Originally this post was going to be about the World Cup finale and Peel Play Olé Olé (my body is still fighting off the sodium bloat, embarrassingly enough), but a very one-sided conversation about cherishing opportunity (and not being money-driven) with my very Asian parents will be taking the limelight today.

The conversation started off pretty normally - Sunday morning, woke up at an unnaturally late hour, parents called, talked about my life etc. I then told my dad that I don't think I want to be an architect for the rest of my life. The reason I cited was that working in the firm was basically the same as studio, but without my other classes as a buffer, obviously, and I didn't want my entire life to be consumed by studio forever. I said that I wanted to try other things, figure out what I really wanted to do.

All of these statements were things that I've mentioned before. The moment I decided to major in Architecture back in high school, I knew that it wasn't going to be my calling for the rest of my life - I chose the major because I felt like it encompassed the largest variety of things that I was interested in.

The only difference this time was that I also mentioned that I wanted to take the last week before I left for China off, so I could enjoy some of my vacation in Boston, but also so that I could move my possessions to a storage space that was not my MacGregor room (since I was getting kicked out of the room) and also that I was at liberty to do so because I had overworked so frequently that my hours added up to 12 weeks anyway.

And thus began the fury that was my parents. My father told me I should continue to work for free, even though I told him that Meejin had expressly told us to count our hours and to not work over the allocated 480 hours. He also insinuated that I was being lazy, because when people first start out in any field of course they would have to work extremely overtime, and that I should not quit doing architecture because I didn't want to. My mother took a less personal approach and decided to message me via Skype in the middle of the night, and the conversation is as follows:

>> Hi Cissy
>> Your dad is really worried that you will have trouble finding a job
>> the project you are doing - do you still like it or not at all?
>> We both are worried that you are taking your work with Meejin more as a job than an opportunity
>> You know that an opportunity can worth more than several jobs combined
>> Companies also don't like to hire people who calculate hours
>> in US and even in Canada
>> that's why it's very important you find something you really like to do, to the extend you forget hours
>> MIT gives a good first impression but at the end, it's how you work that counts
>> when I was working at Burger King, it wasn't for fun. It was for the experience and opportunity. When I quit France, it wasn't for fun. It was for more opportunities. Same thing when I quit my job to start the first company - opportunities often worth more than money, because opportunities mean future. Without that, I would not be able to enjoy what I'm doing today
>> that's why I keep saying "life is a trade-off": you enjoy more and earlier, you suffer more later
>> just like energy is a constant, life's enjoyment is also a constant, just a question when and how much
>> So be aware of your decision, attitude, actions now, because life is a circle and it always comes back to you

(Excuse my mother's grammar, English is her third language.)

I've bolded and italicized the statements that I wanted to address.

1. An opportunity is worth more than several jobs combined.

I disagree - every job is an opportunity, whether or not you realize it at the time. Every job that I've undertaken has been a great opportunity for me to learn about the trade/profession and about myself as a person. By now, I've worked multiple jobs - in high school, I worked an under-the-table library job and I tutored peers, primary school students, and special needs children for free, and here at MIT I've worked in the admissions office, the Library Annex, a research position for a Sloan professor studying the history of the telecommunications industry, web design for a Comparative Media studies professor, building Lego models for the Changing Places group in the Media Lab, and now working in an architecture firm under Meejin.

So what have I gotten out of those jobs? Libraries are incredibly easy for me to navigate and I understand what its like to be a librarian, I've found that I love working with children, I still have no idea how admissions decisions work and I'm convinced that its basically just magic, I've learned that I really can't deal with people who are really bad at responding to emails even after weeks of pestering, web design is similar to architecture in that both focus on usability and accessibility while still attempting to be aesthetically pleasing, what I truly love doing is helping other people and making other people happy... but really the most important part out of all of these jobs is the human relationship aspect. I've made friends in so many places and so many different careers just from working these jobs, and for just that alone, even if I didn't get anything else from working those jobs, everything - the odd hours, the stress, the 20 hours of work while juggling 5 classes at one of the hardest universities in the world - was worth it.

2. It's important that you find something you really like to do, to the extent that you forget your hours.

I count my hours because it is required of me, let me put that straight, so lets talk about the other part of this statement: Do I like architecture?

It's funny that out of all of my I-won't-be-an-architect-when-I-grow-up conversations with my parents, what they've gotten out of it, somehow, is "I don't like architecture". MIT offers 20+ majors that cover a wide variety, so do my parents just think that I have no other options for my choice of major other than architecture? It's been half of my entire college career, and I've had so many second thoughts - what if I switched to civil engineering, or mechanical engineering, or brain and cognitive sciences, or comparative media studies - and yet, even through ridiculous professors who almost require the impossible (you want me to redesign a month of work in one night, really?) I've stuck with it. Its had its ups and downs, and I've definitely second-guessed myself multiple times, especially since I'm at a school where career scouts look for computer scientists and mechanical engineers and other technically brilliant people and definitely not architects, but while architecture might not be my chosen future lifestyle (because yes, architecture is a lifestyle) it is definitely my calling at MIT.

Besides, anyone who lives with me can tell you that I pull ridiculous things for my studios - pull consecutive all nighters, push aside my other work, and skip multiple days of meals to the point where my friends have cooked me food and nearly shoved it down my throat. I take "forgetting my hours" to the extreme.

3. Life is a tradeoff - you enjoy more earlier, you suffer more later.

While I'm not old enough to really know if this is true, I feel like this is such a glass-is-half-empty-so-save-it-for-later depressing way to live. I want to live my life to the fullest, and I try my best to notice the little things - even in my lowest moments I've had little pieces of joy in my life - my friends, those relationships I mentioned that I've forged, etc. Am I enjoying my life too much right now, spending time with my friends, making my baby sister clothes in the little free time that I have, picking up new hobbies, practicing sewing and crocheting, trying out new recipes, even starting a blog for fun?

Should my life as a young adult be miserable in order to accommodate being happy in the unforeseeable future?

My parents would probably say yes, I'm a reckless teenager that wants to have all the good things in live without having to work for it, just like how I was as a small child. And yet, as I've mentioned, working in itself is enjoyable too; I haven't had a moment this summer where I've felt like I wasn't happy, just that perhaps it felt less fulfilling than I hoped it would be, as most things tend to be. My internship right now is literally the same as studio (except maybe doing lots of projects at once instead of focusing on one), but getting paid to do it, and just like over the semester, I can be stressed and happy at the same time.



I think what I want to say is that sometimes people close to you will tell you things that go against your own ideas and values, and so you should also take the time to digest and debate each statement. It's okay to disagree with people who are in a higher position than you - it opens the table up to healthy conversation.

Besides, why shouldn't you try to make your opportunities fun?

Don't choose to not do something because you think it won't be fun - always try it first - but if it isn't fun then make it fun.



Other things that happened this week:

We got dimsum - again - on Saturday and we realized that Max eats up the bill when we go with him (literally, the bill goes from 10 per person to 20+ per person because he eats everything).

World cup finale party in the F-entry lounge, complete with steak-bacon-pineapple pizza!

Started tutoring again - I'm tutoring an 8 year old and we're doing play learning, because - like many other 8 year olds - she can't sit still at all. We're understanding fractions, and before I left after our first session on Wednesday, we did a few problems from her book and she was able to solve them pretty quickly, and her mother was quite impressed.