Wake Up Inside Forbes

My first night sleeping at Princeton lasted for an hour (for clarification from the title, Forbes is my residential college, aka dormitory). One old Vietnamese belief states that when you first sleep at an unfamiliar place, you can't really sleep because you are not used to the bed. This is true for my case now, but I can't complain about the comfy bed. When I woke up at 4 in the morning, tried to close my eyes and found out that I had to leave the bed while everyone else was still enjoying their pillows, I knew jet-lag was still controlling my brain and, what's worse, it would put me into a coma during the day when I would be supposedly joining the orientation activities. Well, I have no better choice than to make use of the time then.

I decided to write a blog post.

Truth be told, this post has been a procrastination. Back to my last days in Vietnam, I wanted to write a post telling how much I loved my friends there and how I realized I was so unwilling to leave my parents and the little kitties (my siblings), yet when I would rather use that time enjoying the last moments, I didn't put myself to write anything. When I finally had time, even ample time, to write something when being stuck at the San Francisco airport, I was already too tired to type anything good.

My little HP corner in San Francisco Int'l Airport

In fact, Princeton is making me miss UWC. It is such a different world. There are so many more people (about 6,000 compared to 251 at UWC-USA [200 students + 50 faculty + 1 post office workman]) that you have the excuse to just not look at the eyes and pass by someone, pretending not recognizing their existence. I still have the UWC habit so when I came to campus this morning, I said hi to the people I met on the way to my dorm. Guess what, they said hi back, while looking like "Hey, do I know this strange guy?". They don't say hi to someone they've never met, and I knew that when I finally realized I was no longer at UWC, when you just approached a new person in orientation and started your favorite sentence: "Hi, I'm [dot dot dot] from [dot dot dot]". Well, I was a bit uncertain and shaky about my choice to enroll Princeton a very tiny bit this morning because one of the big factor of my decision was the friendly environment that really resembled UWC, and it just didn't turn out to be like that anymore. Luckily, when I and Jane passed by Whitman residential college (residential college is Princeton's term for dormitory) in the evening, we saw a group of 20 students making a circle on the grass with three people playing guitars and ukulele while the rest sang. That was just so UWC! (especially Ghost Ranch and random picnics on the field in summer). Princeton had proven itself to be not a bad choice at all.  I really didn't choose wrong hehe.

I told my father last year that I wanted to become a Princeton Student. And now, I am an official tiger.

I got reminded by a close friend that I shouldn't make getting into Princeton a big deal. I agreed with him by then, since I really believed the college admissions process, despite however objective, was partially random. Many good people aced it, and a small portion of equally good people just didn't have that luck for several reasons. That said, I am proud of myself for the effort I spent rather than for the fact of being accepted by Princeton, since I may (or may not) have made it this far merely by luck. However, above all that talk about college admission, getting into Princeton is really a big deal however. It's important in the sense that now I have access to the world-class education, the great academic environment surrounded by wonderful people, and the unlimited source of opportunities; now it's up to me to make that advantage really useful. I was a bit afraid this summer about whether I would have enough capability to make this chance a blast or I would just let it bypass; yet, as I find it challenging, I am eager to do it.

Recently people asked me what I wanted to study in college, and my principal answer which I didn't tell anyone is that I will study anything that would make me as useful as possible for this society, with Vietnam being the priority. That said, I used to dream to become a computer scientist, made cool stuffs and earned lots of money. I could make software that would help people, making their lives more convenient. However, one day I realized that without software we could still survive, even at a lower living standard from the one we currently have. That's not to deny the importance of Internet or Windows and Google or whatever, and as a computer person, I can claim to understand that better than many people. However, as of now, I want to have a more direct impact. I want to become an economist who will either contribute to control the rather unstable macro-economy so that it will have less effect on the lives of people, especially the poor and workers, or contribute to make economic development a real concept, eradicate the poverty with little trade-off on environment and social equality. This may sound too serious, or even like a cliché essay in the college application but I really mean it, and I want to do it.

Okay, it's long enough. I hope this post can be a reminder to myself about what I want to do and why I want to do, as well as how enthusiastic I am when I put my first steps in college. Now the sun is up, and it's time to move out.

P.S: This post ends with a bonus picture of me and my brother 8 years ago: