A Post From the Draft Archives. Incomplete, but Interesting.

Hello Dear Reader,

Well. This is being composed from within the confines of LAX. Somehow, too much time has passed and we find ourselves within the realm of 2013. One more trip, a few more hours of travel, and I complete the return to normalcy.
I'm going home, folks. Back to work.

There is too much to be said about the last semester, and about the year that has so recently come to a close. There are too many defining moments, too many short stories, too many characters to bring to life, too many scenes to sketch out: it is the problem of moving between worlds. Worlds are constructed out of impossibly many tiny details, delicately interwoven so as to avoid attracting the attention of those within their bounds. As a result, it is impossible to convey the rich, subtle structure of our foreign lives.

The remainder of my semester in Budapest was fantastic. It always surprises me how time is capable of shifting and re-shaping structures that appear fixed. But so it goes. New, wonderful, surprising friendships emerged. Lessons were learned. Fun was had.
In terms of travels, I ventured to Prague, Paris, Auschwitz, and Krakow. Each of these was an amazing experience onto itself. I had several nights of staying up to mad hours of the night, even going to bed just as the sun began to rise after a night of laughter, dancing, mangoes, and hot chocolate with friends. I enjoyed many a heartfelt, silly, earnest, intriguing conversation with people who effortlessly stole their way into my heart.
I am usually a bit disappointed and frustrated with myself when it comes to closings or goodbyes. It never feels sufficiently real and adequately heart-wrenching, and I am left feeling altogether too sensible and removed.
Leaving Budapest was not like that. It was hard. It was really hard.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(And that's when I boarded the flight back to Carleton. And life became crazy once more.)

Still alive. Still in Budapest.

Dear Reader,

Yes, I am still alive. And I am still in Budapest. And it is, mostly, exceedingly wonderful.
I am absolutely ashamed that it has been a long (yet short!) two months since last we met. It is embarrassing. I promise it will not happen again!
But, there's no use in lamentations at this point. We must boldly move forward!

So... How to even describe the last two months?
There is no way I can do it justice.

For one, I have developed two very dear and wonderful friends who I almost regard as sisters. Luckily, I get to take those two girls back "home" with me... at least until they graduate in June! Oh noes! But my two roommates have been crazy-awesome and I have come to love them immensely. Our room seems to be always filled with happiness and laughter, or else some good heart-to-heart. I have been infected by their speech patterns, I have started learning how to cook thanks to them, I have been enlightened through exposure to Riverdance, I have learned how to do a mean air-violin to Call Me Maybe, and much much more! Even had I not gained anything else from this program, befriending these two would have made my Budapestan adventures more than worthwhile.

But that's not all!
I have gotten to meet even more awesome people while in Budapest. Alas, most of these are people that I *don't* get to take back to Carleton with me. But I have thoroughly enjoyed our potluck dinners, crepe adventures,  discussions about connectionist neural networks, forays into Euclidean geometry, disagreements about the value of philosophy, late-night philosophical-movie watching, good-humored teasing, and all the rest of it! I love that I have gotten to know a group of passionate, intelligent, well-read, fun nerds who like to laugh and be silly, as well as to share/discuss/explain/argue about ideas. There are a lot of people I will be sad to leave come December...!
But it's been a good two months, and we still have one more! Huzzah!

I no longer embarrass myself at grocery stores (mostly). I have successfully navigated the Hungarian mailing system. I have befriended a couple of Hungarian students and an absolutely delightful French student. I have gone on two excursions with the program as a whole, which provided lots of good bonding time and pretty Hungarian scenery. I have learned to j-walk like a true Hungarian. I have learned how to put together healthy, delicious, and happy one-pot-wonders. I have come to love Budapest and its glorious river Duna.

I have also gotten to venture outside of Hungary. I went on a weekend trip to Vienna with my roommate Lauren. This was glorious-- not least because I was well-accompanied. I also spent a week in Italy for our break: one day in Pisa and three days in Florence (with my other roommate and another friend), followed by one day in Pompei and three days in Rome (flying solo). Oh my goodness... So, so glorious!

Highlights:
Vienna-- definitely the Albertina, with its jaw-dropping impressionist paintings.

Italy... Oh boy!: Climbing the leaning tower of Pisa. The sculptures at the camposanto at the Field of Miracles in Pisa, as well as the sinopias.  Florence's duomo. Michelangelo's David (!!). Pretty much all of Pompei-- ruins and gorgeous scenery both. Passing myself as a Spanish girl from Barcelona while in Pompei... The Roman frescoes at the National Museum in Rome (particularly the four walls of garden fresco... glorious!). The House of the Vestal Virgins at the Forum, as well as the rostrum, Ceasar's mound, and the temple of Romulus. The Colosseum and the Pantheon. Roman sculpture at both the National Museum and the Capitoline museum. Several of the rooms in the Vatican Museum. The art (especially Bernini's sculptures!!) at the Borghese gallery.

I basically discovered during my trip that 1) Medieval art can be hilariously not-that-great 2) David is a piece of beautiful, artistic perfection 3) Roman frescoes/art blow my mind 3) Gian Lorenzo Bernini is (was...) a freakin god.

As proof of that last claim, just look at this. I stole this from the internet (someone successfully violated the no-photo policy of the gallery...), but it is a close-up of part of Bernini's Rape of Proserpine, whose home is at the Borghese.

It's just like flesh!!
But it's marble!!!
HOW DO YOU EVEN DO THIS??
Mind: blown. Life is wonderful.

My only point of displeasure is the fact that a number of these beautiful sculptures are supposed to be depicting rape.
...What? Not cool!
There seems to be a disparity between what it is showing and what it is claiming to show. It's weird and I don't understand. So that whole issue curbs my enthusiasm a bit, but... the artwork... and the sculpture itself... is astoundingly beautiful.

Sooo... Italy was amazing. Basically.

A brief note on academics before I must go to bed... It's already rather later than my bedtime...

Our semester is composed of a series of one-week courses, each taught by a different professor and tackling a different aspect of the very broad field of Cognitive Science. Thus far we have had: Intro to CogSci, Cognitive Neuroscience, Cognitive Ethology, Brain Imaging, Philosophy of Language, Cognitive Informatics, Consciousness, and now we're on Embodied Cognition.

The semester started off roughly, with professors who failed to provide texts or supportive materials, did not give very good conceptual explanations, or assumed a non-existent background in their field... but the semester has more or less steadily progressed, which is wonderful. Also, at the beginning, I was quite frustrated by the very cursory one-week structure of the semester as a whole. However, I think my opinion is starting to soften. I wouldn't say that the different classes *build* upon one another- not exactly. But there are certainly overlaps and interesting connections between different courses, and I am really enjoying the conceptual framework that is starting to build across these various sub-disciplines.

In addition to these classes, I am also taking Theories of Meaning, a philosophy of language seminar, "on the side." Much to my delight, this class has complemented my CogSci coursework and my general interests quite beautifully.

So, generally speaking, life is pretty awesome.
I am in a beautiful place with relatively easy access to other amazing and beautiful places.
I am surrounded by warm, fun, nerdy, wonderful people.
I am making connections between concepts and being introduced to seductive fields of study... What more could I possibly want?

Moreover, I feel as though, albeit very slowly and not at all clearly, I am making some sort of progress in life. I am still highly uncertain as to what I want to do, but it's becoming clear that the path I am on can probably take me to wherever I decide I want to go.

So, for now, I will just enjoy the gorgeous scenery.

Lessons from Computational Chemistry!

Hello, hello!

If anyone could explain to me how there is less than a week left of the long month of August, I would be most grateful.

I find myself back in my SoCal home... somewhat disoriented, excited, distraught, happy, lonely, scared, nostalgic... yearning at turns for comfiness&coziness and for excitement&adventure.

Mostly, I feel very unprepared about the unreal reality that, granted the benevolence of the Fates, I shall be leaving for Budapest in five days(!!).

The last two weeks or so since I last wrote were a little crazy, and quite wonderful.

Research ended nicely- and I shall attempt to provide an explanation of the exciting things I was doing! :]

Brace yourself, dear Reader. We are in for a trip!

So... Our simulations for LTA were failing quite miserably, and we believe the cause (or one major cause, anyway) to be the presence of a dipole in our unit cell structure (we'll talk more about dipoles later).

Backing up a bit. My work was with zeolites. Zeolites are pretty crystals, which means they have repetitive structural units-- aka unit cells. What this means is that you can tile a bunch of unit cells together to get a zeolite-- this not only contributes to the beauty of staring at atom-level pictures of zeolites (which I am fond of doing), but it also means that we can save ourselves time by exploiting the symmetry of the system. Look! A picture!

A unit cell is here boxed in red.

In order to run our simulations, we tile together something like 12 to 36 unit cells (pretending we actually have a 2D system, we can see 4 unit cells in the picture) because 1) we can't afford to try to model a super large system and 2) we can use tricks to make the system seem bigger than it actually is (to get more realistic results).

[For those more mathematically inclined, refer to periodic boundary conditions (we’re mapping onto a torus!!)]

We have essentially two versions of the code that controls our simulations-- one which uses Ewald summation to deal with interactions between charges, and one which does not. For the purposes of this discussion, it doesn’t matter what Ewald does. I’m just using it to differentiate between two different ways of running the simulation. The important thing here is that the version of the code which uses Ewald (which is the version we were interested in) needs the coordinates of the unit cell to be such that the center is (0,0). The other important thing is that using Ewald requires that the unit cell not have a dipole.

For those of us who do not remember what a dipole is, dipoles emerge when you have an imbalance of charge. To use my professor's example from intro chem, think of elephants pulling on a rope tied to a tree. If you have two elephants pulling just as hard in exactly opposite directions, the tree will not fall over. If one is pulling harder than the other, or if they’re pulling in a way that the forces they are exerting on the tree don’t cancel out, the tree will fall over. So having a dipole è the tree falls over.

In this case, we don’t want the tree to fall over.

So we want a structure centered at zero. However, the crystal structure does not start off this way. Instead, it starts off such that the (0,0) point is at the lower left corner.

Original, Uncentered LTA Crystal Structure

Ewald thinks that this is not okay, and so there is a function in the Ewald code that “centers” the structure to make sure that the structure is the way that it likes it.

At least theoretically.

Problem: Somehow or another this function was not working quite properly. The original crystal structure has no dipole (we know this because when we use the non-Ewald version of our code, all is well, and when we use Ewald, things go terribly wrong), but after centering it, it does. This suggests that something funky is going on... and the crystal is not, in fact, being centered properly.

 So, my job for the last few days of summer research was to understand what was going on with the centering process— with the goal of modifying the crystal structure such that it is centered (and dipole-less) to begin with, and undergoes no modification when put through the centering function in the Ewald code.

Summary:

How things are--

 Crystal structure (no dipole, uncentered) --[Ewald centering function]--> Weird, dipole-carrying structure

How I want things to be--

 Modified, centered structure –[Ewald centering function]--> Still nice and centered structure

Alright, so now the problem-solving part.

First, some terminology. 

Because I can’t look at the structure in 3D very easily, I was looking at projections onto a plane.

So what does this mean?

Imagine you’re looking at a cube. This is 3D. Now imagine you start to push on the top of the cube and the inside of the cube kind of collapses so you can flatten the cube into the ground, and you’re just left with…. 

A square, yes? (Yes.) That square is the projection of the cube onto a plane.

Or, if we started off with a delicious donut and for some reason decided to squash it down instead of eat it, we’d get two concentric circles as the projection onto what I shall arbitrarily term the xy plane:

A torus (or mathematical donut)

    

Projection of torus onto plane

(Credit goes to http://mathforum.org/mathimages/index.php/Torus)

[Of course, there’s no reason why you must squish your donut down towards the floor. You could also think of squashing it against a wall—what would that look like?]

Now that we have that, the pictures we saw earlier were the projections of the crystal structure onto the xy plane. And, again, here is the original, uncentered structure:

And here is the output of the centering function (again, projection onto the xy plane), which then gets used in the simulation:

Centered structure.
Red = oxygen atoms, blue = silicon atoms

See how we’re now “centered” at zero?

However, there is a problem, and it is one which would clearly give rise to a dipole. Remember, we want things to be nice and symmetric (such that for any elephant pulling in one direction, there is another elephant pulling just as hard in the opposite direction to balance things out)—but they are not!

(The problem is with the O atoms, specifically, so here we're just showing the oxygens)

Essentially, in the orange circles we have little oxygen elephants pulling on an imaginary tree at the origin. The problem is, the other two edges are missing little oxygen elephants-- so the tree is going down! Oh noes! 

If we look back at the uncentered structure, which has both Si and O atoms (they're just both in the same color [we also have these "X" atoms at the center of each "ball," but don't worry about that]), we see that we have elephant oxygens along all four edges (as well as two sets along each axis)-- but once we center it, we lose two edges of elephant oxygens, and the tree comes crashing down. Clearly something is amiss.

This means it is time to understand the behavior of the centering function!

Initially, I started trying to think in 2D, and this led to my being very confused about what was happening, such that I didn’t get the point of how things worked. Bad idea.

Lesson learned: when trying to understand something, it’s not stupid or simple-minded to start off with the simple model. Au contraire! Keeping things basic allows you to see and understand the important behavior, which will help you out when the system becomes more complicated. At any rate, it’s what scientists seem to believe, and it was wisdom that served me well.

So, let’s focus on 1D.

First, the function:

 x_new = x_old – ROUND(x_old/L)*L    (where L is the length of the unit cell)

So let’s pretend we’re looking at a unit cell (in this case, let’s just look at a line segment) of length 8, and let’s see what happens at each “quarter point” – so what happens to 0, 2, 4, 6, and 8.

 

For 0:                          

  x_new = 0 – ROUND(0/8)*8

        = 0 – ROUND(0)*8

        = 0 – 0*8

        = 0

For 4:

  x_new = 4 – ROUND(4/8)*8

        = 4 – ROUND(0.5)*8

        = 4 – 1*8

        = -4

For 8:

 x_new = 8 – ROUND(8/8)*8 = 0

For 2:

 x_new = 2 – ROUND(2/8)*8 = 2

For 6:

 x_new = 6 – ROUND(6/8)*8 = -2

To illustrate what happens, we can look at the original line, and see where the original points end up in the centered line:

                

             Original line:

               

             

Transformed line:

The color coding is intended
 to "trace" points.

Now, I will point out the interesting things. The points from 0 to right up to 4 (or more generally, from 0 to right up to L/2) end up being unchanged. The points from 4 to 8 (or L/2 to L) end up becoming the negative half of the line (well, plus 0), with L/2 becoming –L/2. It’s like we have cut the original line at the halfway point and moved what used to be the upper half to the end, so that the last point (L, or 8 in thi case) matches up with zero.  

The problem is, that now we have two points that get transformed to zero, and we have no point mapped onto 4, or L/2.

To look at more pretty pictures of projections of LTA….

Below, I noted how the transformation works. The blue is the original input structure, and the beige is the “centered” structure. Because the unit cell has so many nice lines of symmetry, I considered what happened to each of the four “balls” that make up the unit cell. If you don't get what's going on, don't worry about it, and just admire the pretty picture (at least, I think it's pretty). Or use the discussion about our 1D model to try to make sense of it! :]

     

Once again, I used color coding to trace things.
The arrows are intended to provide  perspective.

And here we see that the “missing points” in the projection are located at Lx/2 and Ly/2, which is to be expected from our discussion.

 

In other words... it's like instead of having a set of elephants along each edge, as well as along the axes, we now have relocated the elephants which should be along the edges corresponding to the midpoints (Lx/2, and Ly/2) to the x and y axes (respectively). This means we have two sets of oxygen elephants located along the axes... stacked on top of each other, so to speak. This image, quite properly, is rather ridiculous.

Now I’ll fast forward the story, because I’ve probably already long lost my few readers.

(As always, feel free to ask me about anything I've mentioned. I'd LOVE to talk about it!)

Basically, we have the points at both 0 and L mapping on to the new zero point. So what I did was figure out which points in the centered structure which were located at zero (or rather, along an axis) originally came from a point whose x, y, or z value was equal to L, and then moved that point in the centered structure from 0 to L/2. [Well, actually, I moved it just a teeeeny bit to the left of L/2, because if you’ll remember, a point at L/2 gets moved to –L/2 (4 got moved to -4, in our 1D example above)].
To translate into elephant language, I looked at the silly stack of elephants on the axes and relocated the elephants on top to a more dignified position-- along the empty edges.

At the end of this process I had a centered, dipoleless structure (uh, in theory…). Moreover, because this structure is already centered, upon going through the centering function, nothing changes.

