jenny wen

The faintest idea.

[jennywen]

New year’s resolution: Write better resolutions 🎉

I know, I know: “You still actually think these work?” Yes. Yes, I do. I’ve been writing them and making progress on them for the past few years, so they’re a thing I like to do as the year winds down. And yes, I know—a year is an arbitrary period of time, but I find it’s a good time to reflect. Why not capitalize on the optimism we get at the turn of a new calendar? So, here are some of the considerations I make when I set my resolutions, and things I want to accomplish in general. 

Disclaimer: I’m not an expert by any means and this process is neither universal nor is it absolute, but it’s some insight into how I approach resolutions.

1. Have a goal in mind:

 There are two ways I approach this: When there’s something specific that I think I want to do, I like to distill it to its most fundamental truth and find out why I really want to do it. For example, next year, I want to try and read a bunch of biographies. In and out of bookstores, I’ve been thinking more about the value of biographies, and I’ve been drawn to the idea of reading about experiences that I’ll never be able to have. So, why do I want to read biographies? I want to read biographies to gain empathy and experience. This is more of a bottom-up approach. A top-down approach starts with a goal, where I think I know generally what I want to achieve, but don’t know how to achieve it. This year, I know I need to take better care of maintaining my mental health, but I don’t know how to get there yet, so this is my goal, and from there, I can figure out how I’m going to achieve it. Having a high-level goal helps keep me motivated and understand the meaning of what I’m achieving.

Q: What do I want to do? A: Read biographies

Q: Why do I want to read biographies? A: To gain empathy and experience

Goal: Read to gain empathy and experience

2. Be actionable:

With a goal in mind, I dissect that goal down into what I can do to achieve a goal that might not be so objective. I might already have decided some of the actions from using the bottom-up approach, but it’s worth reflecting if there’s anything else I want to do in order to reach the goal. I like to keep actions quantifiable and explicit, like: What am I going to do? How often am I going to do it? When am I going to do it? For my goal of maintaining my mental health for example, I pledged to go to counselling once a month, keep a daily gratitude log, and meditate at least twice a week. Quantifiable and explicit. 

Goal: Be better at maintaining my mental health Actions: Go to counselling at least once a month, keep a daily gratitude log, and meditate at least twice a week.

3. Break it down:

Sometimes I think spreading a goal across a year is even too daunting for me. I really like checklists, and for some reason I keep them on a monthly basis, so I like to break down my goals month by month. In 2015, I resolved to get more involved in the UX and design community at the University, and I wanted to do that in two ways: getting involved in a leadership position in a UX club or organization, and working in human-computer interaction research. I knew that research positions opened up in April, so I added a checklist item for April to reach out to professors, and I put a “Reach out to clubs” checklist item in my immediate checklist, because I knew it was something I could start looking for right away. In my reading goals, I actually put like “Read 2 books” in my monthly checklist so it feels much more achievable than say, reading 24 books across the entirety of the year.

I realize this Wunderlist workflow is probably crazy.

4. Be realistic:

Being disappointed by not meeting unrealistic expectations is a real downer and I find it especially tough to deal with when I’m creating new habits. In 2015, I didn’t already have a reading habit so it didn’t make sense for me to say I was going to read one book every week. Instead, I thought realistically about my reading pace and planned around the months that I was going to be in school. That year, I planned to read one book every month while I was in school and two books for every month out of school. The goal was lofty enough for me to feel challenged, but not overwhelming considering my school schedule.

5. Make plans to check in:

I’ve definitely set resolutions in the past and never tended to them again in the year. I like to write my resolutions somewhere where I can access them easily like a Wunderlist or a Dropbox Paper doc, and then I’ll set reminders to myself to check in and see my progress. In 2015, I only set a reminder for June, but this year, I plan on setting a bit of time to reflect every month. By reflecting often, I can adjust my plan and even decide to be more aggressive with my goals if I think it’s going well.

have i reached peak yuppy yet

What are some of your tips and tricks for resolutions? What works for you?

[jennywen]

Senior-senioritis

Hey! This week, I, along with some of you out there, am finally starting my senior year. I swam against the current for a bit, so this is my sixth academic year as an undergrad at UWaterloo. (It's a long story, but I basically earned half a degree before I realized there were other, tastier fish for me to fry.) 

