The Story of Ryan Yao
After having a late night study session with Ryan and Juan (and I guess to some extent, Druhv). I didn’t really get anything done, because I was tired from yesterday’s activities (dodgeball and all). I admire Ryan’s ability to concentrate in spite of his surroundings - he’s so good at what he does. Anyways, I ended up talking to both Ryan and Juan - hence the unproductiveness - and learned about Ryan in the meanwhile. For a while, we talked about the day’s events and activities, starting with our opinions on the home-group speech. He said that he didn’t like the religious context behind the speech, while I told him that I didn’t connect with the message of the speech - but we both thought that the speech was well constructed and presented. And then, we delved into other facets of our lives - or at least his life - I was kinda curious to see the environment Ryan came from.
Apparently, Ryan came from an international school in China. But get this, his graduating class only accommodated 30 people. 30? That doesn’t even cover a fraction of WestCo’s graduating class! That’s so insane. Anyways, he was telling me about his reasons for choosing Berkeley - it was basically because it was the #1 public university. As he was retelling me his accounts and all, I was kinda fascinated by his linear logic. Anyways, so we talked about his high school and I was commenting on how smart his class must have been, especially since he seemed really smart. Instead of confirming the intellectual capabilities of his peers, he actually spoke pretty lowly of them. Out of the 30 people within his cohort, 3 of them weren’t eligible to apply to college.
I left their room after Druhv came back because they were all heading off to sleep - which I kinda expected, especially since it was like 3 AM. My sleeping schedule is getting out of hand.