Here is the result of centering my new centered input structure (also, just so you know, the projections onto the yz and xz planes look the same):

                         

Yay! Things appear to be fixed!

BUT WAIT. The problem was the dipole, and now I needed to actually calculate the dipole and make sure it was zero. I’ll spare you the detail, but… THE STRUCTURE STILL HAD  A DIPOLE! Granted, it was a much smaller dipole than it originally had… but still! Not cool, man!

Unfortunately, this realization happened at nearly the end of my last day of research, and there was no real time to do more problem-solving.

What I can say is the following. If you will recall, all these pretty pictures are projections onto a plane—aka, squished donuts. I would argue that squished donuts are not as enjoyable as real donuts, and it is much the same with these projections. You lose information in the flattening process.

To get an idea of this, imagine that cube again. Now imagine giving the side edges of the cube a jagged cut, so when you look at it straight ahead, you see something like:

  

                                                             

The problem is, if you squish it toward the ground, you still just see:

This isn’t the best example, but the point is, we can imagine that there was important information being lost in the squishing process, such that while the projection was nicely symmetric (and thus dipole-less), the 3D structure still had rowdy elephants causing problems and knocking over trees.

Unfortunately, my story ends here. I have a bit more detailed information about the remaining problem (ask if interested), but alas, at this point my research time was over, and I needed to get ready to get on a plane to visit a certain Russian-enthusiast close to my heart (if very far away in spacetime). So I still don’t understand exactly what was happening in the 3D structure that I wasn’t seeing in the projections, and I don’t understand at all how that problem came about.

I did learn a few things, though, including:

1) I love staring at pictures of pretty crystals. !

2) Start small when trying to understand tricky things.

3) It’s okay to feel clueless and lost and not good enough. You are good enough. Just take a  deep breath, and start grasping onto whatever you can. Eventually things will start to make   sense.

4) It is good to start small, but don’t be surprised (or traumatized) when you take it up a level, and suddenly things are broken again. You’ve made progress! And you’re that much better at fixing things.

I learned this while getting lost in lines of Fortran and suspecting I was actually stupid and incompetent and while fearing that I would never understand what the hell was going on with these zeolite things…

But I suspect that what I learned this summer will extend far beyond the abstract world of atomistic simulations and impact the way I carry myself in everyday life--  in the same surprising way that playing around with code can extend beyond the virtual world and uncover some truth about reality.

Huzzah for computational chemistry! :D

Hailing the Summer

Greetings, fair Reader!

The summer adventures have begun.

 After a brief, happy sojourn home, I find myself back at school for exciting chemistry research adventures. I have finally more or less settled back into my room, with a new roommate and a new set of challenges to conquer. Exciting!

My research adventures started yesterday, and it rapidly became evident that I definitely have my work cut out for me in the next ten weeks...
I have already gotten a tiny bit deeper into Unix, discovered and explored Emacs, and am expected to gain working knowledge of Fortran by the end of the week, since that is the programming language I shall be working in. So in the last two days I have gone through about 160 pages of Fortran.... only 200ish to go! Woo!
Oh, and let's not forget the 100+ pages of reading that I copied for myself today....
It seems quite daunting, but I am rather excited, to be honest. A lot of work means a lot of learning... and I feel like the amount of learning I will be doing will be slightly ridiculous. In a good way.

But I do love that my nerdiness is increasing significantly. I think I may have to start gaming. Or go crazy and convert to Linux. Somehow or another I need to affirm my transition into this particular realm of nerdom.
In my mind, female computer sciencey nerds have a nice edge of badassery, and while skipping through my Fortran book, I like to think to myself- yeah... yeah, I could do that. I could be a cool nerd-girl. I could totally do that!
...But then I realize that my carefully penned notes, general tidiness and prim&proper-ness do seem to disqualify me from playing the role of badass nerd girl.
But hey, that doesn't have to stop me from feeling super cool about coding, does it?

I don't know why I am so enchanted by coding. Maybe because I have been woefully ignorant of how it all works. Computers and programming seem to be shrouded in some sort of magical veil. In some way, computers seem to grasp at the magic of life- quite literally.
Computers stand at the border between physical reality and the wonderful world of abstraction. They translate between the "real" world and the world of ideas. They partake in the mystery of Meaning.
Magic, I say!