I wrote this post (above) as an intro in my class Facebook group before we started freshman year. For some godforsaken reason, this post gets purged and re-surfaced on my feed like, once a year. During its annual 2016 re-purge, the contrast was stark: Who was this beaming, optimistic person? Where was she now, when I needed her the most? I posed these as questions, but the answers, I knew: amidst thermodynamics textbooks, three-ring binders, and my friends graduating a whole two years before I did, I’d lost sight of who I set out to be at the beginning of this whole thing. 

Frustrated by stagnation and the eagerness to graduate, I've stormed into too many classes and exams with a big "fuck you" look on my face. I've talked back to professors and TAs because I felt like I deserved more than what they were teaching me. In group settings, I've set the mood poorly from just not wanting to be there, working on an assignment together. I've described my state as being "over it", more times than I’m comfortable admitting. 

I’m worse than your textbook senior year student; I’ve had two extra years for this senioritis thing to metastasize and consume me entirely. 

Sure, senior year weathers us in good ways: we're more efficient, self-aware, and confident. But, it didn’t grant me full rights to be condescending, to invoke my cynicisms on other people who were still enjoying the ride. I, too was shiny, impressionable, and keen at one point, and I wouldn’t have wanted someone like me, raining on my university parade.

This coming year, I want to choose resilience. I want to choose the alternative that isn't spending my year stroking my angst, saturated in ambivalence, and counting the days to its end. This year will pass—this much is constant and out of our control—but how will we let it pass? For me, this means not opting out of graduation year events (pubcrawls, Gradball, iron ring rituals, convocation). And while it doesn't mean plunging myself as wholeheartedly into my studies as I did in first year, it does mean motivating those around me who've been persistent and unwavering in their academic pursuits. It means not applying apathy in opportunities to help people who've been in school for less time than I have.  It means staying involved in the communities I’m a part of at school, and embracing them (Hack the North, UW/UX, and the SYDE community), knowing I won’t have them in a year’s time. 

While I usually do step into a new semester rosier than I ended the previous, I'm writing this (as I have been) for accountability and as a thought catalyst for people like you, who might be feeling a little like I do. As much as we've had enough—the end is nearer than it's ever been. And as distant as it all seems, I know there will be a day when we’ll miss shooting the shit in the computer lab, and eating cold, sad, sad, (but free!) pizza. So let’s make the most of it. This year, let’s channel our freshman year optimism, compound it with senior year grit, and make moments that’ll strike an undying wistfulness in our future selves one day. 

Catch you on the convocation stage—with bells on, Jenny 

(I’m looking towards my future here—upward and to the right, of course 📈) 

[jennywen]

I appear successful, therefore, I am.

While it’s a well-worn statement to say I think “success is subjective”, and “success is what you make it”, I drilled down on my definition of success, and realized that a lot of what I’ve been working towards in college, has been a lie. I’ve been working towards a state best described as “perceived successfulness”—one that would provide me satisfaction only by way of having other people identify me as being successful.

In other words, I’ve been ticking off boxes on someone else's checklist when I should have been writing my own.

I’m not really sure what it’s like in other circles, but within my community at Waterloo, someone who’s regarded as “successful” typically has checked off a list like this:

Work a string of comfy tech jobs

Gain academic prowess

Get institutional and/or social acknowledgement of 1. and/or 2. (i.e. through scholarships, or just like, being the “go-to-gal” for helping you through interview season)

Be one half of a committed, long-term relationship

A lot of it due to circumstance and good graces, I’ve been fortunate enough to hit all four cornerstones at some point in my academic career. At times when I was less than 4-for-4, I wanted to wrestle together all my willpower and resources to secure them. More importantly, when I did, I wanted people to know I had them, and that I owned them (see: humblebragging, see: not-so-humblebragging). What’s more, when most of my friends are bagging at least 3 out of the 4, I feel like I need to align myself with their goals, and achieve towards their common definition of success, just to stay afloat with them.

Now, when I’m making a decision that I know will nudge my trajectory one way or the other, I’ve started asking myself: “Do I really want this because I want this? Or do I want this because everyone else wants this?” Too often, I’m not sure. Sometimes I think it’s just me—an independent weakness, a shortcoming that’ll only lend itself to eternal dissatisfaction, but I’ve realized in conversations that I’m not alone in this existential conquest, and there are more of you out there who’ve had these faintest of ideas.

So, this is a call-to-action for those of you who think you might be in a situation like mine: take an outward glance at yourself, as you are, and channel some critical judgement inward at who you’re striving to become. Is it really you? Or is it someone else?

