Every month or so, I mentally go over the story of my life in its entirety, trying to fit in the past month's experience into a story. I guess you could say that I'm keeping a memoir in my head, one that's constantly revised, in lieu of a journal which recounts how I feel at the time. The two are, I think, orthogonal, since the point of the journal is so you can remember what you're feeling at the time, and compare it to the memoir (or whatever what I'm doing should be called), which fits it into a grand scheme. It's a complement, so that each supplants the other to give the whole picture.
One of the themes that seems to keep coming up is the fact that I usually fail miserably in my first go-round in a venue. I get the hang of it, and I become good at it, for almost all values of it, but there's a dramatic jump from the first time to the second time. I can think of many reasons for this: first of all, I post-mortem a lot, and after the first time is over by thinking back on it a lot can be gleaned, even if most of it is unconscious or indirect. Another possible reason is that I spend the first time experimenting, and the second time I can pick out what's worked since I've tried a lot of things, and stick with that.
There's an effect on the other end, for what it's worth, but that's separate enough that it will be saved for another one of these so I have a topic in store.
Let's consider first the phases of life. The story starts in 1985, when I came to America. The first school I was placed in, P.S. 11 in New York, I ... failed miserably. In my first week there, I got into a fight with a kid and was sent to the principal's office and then home; shortly thereafter, I was pulled out of that school and placed into St. Ann's, the elementary-middle school which I would stay at until eighth grade. I don't really remember this, since I was pretty young, but the facts seem to support the theory I have.
The next year, whoever's in charge of these decisions decided to try to skip me from kindergarten into fourth grade, something that seems preposterous in retrospect. I failed. I lasted maybe a week in fourth grade, and I was freaking out. Again, I don't remember this, but I kind of remember remembering it, which is the next best thing. The year after that, they again tried to skip me from first grade into fourth, this time successfully. Sure, I had to go through the usual adjustment periods as well as learn to cope with the social shunning, but I apparently did a pretty good job of it. I don't remember feeling maudlin or friendless or anything in middle school, and the records back this up.
Two asides here. First, I think this was helped by being in private school. In a private school, I think there's more diversity among the kids. They've had more money and thus more opportunities, and their character has therefore been shaped by which ones their parents have chosen to give them; contrast this with (relatively) poor public school kids, who have had only a rote set of opportunities and thus haven't turned out that differently from each other. This helped me in two ways: first of all, with the kids already accustomed to diversity, they were more inclined not to immediately disregard someone who was different, and second of all, there was already something of a pecking order between the "cool kids" and the less cool kids (as opposed to everyone being in a herd with similar values.) The second one, of course, branches again: the less cool kids were more inclined to want me around as reassurance of their social standing, and some of them also knew the pain of being made fun of and were nice enough not to want to propagate it.
This idea tree is growing larger by the minute. I'd wrap it up by moving on to the second aside, but unfortunately I've forgotten it in my dotage. If I remember it, I'll come back and insert it, but then you won't read these words so it'll be a moot point anyway.
Middle school continued more or less uneventfully, as part of the same continuous phase of life.
High school was similar, and I'm going to get into grades here in parallel. My first-semester high school grades were literally twice as bad as the rest of my grades; at Stuy we were graded on a 100-point scale, and I was missing twice as many of the 100 points first term freshman year as the rest of the time on average. (I don't remember the exact numbers. It actually might have been more than twice as many.) These grades were easily the worst of any semester in high school, but they were also a huge step up from my mid-term grades, which if they had held up would have been, I don't know, between three and four times as bad as everything else. (It is worth noting, however, that as I gathered more evidence it became clear that teachers often used mid-term grades to scare kids into doing better and to keep people on their toes. I think every semester my grades went up from mid-term to end-of-term.)
As for friends... I had one friend from middle school, and I couldn't for the life of me tell you who my other friends first-term were. I played cards with the people in my homeroom throughout high school. I can think of one kid, Peter Chan, who I was friends with. I don't think I talked to him after sophomore year, not because of any incident but because we were never really meant to be friends in the first place. I had the math team people, more or less out of exposure. I didn't have any particularly close friends in high school, but I definitely didn't have any close friends freshman year.
That's not quite accurate, I suppose -- I did pick up a group of friends senior year, who, while I wouldn't call them close in the sense that I call my close friends now close, I definitely did fit in to. I aged well in high school, I think.
Along the way in ninth grade, I lost, miserably, in an election for student representative, being beaten out by a girl named Caroline Chin. I don't know what's happened to her, but she's sure as hell not this person. There were three candidates. I forget who the third one was, but I think it was Justin Fox, who I hit over the head with a chair-desk in another unforgettable ninth-grade incident, I think because he accused me of cheating at cards. I have no idea how I could have figured out middle school and been so obviously unprepared for high school, but I guess I was. Either that or, as I'm trying to prove, I just suck at things the first time around. It's worth noting that basically the only two physical fights I've gotten into were during my first year of American schooling and my first year of high school.
Anyway, I recall my mother's interpretation of the election events, which is that Caroline got all the girls' votes and Justin and I split the boys'. This is untrue. I got like two votes. In ninth-grade elections, no one has any idea what issues matter or anything. Caroline wasn't an extremely popular kid or anything; she just stomped Justin and me in the crash-course on how to win an election.
With the exception of frivolity, I think that's the only election I've lost in my life, although the finicky reader will point out that I've only won frivolous, or at least uncontested, elections as well.
On to college, where I utterly blew off my first year (and the summer after my first year, for that matter), both academically and personally. I think this was the first time in my life I was actually unhappy, although that's probably best attributed to the fact that the range of experiences was so beyond anything that I had experienced before. It was enough to make me panic and run home for Veterans' Day weekend, though. More on that later.
Academically, my first-term freshman year grades were again much, much worse than any other grades I would get in the future. With letter grades, it's hard to tell, but using Harvard's wacky point system, they were a shade over twice as bad as the future grades I would get. This is largely due to one course, but it's not a coincidence that that course was first-term freshman year: I had no idea how to pick courses, and I didn't grasp certain basic concepts like the fact that going to discussion section was mandatory for humanities courses. I have no idea why.
During that term, I would say that I made two bad course selection decisions (out of four.) I think I made a total of two the remainder of my college career, maybe even only one considering that one of the courses I'm talking about I only took to fulfill a requirement (which could have been fulfilled in other ways, so I can't get out of it entirely scot-free.) None of them are remotely as egregious as the key mistake of my first term.
Personally, I was a mess. My sleep schedule was awful -- by the end of the term I was routinely going to one of my four classes. I would sleep from something like 8 am (right after breakfast opened) until around sunset on most days; the class I went to, which was by far my hardest class, was from 2:30-4 in the afternoon, and I forced myself out of bed to get to it on the two days a week it occurred. I've written about the market forces in play here also elsewhere, but none of that changes the fact that the complete lack of sun for days at a time was severely impacting my life. Even now, when I have my problems with the sleep, my sleep schedule is nowhere near as screwed up as that first year.
Looking back, I was nowhere near as miserable as one would expect given these rather alarming problems. I haven't mentioned the ones that were out of my control, like the completely at-odds-with-my-personality roommate, the meticulous Nashvillian, to whom I didn't talk from October through March, or the coincidental appearance of the most irksome and clingy person I've ever known (who I had met at summer camp) two doors down in my hallway. Yet I managed; I don't even remember being particularly depressed. I can only wonder at how happy I'd have been if things were going right.
I later learned, of course, that nearly everyone who had met me during that phase had gotten an awful impression. This isn't surprising, as thinking back on it if I met that person I would likely also get an awful impression. I didn't know how to act in a college environment. I was irresponsible without being fun, the worst of both worlds. It was during this time that my tendency to scare people off by being too forward about liking them (in both a platonic and romantic way) reared its head for the first serious time. I'm not sure what the causes of that are, but it's still with me today for both idealistic and impatient reasons.
All in all, first term freshman year was more or less a complete waste, except that I met the two people, Joon and Paul, who are still my crew to this day. Second term was better, but still nowhere near the level of my last three years of college.
We're reaching the end of the phases discussion. One more: grad school, and this one's a slam-dunk. The wise Melissa Franklin told me that the first year out of college would be the worst year of my life, and she was right. I didn't know how to deal with friendships that I wanted to keep out of college with people who weren't anywhere close to me and whom I would never see, I guess around five in all. I had no idea how to deal with grad school; my first year was, aside from one reading course, a complete mathematical waste of time. I didn't adapt well to living out of a dorm environment. I committed social faux pas (pases? I'm rusty on the old French) en masse, with the most memorable (to me) and painful one being a time when someone suggested carpooling to a party and I ... calculated costs and determined how much each person should be paid. It was not my finest moment, and set back my social advancement several months.
Because of my social ineptitude in high school and college, I started socializing essentially a year behind. This was intensified in graduate school, since because I had no idea what to do I was rarely in the math department and meeting people. I had a clique of sorts the first couple of weeks, but then I stopped coming into the math department on a regular basis and was quickly eliminated, which was mostly fine with me since I didn't have anything invested in any of the people. I coped better this time, since I realized that this slow start really wasn't that important in the grand scheme of things. Working also in my favor was the continuous nature of the real-world, as opposed to the quantized nature of high school and college (which fosters cliquing around grade lines for obvious reasons.)
