What I learned about Relationships from Yale (and NYC)

Okay, hope you all had a wonderful Valentine’s Day! I had a great dinner at Koi with M the birthday girl and one of the guys was gentleman enough to bring a rose to each of the girls, very nice gesture I have to say! And then we went out to drinks at Stone Rose at the Time Warner Building. Again another cool spot in NY, you have to check it out next time you want a romantic yet low-key spot, with a lot of space, unique drinks and a great view!

Anyway, I have to admit that originally I plan to write on “What has Yale taught me about sex”! But I realized I am yet to be that aggressive and I don’t want to scare away some of my younger readers and I am pretty sure I’m not an expert on that subject anyway! But if that’s something you’re interested in reading please give me a shout in the comment or something.

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So let me get back to what I actually want to talk about today: What I learned about relationships at Yale and in the US?

1. Be an independent person first

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It took me a long time to realize how much truth lies in this simple idea: If you are not a happy person single, you will not be a happy person in a relationship. I’m not sure about you but I was raised up in an environment with this whole idea of “we are born to be incomplete and we spend our whole life trying to find someone to complete and to heal us”. After I came to Yale and the US, I realized it was a lie. Why? Because this idea leads us to the trap of being too demanding.

给，还没有毕业的你们：(My College Experience in the US)

THIS ARTICLE WAS WRITTEN 2.5 years ago, 2 weeks after I relocated to New York from New Haven, originally posted on CUUS (Chinese Undergraduates at United States). I decided to re-post this as I have been bombed by a series of questions on job hunting and life philosophies especially from Chinese students recently; and I realized a lot of examples and thoughts I laid out in this article are still very much applicable to people still at college or just gradated.

I know it’s a long one, and it’s in Chinese, but this is among one of the most precious, profound, informative, yet personal articles I have ever written in my life. So enjoy.

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(首发于CUUS & deniseyezi 个人博客, 转载请注明作者出处)

看了茶茶最近的帖子，有很多感触和启发，也有些许的惭愧。CUUS曾经是我大学生活中的重头戏，在这里应该记载了我的很多快乐，感伤，幸福，以及迷茫。然而我还没有来得及庆祝我的成长，或者还没来得及再宣告原来我依然是一个什么都不懂得孩子，一转眼，就毕业了。

毕业后来到纽约已经近两周了，仿佛这辈子也没有连续两周可以这样清闲而懒散。没有什么需要马上plan,没有什么deadline, 这样的梦幻般的生活却仿佛一下子不习惯。纽约已经燥热了3天，今天晚上一场大雨过后，终于凉快下来。这样的夜，我想，正适合写字。

仅希望——这些我毕业后才终于懂了的事情，你们毕业前就了解吧。

其实我只是想回答一个很简单的问题：在美国的大学四年，我们到底应该做些什么？或者那些看似平常的小事，我们应该怎么做？

以下的一些个人想法和经历，主要是讲几个故事，仅供参考。

 

• 关于人生观价值观—要感恩要控制

最近我遇到一位长得一表人才，家庭条件非常好的移民，IVY league的PhD +MBA, 据他本人说是开过法拉利，乘过私人飞机，交过super model做女朋友。可是认识没几天他突然抱怨，我觉得生活没有意义了，我不知道我到底想做什么，没有什么事情让我感到excited,我觉得我没有任何朋友。。。等等。我就傻了。当然我尽力安慰他，可是我在心里说：你不知道比多少多少人幸运呢！我想不明白他为什么没有感恩的心情，为什么不能对已有的知足。

A Good NAME for your Internship; A Good TEAM for your Job

I was at this Womensphere Summit on Emerging Global Leaders this past Saturday and the beautiful lady sitting beside me is a junior at Brown University majoring in International Relations (no surprise), and she is freaking out about what she is going to do for the rest of her life, especially when everyone starts talking about passion and building a solid career path.

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This may be the stage you are at in your life and you are thinking about the same issues and you may be freaking out too, and if I were right, you actually go to a great school with top programs and your grades are decent. But you are still freaking out. Why? I know. I’ve been there before: There are simply too many options, and you could potentially do anything and everything. But you have no clue what you really want and how you should make such decisions.

Ok so here are some well-tested advices (by my own experience and by many others) on how to figure out your passion and make decisions on your junior internship and more importantly, your first full-time job. Bear with me.

 

Find a good NAME for your internship

我羡慕那些时光流逝却未能改变他们的人

Another periodic Chinese blog of mine, in response to a movie based on my very generation, emotionally deep; excuse me if you don’t read Chinese.

“少年的我们，都是热烈而坚持的，那是一种光芒，引人入胜。我羡慕那些时光流逝却未能改变他们的人”
 
——前两天终于看了80后那部电影。不能说每个情节都感同身受，可是很多细节上了东西却仿佛无缘无故的牵扯了我多年没有调动了的敏感神经。这是一部融入了太多感情在里面的片子，让我流泪，在回忆中不知所措，然后一发不可收拾。
 

 

所以我一直很犹豫要不要写这篇文字。爬格子对我来说有时候是一个很痛苦的过程。要么就不写，如果写就需要在沉静中奔放，在压抑中爆发。我总觉得，爬格子是一项只能在深夜才能进行的活动。夜深人静，才可以看透彻自己的心境，等文字终于自然流淌，才终于得以释怀。所以我才一直觉得，写字让我痛苦，却也因此让我沉迷。
 
记得中学的时候读安妮宝贝，看新概念作文，谈论郭敬明。现在想来真的很奇怪，那些根本从来没有在我身上发生过的事情，为什么只是读过就在自己的身体和精神上刻了那么深的烙印。慢慢学会“一半明媚一半忧伤”或者什么“快乐而孤独的等待”还有“爱情仿佛在她心里开出一朵诡异的花”还有那些一切有关长发，阳光，白球鞋的东西。乐此不疲。
 
我们本来都是快乐而简单的小孩子吧。为什么后来我们的文字里有那么多忧伤？
 

Best of 2010, and Preview of 2011

I have kept blogs in a variety of places before and this is the first and only time the website sent me a stats summary with such details for the bygone year. For the constant thrive to optimize user experience and the degree of dedication, I want to first thank WordPress for offering me, and many other bloggers in this world, an intimate place to pursue our passions, to share our curiosities, and to develop a legacy. 