[jennywen]

Disrupting disruptive disruptors

It’s parody, but definitely not hyperbole. Source: Silicon Valley, HBO.

When Silicon Valley makes media about Silicon Valley, I wish it wouldn’t pan shots of the San Francisco sunrise over an Apple-product-laden standing desk, or thread together hyper-time-lapsed images of an open-concept office. It’s images like these that paint a picture to the general public, in which we couldn’t seem more removed from the rest of the world — in workspaces of the 1%. Though workplace perks are the norm, they shouldn’t be the focus of our work — the work that’s supposed to be helping the millions of people who use the products we build.

Our work is not micro-kitchens, 15-inch Macbooks, nap pods, and ball pits, and I never want to be pitched to work for a company on the basis of these sorts of things. If anything, having these things reinforces to the rest of the world that we are becoming less and less aware of the users we’re building for. Most of our users will never have lunch catered to them on a daily basis, or ride a wifi-equipped shuttle to work. From socioeconomic, demographic, and behavioural standpoints, we’re gravitating further and further away from average users, and generally, average people.

So, I have two questions for you: As a technologist, how do you stay grounded to the people you’re building for? As an industry, what are some ways we could reinvent the workplace to be more cognizant of our privilege?

[jennywen]

Sharing with care

I’ve been having an internal conflict. One about when and when not to share, one about being on the receiving end of them, one that’s concerned about germinating my own narcissism, and one that realizes that in writing this, I am by default, sharing. By sharing this, I am confusing my position on the spectrum of social sharing.

Wholeheartedly, I can say that there is certainly something invigorating about posting a profile picture from my travels and watching the number of likes climb to over a hundred when I wake up the next morning. The like/notification paradigm is a habit-forming, reward-centre-pleasing, soul-disintegrating user experience trigger. I’ve never claimed to have an addictive personality, but I can’t help but be hooked.

Behind the screen, it's difficult not to be reminded that I'm less successful, less glowing, and less opportunistic than those who engulf my feed. As my friends plunge into the next phase of their lives, my self-esteem is time and time again, submerged by their triumphs: graduations, travel plans, career advancements, engagements. A part of me hates them for sharing what they share, and a part of me hates myself for not being able to accept my own condition congenially. I love these people, and most of them have great intentions—but in being unadulterated I can't deny myself my own envy.

In fueling the hate train, I’m completely guilty myself—a regular offender, in fact. When I location-tag a photo to some obscure place that I’m only fortunate enough to be because of my own privilege and circumstances, you probably hate me. I’ve totally #humblebragged, “announced” career opportunities, and added life events for things I know will make other people envious, but I think will earn me social approval. I’d hate me, too.

Nonetheless, I actually care about most of the people I follow—there are people that I’ve drifted from, people who make me hit “like” with every personal update (regardless of how envious I am), and people I'm still close with, where social media is just another vehicle to maintain intimacy. I like to hope that somewhere out there, there are people who are genuinely interested in my life, too. At the same time, I’m becoming increasingly uncomfortable with this vicious cycle of self-loathing and the reflexive need for approval. I’m exercising what control I have to shy from sharing to my own social circles and reduce the time I spend numbly scrolling through news feeds.

So, what is worth sharing? What kind of tone should we use when we share? Would it make it more human if we shared both our triumphs and our failures? Should I share about all the nights I spend alone, wallowing in the consciousness of my own loneliness? (There are certainly plenty.) What's more, should we share at all?

[jennywen]

Solitude/Companionship

I went on a trip.

“Real fucking original, Jenny. You’re going to write about your trip." 

I went on a trip alone. Less with the intention of getting away, but more with the intention of teaching myself to be fiercely independent. I remember having a debate with myself, trying to convince myself that it wasn’t the safest idea — to go to an unfamiliar place, with no one else in tow. But of course, I knew that wasn’t true. I knew it was my fear of being alone that fuelled my reluctancy. In the end, like most of the pivotal decisions I’ve made, it was fear that made me certain that I had to do it. 

I chose Portland because it was a cheap flight away from San Francisco, reasonably safe, and a place I didn’t think I’d visit for any other reason. But it doesn’t matter where I went—it could have been anywhere. What really matters in this story is what I learned in the process.

