garage making music and harmonizing and playing guitar – shit that shit was sooooo much fun. yet i couldn’t leave it that. i rallied the whole band to produce the album and sell it to fundraise for the american cancer society and market our cause and lead a team in relay for life…we had a few very loved ones with cancer that summer, so our project was inspired by them, and of course…it was…i mean it was wonderful.

but…why must i infuse everything with a cause, always? i need to learn to enjoy simple things more and to let myself do so. to just…enjoy. to add a little more hedonism to my life? i mean jesus. i’m lucky to have so much to enjoy, why can’t i just enjoy? always tryna fight the good fight…but WHICH good fight? and how?

so…i’m starting to realize all this and you know what…i feel pretty foolish. inequality will always. always. always. be a part of our world. i can choose to build a life around bridging certain inequalities…but you know what…i could also choose not to – how fucking crazy is that. obvious right? if you’ve got the goods, you’ve got the privilege, just take it and run, do your thing baby…

but no. the trick is to find balance. i guess that for a while now i’ve been equating balance with complacency. like, “if thinking about global poverty can be a side-job – a hobby, even – when it’s a reality to the majority of the world…well that’s not fair.”

of course it isn’t FAIR, vyvy. but it’s either that or not caring at all. because devoting every ounce of my life to activism isn’t going to cut it either. finding balance – incorporating compassion into my career and leaving plenty of room for me to just enjoy and love and spend time with my friends and family and truly, honestly, see the importance in that – is a survival tool.

i’m still…grappling with that. how ridiculous is that? it’s not even like i clock in tons of hours into volunteer work or anything. but it is my whole orientation to the world, and it affects how i interact with everyone, whether i am volunteering with them or not.

why do i get the feeling this is so damn obvious to people? well, i guess we all grow up in different ways and at different rates. i’m ready to stop beating myself up for not giving enough to the world. to just protect my own and love the people around me and be happy that they are safe and warm and well.

:-/

i’m feeling really sad right now. i’m reflecting back on the incredibly determined girl i was when i applied to brown. not just determined. i was on point, man. i was such a huge dreamer. i’m sad for the person i once was – i still am – but i feel behind. how is it that someone can lose sight so completely of who they are? i think back to how little i spoke with my mentors and my parents in my first two years of college. because i couldn’t explain to them what i was DOING at school, the self-destructive, self-doubting, strange, angry attitude that i was cultivating. i wish i had. i wish that i had spoken with people who love and know me, the real me, so that they might have shaken me and reminded me VYVY WAKE UP. at heart, you want the world. you love the world. you love you love you love it. i dug up my plme essay…

i know most people complain about college essays and stuff,  but i loved writing my college essay. it was a chance to explain what i was all about. and i was about something. i was fucking in love with the world, and i wanted to do so much. i had done so much, but i was excited to do so so much more. i still do. i only applied to one school, one program, early decision. i didn’t even bother beginning to write the rest of my applications because honestly…this was the perfect program for me, and i knew i was perfect for it. i know that sounds cocky but if you know me…well, you do.

i do not understand why. but by the end of two years after i had finished my application to brown, i somehow believed that:
1) my desire to save the world was…i don’t know what the word even is. bad? wrong? that my tendency to lead is…selfish? and now i, i feel, i have been kicked in the butt by the opposite of selfishness…
2) i did not have what it really takes to become a doctor.

anyway i feel like posting one of my essays to get into PLME. i just need to remind myself of who i am. this is me.

There’s nothing so ubiquitous as love and disease. One would think that given the universality of these two phenomena, we would use the former to unite and combat the latter. Yet health problems worldwide are exacerbated by social injustices, such as gender inequality’s role in women’s reproductive health; inaccessible, expensive medication; and poor sanitation in war-torn regions.

I’ve spent my high school years on the campaign side of humanitarian issues, raising funds for health-related NGOs. For example, the current campaign I lead is a national one that empowers the Junior State of America, a student-run organization, to raise $100,000 for organizations aiding refugees in Darfur, one of which is Doctors without Borders. As an activist, I trust that the physicians working in Darfur understand the specific health problems that the Darfuri people face and know how to maximize the power of civilian-raised money. Though I love the grassroots work I do, I constantly feel my enormous physical distance from the people I help. One day, I want to be not the person administrating fundraisers for health projects but the doctor herself. I want to be the one knowing the people I help, understanding them on both a molecular and personal level, merging my interest in public health with my love for the microscopic study of life and the human body.

On a personal level, losing loved ones to disease has made me determined to be a practitioner in the field that saves lives. We live for certain ideals: love, freedom, art. But mortality makes the importance of everything else pale in comparison; health comes first. Always. Without health, it is impossible to pursue higher goals.

I am drawn to Brown’s PLME because I wholeheartedly identify with its philosophy of creating doctors who understand people as much as they do bacteria. I am so inspired by the program’s International Health opportunity and its Arts and Humanities Fellowship, which both illustrate PLME’s belief in an interdisciplinary approach to medicine. Furthermore, I am thrilled by the International Health Institute’s research opportunities, finding it incredible that the school establishes partnerships with researchers in other countries to give students such a global application for medicine. Medical education urges specialization for efficacy, and I believe in that, but PLME addresses what may be the weak point of other programs—a humanitarian perspective.

My peers label me as the humanities type of girl, the music-writing, book-quoting humanist. What can I say? I love the humanities. I’m a writer. But I love science, too, and I have an affinity for both. To me, science is art, elevated. Art documents phenomena, infers truth from observations, creates a model of life. Science is all those things plus more in that it also solves problems. Above all, the thread between art and science is humanity. Like a writer, one cannot be a physician without a profound love for the human being, body and soul.