There are other, more personal problems, but it's time to wind up the phases discussion. Hopefully I've proven my point.
That was dinner; it's time for dessert. I've explained in general how this first-time failure has manifested itself in my life, so I can be a bit shorter with each of the remaining specific examples. The most obvious, because of its importance, is romantic relationships.
My first relationship was, I think, a pretty cookie-cutter summer-camp relationship. I didn't understand this type of relationship; I got in emotionally way over my head, going so far as to (and there is epistolary proof of this) promise that I would go to Massachusetts and camp out in her yard if her parents wouldn't let me stay with her. I'm glad one of us realized that we weren't really compatible, certainly not in any deep way, because I don't think I ever would have.
This, of course, didn't teach me anything about what I really wanted, since it was really just a standard intro. I then proceeded to have by far the worst relationship of my life in terms of decision-making; I can go into it if you want, or I can leave the gory details to your imagination. Fortunately, by this time I at least had enough perspective to know that this wasn't going to last, but the fact that it went on for as long as it did -- something like six months -- is preposterous. We had nothing in common. If I met her today, I would instantly realize that she lacks essentially all of the qualities that I look for in a person.
I guess I'm cheating a bit by lumping the first two relationships into the learning period, but I think it's reasonably valid. Since then, all of my relationships have either been serious and with people I should have been with, or not so serious and known to be that way from the start. I can't say it's been all smiles, but at least it hasn't been disastrous. This is where the in retrospect comes in; at the time, I thought that the relationships were fantastic ideas, but they set back my romantic life by several years. (This is, of course, a gross exaggeration.)
Some other notes. First, these things dovetail with other first experiences to create the diciest periods of my life. First term freshman year of college, in particular. I mentioned before about the panicking and running home for Veterans' Day weekend (not literally); the immediate precursor of that was the second-most painful moment of my life, when a girl by the name of Shauyene broke up with me.
I should note here that I don't think my relationship with Shauyene, which was pretty tumultuous and perhaps not even best described as a relationship, was a bad idea. It was fun. I liked her; I still like her a lot, think she's a great person, and her priorities are very similar to mine. But they weren't very similar to the priorities I had then, which had finding true love at the top of the list. The problem wasn't the relationship; the problem was that I spent too much time thinking about true love and not enough time just having fun. I was so happy to have found someone in my first year of college that I overemphasized it. The relationship was fine; it was how I fit it into my life that was totally out of proportion, and that was due to not knowing how to deal with the college environment. When it fell apart, so did I.
Most painful moment, well, I've talked about it enough that I shouldn't talk about it again, not because it hurts me to talk about it (it doesn't) but because you all already know about it. The basic set-up is the first year out of college, when I was floundering out here (as I mentioned before.) I had only one thing to cling onto, the best relationship of my life, with someone I was still very much in love with. I didn't know how to fit this into my life; I flew out there (Boston) for her birthday to surprise her, had my misconceptions crushed, and ... I guess I would have run home if there were a home I could have run to. As it was, I ran away to games, which I guess had become more or less equivalent.
I don't think the problem was my feelings for Adrienne, which are in fact more or less the same today as they were then. Rather, the problems were that I didn't know how to live a life in grad school, so I tried to live the same life I had been living with her in college from 3000 miles away, with predictable results. This set back my friendship with Adrienne by several months. (This is, unfortunately, not a gross exaggeration. Actually, it's easily more than that; it's at least a year.) This was not unprecedented; in the first year of college, a similar thing had happened with Danielle over I think Christmas break, where I assumed that life would be as before and of course things had changed. That also set my friendship with Danielle back by several months. The episodes are actually eerily similar, something I don't think I had realized until today.
The key point here is the theme of this perspective: that I screw things up the first time around. There are plenty of events inside of relationships that point to this as well, but these are the macroscopic ones. The problem with this, as opposed to high school and college, is that I might not get another chance. This worried me a lot at first, but I've gotten a lot better over the years at not crying over spilled milk.