During my first two days in Portland, I saw a pattern in myself. I left in the morning, optimistic, hopeful for what was in the day ahead for myself. I’d come home, slightly disappointed and feeling an emptiness, like I wished I’d shared the day with someone else. I hesitated to take large risks, and I’d circled the same neighbourhoods a few times. Desperate, I even made conversation with a canvasser in Mandarin. I didn’t know how to enjoy my own company; I felt weird in my own skin. 

Come the third day, I’d begun to familiarize myself with the city’s own idiosyncrasies. There I was, in Portland’s International Rose Test Garden, with a book at hand. Something in me realized that I needn’t have any priorities, but I could just be there, in that moment, and fittingly….wait for it…take time to smell the roses. Triumphed by my realization, I saw a movie and had a beer by myself for the first time in my life. I felt fearless and empowered.

I WAS HAVING FUN ON MY OWN. 

One of my fears proceeding into this trip, was that I was going to love spending time by myself so much, that I would reject any future social invitations for alone time. That wasn’t the case. If there’s anything I’ve learned to appreciate is that so much of life relies on companionship. 

Travelling alone, I was so efficient. I’d blaze through Washington Park trails at double-time, decisively order a latte from Stumptown, and observe only the exhibits that I wanted to at the Oregon Zoo. 

Gone were the interactions that derive so sweetly from companionship. I didn’t sit on an unremarkable patch of grass to engage in a debate about optimal beard length. I didn’t begrudgingly trail anyone through the sci-fi section of Powell’s Books, only to unintentionally discover a title of my own. I didn’t stumble home, intoxicated by the spell of Portland’s microbreweries. 

Companionship is what makes time spent so unpredictable. It is the counterpart that challenges the voice that we think is so sound inside. It is the person we want to share our stories with at the end of the day. As humans, we crave companionship, and for good reason—it’s how we survive. In groups, our diversity enriches the human life, and our cumulative abilities make us more resilient than any one individual. Without solitude, however, it’s difficult to truly appreciate good company.

[jennywen]

A mindful way

OP: “...my appointment came, and my counselor was sick... and the next available appointment is in another 40 days”

Reply: “...but I suppose the university doesn't care too much about our mental health. It costs them too much money to care."

http://www.omguw.com/2015/03/20768.html

Over the span of the first three months of this year, I’ve seen a handful of posts on my Facebook feed of people within my network “coming out” with the mental illnesses they’ve been struggling with. It’s been enlightening to peek into their dark, unexposed corners. “Happy shiny people, and all of their demons”, I keep saying. While I’m excited that people are more comfortable with their conditions, I’m also becoming concerned by the sheer number of people who are struggling.

All of this leads me into a bout of questions: How do we keep up with the demands of precious counselor time while ensuring that every patient gets the care and attention they need? Is counseling just a highly-reactive method of treating mental illness? How can we prevent mental illness proactively, despite all of life’s entropies? I’m not sure.

While I’ve personally never been to Counseling Services at UW, I know that counseling is most effective when it’s used on a regular basis, with the same counselor, for an extended period of time. Not all counselors are a fit for every person, and it often takes some time and exploring to find the right one. For many students, on-campus Counseling Services is their most reliable and most affordable resource for getting treatment. 

When there isn’t a counselor available, sometimes it’s best to talk to a friend. I’ve been keen to lend an ear, but I’m not always sure how to best act. As a friend and someone who has also sought counseling, I’ve both uttered and received the words:  “I’m not sure how to help, but you should talk to someone who does”. I can sense a certain circularity to this problem.

Without a doubt, Counseling Services is invaluable to campus life, and the counselors’ overbooked schedules are just one signifier of its utility. We’re fortunate enough to be a part of an institution that cares enough to invest money in improving mental health; I don’t think the University doesn’t care. At the same time, the landscape of mental illness on campus is changing. The conversation is evolving. While stigma still exists, the barriers are being dismantled, brick by brick, and we need to think not only about awareness, but increasingly about how we help all of these people who are ready to tackle their demons. Imagine mustering the strength to talk, only for there to be no one to listen.

Aside: Yes. I still read OMGUW. Secretly a first-year in my double room at Renison. Forever.