I also want to take the opportunity to appreciate every one of you who has stopped by my blog over the past year. For those who have commented on my posts, cheered for me on my facebook walls, left a message to me on LinkedIn and Gtalk, followed me on Google Reader, or mentioned my blog to me face-to-face, I want to thank you for being my constant motivation and inspiration. Your encouragement means the world to me.

Started in mid-April 2010, the blog had 70 new posts and was viewed about 21,000 times over the course of 2010. Not bad for the first year I have to say. Thanks for sharing this with me.

Here are my Top Posts of the Year:

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10. This is the kind of email I WILL respond to!

This was an introduction email on career opportunity that I have been waiting for. As I know most people are still struggling on how to effectively network and communicate, I figured it was a good idea to share the email and my interpretation with you. 

What can possibly go wrong with your resume?

We have been hiring in our group and the resume screening process is kind of fun. I know there are many articles all over the place on how to write a perfect resume and I can tell many of the resumes I’ve seen have tried very hard to follow these rules. But then, what can possibly still go wrong?

 

1)      What the hell is that experience on top of your resume?

Wharton MBA, 4.0 GPA, absolutely impressive. And all the other work experience only makes him more qualified for the job. Wait, but his most recent position for the last 8 months is in MUSIC PRODUCTION? It’s not that you can’t try something new about your life, but why is this RELEVANT TO THIS JOB that you’re applying? You can be a very artsy person or a super talented guitar player and that’s probably even a plus, and it could become a very entertaining topic at the interview. But it’s usually a BAD idea to put this in bold letters on the TOP of your resume applying for a job in a totally different industry, because people will have a REALLY HARD time making the connections. 

Your resume represents who you are before you get a chance to convince anyone face-to-face. You want to make it REALLY EASY for the resume screeners to pick you. 

2)      Those two lines at the bottom of your resume

Things I wish I knew when I was at College

For years I have been trying so hard to understand what I want from life, and what I could do to make the best out of it. Four years of college life (not limited to “college” life, obviously) in a different country have constantly challenged my boundaries and characters, and in retrospect, I feel grateful for all the good and bad that happened to me. Here are a few points that I want to share with all of you.

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1. Be your own healer.

I used to believe that love is the cure for every pain. But I was wrong, because there are so many types of loves that we constantly confuse ourselves and draw each other into unnecessary troubles and conflicts. I have always been a “strong” girl, like many other girls, I am used to “pretend to be cool” and “always smile, be active” on the outside. But I realized long ago that I was not so strong from inside, I was actually weak, sentimental and even vulnerable. So I used to expect that one day there will be a guy coming into my life as a savior, a healer. It turned out pretty much to be an illusion.

Why? even you met someone really responsible, he is never really going to be responsible for you. Ultimately he does not owe you (or anyone) anything. If you devote for a relationship it only means you really care, but it doesn’t mean he will take responsibility for your choices, your mistakes and your sorrow. If you want a better life, please be your own healer, and make your heart, not appearance, stronger.

2. Face your fear.

What Happened to the Moonlight?

I wrote this a while back but would like to repost this today in memory of my bright college years.

I finally went back to Yale again last weekend for the 2009 commencement. It’s been exactly a year, everything’s still the same; everything’s so different. My fellow Piersonites reminded me of Toads, last change dance, Myrtle Beach, fencing club, Feb club, commencement ball, and etc. I was thrilled to discover K and S are coming to midtown NY to work too, and we were already discussing our lunch plans. Well, plan is always just a plan. I haven’t even officially scheduled one lunch with my former schoolmate in McKinsey right across the street yet. New York is so big; New York is so small.

“So today I will not insult you by calling you ‘the best and the brightest’ of your generation. Instead, I will call you ‘darned smart and really good-looking,'” class day keynote speech, Christopher Buckley, Yale class of ’75, writer. I was a little bit disappointed initially, think about Tony Blair from last year, but soon I got totally fascinated by his humor and attitude. “Say cool lines”, he reminded us, and “Perhaps most amazing, most cool of all, America finally elected its first African American president. A Harvard man,” Buckley said, with feigned disdain. “Okay. But remember — it might not have happened if it hadn’t been for a Yale man, George W. Bush.”

Of course most importantly, he challenged the fundamental way of supposed-to-be profound philosophical thinking. According to him, “whatever!” is the ultimate answer to life’s most existential problems, and “it’s just brilliant and philosophically air-tight.” To be or not to be – whatever! The only thing we have to fear is fear itself – whatever! But whatever life holds in store for you, remember the words of that most quotable of American philosophers, Yogi Berra: “When I come to a fork in the road, I take it.” And finally…he said “Whatever else life holds in store for you, and may it hold every blessing and every happiness, there’s one very cool line that you can already say: Yale, 2009 – whatever!”