Math competitions. This is an easy one. In most of the math competitions I've taken, I've done horribly the first time and much, much better as years went on. The acronyms probably mean nothing to those of you who aren't in the specialist audience, but the numbers still stand. The first time I took the AHSME, I got a 99; 100 qualified you for the AIME. This may seem like bad luck, but in fact this is incredible stupidity. If one's goal is to qualify (I don't remember what mine really was; this was a long time ago), there is no reason to answer a number of questions that would give you a 99. (30-question test: +5 for a right answer, +2 for leaving it blank, 0 for a wrong answer, five-choice multiple choice. It's a good scoring system.) May as well answer two more, because you might get up from 99 to 100 that way and you can never drop below 100 because of this. I never made this mistake again.
The AIME is another math competition. I got a 4 the first time I took it and a 10 the next year (out of 15.) These tests weren't particularly easy or difficult. (One has to always compensate for year-to-year difficulty levels on these tests, which vary quite a bit.)
On the Mandlebrot competition, which is out of 70 (five rounds of 14), I got something like 30 the first year I took it, freshman year of high school; the winner was in the mid-60's. I was probably somewhere around 100th. The next year I got 67 and tied for second, and I placed first the next two years. This is the most dramatic learning curve I've ever had for anything.
The Putnam exam is the only college math competition out there. I was top 25 -- I think 24th -- the first year. I was top five, the highest possible ranking (they don't release scores of the top 5) the next two years. Top 50 senior year of college; that's a subject for another day, perhaps yesterday or never.
There's other stuff, I guess, but we're getting into the quantitative land and the briefer I keep any section (this thing is getting too long) the less chance there is that your eyes will glaze over.
Ultimate frisbee is the only sport I really play. The first time I played, at summer camp in 1993, I was awful. I couldn't throw, I couldn't run, I couldn't catch. By junior year I was one of the best players at [the same] camp. Somewhere along the line I learned by miracle to throw a forehand. I still have no idea how that happened. Growing some number of inches also helped, although I'm hardly tall now.
There's all of the usual writing stuff. Looking back at my old e-mails makes me cringe. Looking back at my old posts to the Nose makes me cringe. Looking back at my old webpage is impossible, since I wrote over it, but there are pieces lying around that I wrote on the first attempt, and they make me cringe. Looking back at the early days of the weblog, which you too can do, is also definitely cringe-worthy. When I kept a journal of my road trip in writing (summer 2001), it sucked at the beginning. When I kept a dictated journal of my road trip (summer 2002), it sucked at the beginning. Danielle can tell you how much my first attempt at an autobiography sucked; I think she has the only extant copy, which is probably the single best piece of blackmail anyone has on me. It set our (mine and Danielle's) friendship back a year. I wish that were an exaggeration. It was powerfully bad. I couldn't write worth a damn when I started Ms. Kocela's writing class in high school, and by the end I had been published in twelve different literary magazines. That's not an exaggeration, it's a flat-out lie -- but I suppose in any case most of what improvement there was is probably due to the fact that Ms. Kocela was a kickass teacher, as was my Expos preceptor in college, Marguerite Feitlowitz. (I did have one terrible writing teacher, who indirectly precipitated the disastrous autobiography, although this is hardly an excuse.)
As you might have guessed or experienced firsthand, I make horrible first impressions, which is just a microscopic version of this, although, in a very meta way, I've become a lot better at making first impressions over the years. I think I've made a good first impression on precisely two of my friends, and these are the people who like me. There are various reasons for this, but it's the same point essentially.
There are, of course, things that don't fit into this category. My first year at math camp, which was definitely a new experience on par in its novelty with high school or college, went well; I'd be hard-pressed to say that the second or third year went any better. I still can't snowboard particularly well; I don't think I'm picking it up quickly. (It's the hardest thing I've ever done, by a large margin.) I haven't gotten much better at basketball. In math competitions, my individual scores (out of 8) at ARML, by year, were 7, 7, 3, 7; at NYSML, 7, 7, 7, 8. Relationship-wise, well, if I really picked things up quickly I probably wouldn't have had as many relationships as I've had, although that's a tricky one.
Where does this come from? I'll hazard a guess. I'm good at adapting to circumstances once I realize they exist, but because of my arrogance I believe that circumstances don't have a big effect on me and thus shouldn't have a big effect on my lifestyle. So I'm slow to adapt to new circumstances, like girls being actually interested in me, high school, college, playing frisbee with the novel skills it requires, a type of math question, a new person to interact with, etc.. I don't realize that something is a mistake since the circumstances have changed until I do it and it turns out badly, and until I've had a chance to reflect on it. I learn to fit the circumstances, but there's an adjustment period while my persona stubbornly resists change and refuses to believe that circumstances should have any effect on it whatsoever.
I have no evidence that this is more true of me than anyone else; in fact, that sort of sounds like a horoscope, except that it's a bit more jarring. Does this sound like you?