Yours until my UWDC++ download finishes,

Jenny

[jennywen]

High School: A Retrospective

My younger sister is in grade eleven, and she has a lot of pivotal decisions to make. As the eldest child of immigrant parents, I was supposed to be the pioneer - the experiment. I was the first to tread my way through an education system and cultural norms my parents were unfamiliar and uncomfortable with. I had no one like myself to look up to and guide me through my adolescence. Sometimes when I talk to my sister about the future, I see in her eyes that her trust in me is unwavering and that my opinions are oh-so valuable to her decision-making process. That’s terrifying for me. It’s hard for me to trust myself with my own future, let alone someone else’s, but I completely understand why she does.

So, this one is for my sister Katherine, and for all of the other adolescents in this tumultuously dynamic part of their thus-far short lives. I hope this advice helps.

Being awkward about your body is a-okay. I was maybe the most awkward, ever. Look around. There are people around you who seem so much more well-adjusted than you are. Girls and guys so comfortable with their bodies, with what they do with their bodies. I don’t think I ever resolved this in high school, at least. You’re not alone. Try to avoid negativity. Stop comparing yourself to other people, and find out what it is about yourself that you like. It certainly is easier said than done. Personally, I learned to accept my thighs for what they were; I ate food that made me feel good about what I was eating, and started running on a regular basis. I learned to take control of my body, and be comfortable and feel like I was myself in it.

Apathy is infectious. It’s rough; I caught it, too. It’s difficult to be buoyant in a sea of apathy without wanting to draw attention to yourself while you're swimming against the current. Plenty of times I avoided opportunities because they were “uncool” and because none of my friends were interested. I dropped out of lunch-time band class because none of my friends were doing it, and I wanted to eat lunch with them. I never took computer science because only the “weird kids” took computer science. I didn’t have ambitions for self-started projects, or to attend Shad Valley because none of my friends had those ambitions, either. Try and surround yourself with people who care. People who are passionate, and remember that four years of being weird and keen is just four years of being weird and keen. Five years later, I don’t think anyone I know is still laughing at anyone from our high school class for being weird and keen.

Take ridiculous classes. I think there was a good period of my high school career when my academically-minded friends looked at my schedule and laughed at me. I enrolled myself in all of the “fun classes”: college-level Marketing, Photography, Fashion, Web Design, Manufacturing Shop. They poked at me like, "See you on the other side of the take-out counter!” The generally high-achieving half of my high school class was focused on fast-tracking their Biology and Calculus credits, bound for Health Sciences and Finance majors. I met some amazing teachers in those classes who taught me really important lessons. My art teacher who convinced me that design was worth pursuing. My manufacturing teacher who encouraged my participation despite being one of two females enrolled in the class (this confidence would prove to pay off later in Engineering school). Opportunities to take such a wide array of classes may never present themselves again. Don’t waste that because you’re focused on your college track. Have a little fun. Become an interesting person.

People are transient. I think high school was the first time in my life that I realized that. Staying in touch with people after high school is never as ideal as you make it seem when you write your phone number in their yearbook. That’s okay. People change, and that’s part of the ebb and flow of life, I guess. The lesson here is: make decisions for yourself, and not the friends who might not be your friends in a year or two.

Don’t peak in high school. It’s okay to be awkward, to be so lost in who you are and what you’re doing. I remember on the first day of high school, a senior told me “High school is the best four years of your life”. Don’t make that true. Considering the present human life expectancy is about 72 years, four years is less than 6% of your lifetime. If they’re a shitty four years, that’s okay. Just make the other 94% worth it. Remember to keep the 94% in mind when you make decisions in high school. Know that those shitty four years are just a primer to who you will become. It's the layer that makes the other stuff stick - it doesn't have to be pretty, and it doesn't need to define your identity.

High school is one of the few places where so many different people will be jumbled together. Be cognizant of this, but also take advantage of it. Soon enough, you’ll go to college and meet people who think the same way you do, and like the same things you do. It will be so comforting to find a niche of people just like you. At the same time, it’s important to value diversity and get to know people outside of your in-crowd. I was too cagey and segregated in my own group of friends to give other people the time of day, and I completely regret that. Maybe your differences will set you apart from being lifelong friends, but maybe for the time being, you’ll learn a lot from each other and value your differences. 

Try new things. Finally, this is contrary to every piece of parental advice, ever. Have your first beer. Go to parties. Kiss a stranger. Fall in love. Skip school. Gossip with your best friend. Stay out too late. Make mistakes. In hindsight, these are the experiences that are the most remarkable to me, and not the classes I took. From these experiences I learned about the person I didn’t want to be and ultimately made me the person I wanted to be. I don’t really know how to give this piece of advice without discretion. There are certainly individuals I know who made the wrong decisions in high school which may have led them down the wrong path, post-graduation.

These are the things I learned in high school. The things I wish I could change, and the things I’m so grateful for. Learn from me, but remember to learn from taking your own risks. Just because I lived these already doesn’t mean you shouldn’t live your own.

Here's a toast to the Class of 2015 and beyond. 

Make mistakes. Get messy.

[designer-wolves-blog]

Here’s for a better 2015, be a Bitch, get shit done.

[jennywen]

Me.

[jennywen]

An Epilogue

Last year, I ended a five-year relationship. It’s an agonizing statement to write, let alone an experience to share, and so many of my emotions are still so raw. I could write a post about love: “What It’s Like to Fall in Love”, “The 15 Best Tidbits of Being in Love", “How to Be in Love With Your Best Friend”, but I don’t feel like popular culture underserves that area in any way. I'm still learning a lot so I'm wary of my own advice and probably have no authority in telling you what to do. So, here’s what I’ve learned so far, and maybe the lessons will appeal to you anecdotally as opposed to being preached at you:

Letting go is gradual. I'm learning to let go - not just of a person who was my best friend, but of the idea of him and what we had. We were together for long enough that when considering the notion of being together for the rest of our lives, I sometimes thought: maybe. I'm still letting go of my aspirations of us - aspirations of our futures entwined together - both for the foreseeable and unforeseeable time periods. The holidays we were supposed to spend together in our hometown, the one-room apartment we talked about but never shared. I don't really know how to make this all dissipate, other than with time. I'm relying on time to remove the sticky residue.

We should have "checked in" with each other more often. We did long distance on-and-off for the latter half of our relationship, and it sounds like such a formality, but we should have sat down at the beginning and end of each of the segments of time during which we were geographically separated and evaluated our relationship. How did we feel about the time we were going to be separated? What was our plan in ensuring that we remained intimate and in contact? What did we learn over the time we were separated? How are we both different from each other now? We were "high school sweethearts" so our relationship was pretty laissez-faire to begin with, but maybe that was part of the problem - we never propelled our relationship to evolve at the same rate that we both did, after high school.

Everything in hindsight is so ideal. It was and it is still so easy to say "we could have done this" and "if this, then things would have been different". Maybe they would have been. Maybe we both just fucked up, and weren't mature enough to handle being in a relationship that could have been ours for as long as we wanted. At the same time, I'm skeptical of our abilities to make dramatic change. I know that at the first realization of loss comes desperation, and with desperation are bold promises. I guess with these things and decisions in general, there is no real way of knowing what could have been, unless we chose the alternative to what we currently have.

Everything in hindsight is so goddamn ideal. During moments when I am left alone to stir with my thoughts, I glance backward at our relationship and my mind eclipses at only the best parts: A The Smiths track plays in my head, and there we are dicking around in IKEA, our bellies sated by a 10-meatball meal. It's literally that scene from 500 Days of Summer, somewhere in the in between of the first few hundred days when everything is so blissful. Moments like these are my favourite moments and they are moments I will probably cherish privately for the rest of my life. They're incredible, and part of that is so terrifying to me. When I focus at these moments, they are joyful, but instinctively I fill with doubt. Part of me fears that we made the wrong decision to end our relationship, and I feel broken at the idea that we won't make these memories together anymore. To put it plainly: it hurts. It usually takes a concerted effort for me to refocus, put in perspective the rest of our relationship and re-weight these recollections with the reasons that it did end.

Hurt is inevitable. I realized this quite recently. Over the years, we certainly both hurt each other: small nicks, and some salted wounds. Part of accepting the responsibility of being in a relationship is realizing you both have the power to hurt, and are also both exposed raw to the vulnerability of being hurt. I don't have a solution to this. If we shy away from all sources of hurt, we shy away from love. For every unkept promise, there were a dozen handwritten cards and letters. For each unresolved Skype call, there were a countless number of warm, comfortable silences in which we both just felt reassured and safe from the world in the company of each other.

Maybe I'll revisit these five lessons in a few months and deem them invalid in every way, but maybe I'll respect them for their truths at the time of their conception. The experience is new to me; I'm still so uncertain about the way I feel now and how I will feel as time passes. However, there is one thing I am certain about: this denouement of a relationship - it's painful, but I would never sacrifice any of the five years we had just so I could no longer feel this way.

[jennywen]

I made some decisions this year that I found really personally challenging. Some of those decisions, I'm still unsure whether will bring me the most happiness, and some, I'm still dealing with the emotional consequences of.

This next bit really resonated with me, as it's something I thought about in this whole decision-making process:

"Many of the choices we face in the new year will be between alternatives that are on a par. Our task then is to reflect on what kind of person we can commit to being when making those choices."

[jennywen]

 Just saw this post on my timeline. It's Christmas Eve, in the year 2014. This is not okay.

My first reaction is a complementary scenario. It's something like this:

An elderly man approaches the platform with three large shopping bags in tow. He peers to his left and sees the train approaching, its headlight barely visible in the Christmas eve fog. The swift breeze of the train's deceleration sweeps his face as he shuffles towards the yellow line. He pauses. He jilts. A pang of excitement perhaps for the reactions of his grandchildren unwrapping their gifts in just a few short hours. Instead, he collapses in the way of the train as it approaches. A Christmas tragedy. The media lights up in his honour. What unfortunate timing.

Death is death. Illness is illness. But compassion should also be compassion, regardless of the physiological cause of tragedy. So this Christmas Eve, make sure to reach out to the ones you love, and the ones who love you, because that's a real #classact. 

[jennywen]

On internships, anxiety, and premature perceptions of my career

I wrote this earlier this year, and published it on Medium, but I wanted to move it here to have all of my writing in one place.

There’s something to be said about being an intern and a co-op student; in limbo from one city to the next, one transient mindset to another. Part of me longs to continue living my life like this, with the urgency to extract the most out of each internship, to cherish the freshness of every experience and leave at the moment the routine becomes even remotely tiresome or familiar. The other part of me yearns for financial independence, a full-time job with full-time friends, a cat, and a bachelor-suite apartment.

At the University of Waterloo, most undergraduate programs are offered as co-operative education programs. We work full-time internships (or co-ops) between every four-month study term, nestling an environment where professional, applied experience is weighted on par with theoretical queries and knowledge. It’s a system that’s been praised by The New York Times, Salman Khan of Khan Academy and other top Silicon Valley companies, to which Waterloo has been a dominant feeder school.

Waterloo’s program has certainly made me ever more certain that I am interested in technology and design, but carving my career through these internships still proves difficult. I’m only twenty-one years of age, and I’ve already dabbled in career paths in journalism, visual communication, urban planning, software engineering, and product design. I can’t help but be uncertain about certainty.

I had a period immersed with uncertainty, three years ago. I speak about it like I am well-versed in difficulties and am now the flame re-ignited from embers, but I know I will reflect on this in years with embarrassment at how naïve I was, and how insignificant my struggle really was.

After my freshman year at Waterloo, I was diagnosed with a situational anxiety disorder. At this point, I was an Urban Planning major — unhappy, underachieving, and unmotivated by the course of my academic study, lacking the rigour and passion to be engaged.

I never truly understood the term “mental illness”, until anxiety commandeered my body. Oddly enough, I was able to pour all my efforts into my academic studies, distracting myself from ruminating, brooding in my thoughts, and preventing them from succumbing me entirely. Anxiety taught me about how little I actually had control of, and provided me with the grit to work hard and focus.

As a result of finally finding the ability to channel myself into my studies, I decided to switch my major to Engineering, restarting as a freshman two years proceeding my original matriculation, and pushing my graduation date back the same amount of time. I remember submitting my application to switch majors, excited to be engaged in a field I could be passionate about, and intimidated by the possibility of being innately unintelligent in comparison to my new classmates, two years my junior.

The friends I had originally entered university with are graduating this year. My parents always cautioned me as a child. They convinced me I was a talented student, but that my peers would catch up and surpass my abilities, if I wasn’t diligent about my studies and about improving myself. I know that my decision to switch majors will reflect on me for the better, and throughout the next tidbit of my career, but by graduating at a later date, I can’t help but feel like I am lagging in the journey that is life.

As a tech intern in Silicon Valley, it’s difficult not to feel underwhelming in my pursuits in an industry bustling with smart, self-motivated individuals. I often find myself intimidated by the sheer achievements of the peers I am surrounded by. However, similar to my classmates, my Silicon Valley peers and co-workers constantly challenge me to improve myself, and aspire me to set my goals according to their high-calibre achievements, not only professionally, but as an individual.

So much of me wants to have the feeling of being an underdog dissipate, to feel mastery, but so much of me knows that this is undesirable, that comfort means slowing down, lacking challenge and losing the willingness to learn.

Instead, I hope that in a few years, when I finally join my ex-classmates in the real world, when a passerby glances and mentally labels me as a “young professional”, when I lint-roll the cat hair off my shirts like a real adult, when I am a mentor to a young intern myself, that I am still uncertain, anxious about the future, and hungry to grasp every learning experience. I hope I still have my intern mentality.

[jennywen]

Feeling blue, feeling twenty-two, feeling #newyearnewyou.

A few weeks ago, as the clock struck midnight, I laid in bed — introspective, wistful, and excited. Tempted by restlessness and self-reflection on the eve of my birthday, I thought about who I’ve become in not only the past year, but the past twenty-two. I realized that I’d recently become insistent that I’d reached steady-state; it appeared as if I found who I wanted to be, and knew who I’d become. 

However, upon reflection, I realized that I had been blinded by this exact belief, and the dynamism of myself was thriving without my notice. Without being attuned to these changes, I was being a passive and unconscious actor in my own personal development. So, with the verge of the new year upon us, and the turn of the dial of my personal clock, I've set aside a goal for myself to be more introspective and accepting of this fluidity. I'd also like to be more open to criticism, and actively seek open feedback from those around me. Having a tough skin and receiving feedback is terrifying for me, but it's entirely necessary in this unforgiving pursuit of self.

I spent a good portion of the latter half of this year in a state of blue. I was stretched thin by the routine of academia, and I felt broken and unwound by some of the close ties I'd left in a similar state. Nonetheless, I realized that despite the distance I'd placed between myself and some genuinely influential people in my life, I had also removed the distance between some others whom I am entirely grateful to know. With time, and the entropies of routine, these same people have evolved into fulfilling the influential roles in my life that I thought to be newly vacant. For that, I am thankful. I resolve to continue to cherish these people and take the risks required to open myself up to them, as we mutually guide each other along in the journey that is 2015.

I was also quite content with the level of achievement I was able to accomplish in the past year. Academically, I was at my peak, and career-wise I was content and found a niche where I felt I belonged. Nonetheless, as the year progressed, this comfort made me sluggish and I turned my back at opportunities of self-improvement. Perhaps these lapses are okay; perhaps once we notice them, they are golden opportunities to rekindle and re-evaluate our passions. As a result, I resolve to be ever more aggressive and relentless in realizing my ambitions, which may or may not involve academia. Specifically, I'd like to be active in a leadership role for a cause I am passionate about, and continue to ruthlessly prioritize my time for my own best interests.

There is one year in my adolescence, where I recall writing a letter to myself at the start of the year, folding it and sealing it in a Ziploc bag. I mounted it to my cork board, with the promise of reflecting upon it at the turn of the next year. My memory escapes me, and I have no idea if I actually ever read that letter at the end of the year. I figure that the physical event of reading that letter is unimportant, and what really matters is whether or not I learned something about myself from reflecting on those 365 days. I, like yourself, am cynical towards the idea of "new years resolutions", but there remains a part of me that is minutely optimistic about my own potential.  Also, if we never set over-ambitious goals, how will we ever feel fulfillment?

Maybe recording and sharing these resolutions here binds me to them, regardless of when I next encounter this text. So here's my call-to-action for you: do the same thing. Share your lofty ambitions for the next year, and we can both make sure to hold each other accountable.

See you on the other side of the countdown.

[jennywen]

A memo to myself, four years ago.

Dear Jenny. You are young, you are naïve. You will fall. You will grapple with the very being of yourself. You will hallucinate. You will fail. You will panic. You will cry. Oh, you will cry. You will smile to fight off the urge to hyperventilate. You will question your desire to go on. You will think about the unthinkable. You will seek help. You will find kindness and resilience in the human spirit. You will love. You will heal. You will discover passion amidst disparity. Passion that drives away darkness. You will rise to the challenge. You will find you.

[dear-photograph]

[jennywen]

dear-photograph:

Dear Photograph,

My father could make anyone laugh…especially my mother.

Michael

[thingsorganizedneatly]

[jennywen]

Weeeelll, this wraps up my life this past week.

thingsorganizedneatly:

144 Empty Parking Lots, from Jenny Odell’s Satellite Collection