I have set about reading I Am a Strange Loop, by Douglas Hofstadter. He is, quite simply, fantastic. The knowledge that he is at Indiana University seriously tempts me to delve into Cognitive Science and ambitiously strive to end up in his lab, because it could only be absolutely awesome. But I digress.
The book builds upon ideas Hofstadter introduced in Godel, Escher, Bach (GEB), but focuses on the concept of I, or the self. Consciousness. That slippery thing!

To my extreme delight, I Am a Strange Loop has succeeded in weaving together essential philosophical questions with cognitive science, basic neuroscience, logic/mathematics, and computer science. (It's amazing how he manages to meld together so many topics and questions I delight in!)
He plays with questions like: What does it mean to be alive? What does it mean to be me?  What does it mean to know? What is consciousness? How might consciousness arise? How can something have meaning?

I think that, through GEB, Hofstadter really got me to appreciate the idea that structure is the key to meaning. Structure... ah, how magical!
I do not think I am yet ready to write out my thoughts on the subject... my thoughts are still hazy and unorganized, but the picture is slowly starting to come together. I just have unstructured words to throw at you.
Words like logic, and structure, and thinking, and meaning, and language, and binary, and beauty.
Wonderful, magical words!

But I should stop my incoherent rambling on Hofstadter's books for the time being.

The days seem to be virtually endless. There is an amazing fifteen-and-a-half hours between sunrise and sunset!
By 7am it is bright and sunny, and the world beckons me to be out of bed.
Thankfully, I obliged the world today. I went for a walk-jog in the arb, and it was a wonderful, wonderful decision. The morning light was gold-like and happy, the plant-life was gorgeous, and a little creek which I found along my path convinced me that I was part of an enchanted world. It was absolutely lovely.

I am not sure what exactly I want to achieve during these bright summer days, but I know that I want to partake in a curious mixture of gentle loveliness and nerd-girl awesomeness. I want to go for daily walk-runs, I want to improve my flexibility, I want to attempt a plunge into the world of music by making an acquaintance with the piano.... I think mostly I want to realize that I really do have a certain degree of control over my life. It is the sort of truth that lurks dangerously in the background. Dangerously, because it is so obvious it seems to evade belief.

I have spent a lot of time feeling small and incapable and boring... and done nothing about it.
But, ha! That is not how the game is played, World! Nice try, but I've finally caught on to your trickery.
The game is played by soaking in programming languages. By having the courage to try to learn piano. By having the discipline to wake up in the morning and greet a beautiful day. The game is played by realizing that you want to do something worthwhile... and then taking a step in that direction.
It's so terrifying, but so wonderful and liberating!

I may get lost in the arb, or fail miserably at piano, or cook the worst meals ever produced on the face of the earth, or feel utterly lost in the world of chemistry. The chances are pretty high that all of these things will happen within the next few weeks. But I have a suspicion that with a bit of time and a lot of work, it's going to be okay.

Maybe there's still hope for badassery. Hmm. Can I be both lovely and badass?
Well... I do love a good paradox.

On The Midpoint

Well, the second year has come to an end.

I remember old middle school days, when I felt safely sheltered from adulthood and "growing up" by the endless high school years before me... and now college is half-past.
It is a bit surreal.
The passing of time seems to have a very strange quality to it. The years seem to fly swiftly by on fairy's wings, and yet days and weeks can drag by in an impressive manner.

In the midst of this strange passing of time, I find it difficult to assess my growth. Surely I change in subtle ways between moments, days, weeks, months, years... But the gradualness of the process makes me incapable of detecting the difference.
I am reminded of when I first learned calculus. The concept of the integral made the tricky concept of life clearer to me: it is the accumulation of changes that occur on infinitesimal time scales. Decisions made from instant to instant appear so incredibly trivial and inconsequential, but the summation of the values of those instants make up a life. Magical.
It is fitting that the integral encapsulates the great, elusive concept of infinity. How do we ever reach the infinitesimal? How do we ever progress? When and where do we capture the fleeting Now? How is it that the minutes and days and years slip by?
The mysteries of life and metaphysics seem to me to be intertwined with the wonder of infinity. It is lovely.

Yet somehow the time does slip by. Somehow "life" does get accumulated between duration-less Nows. And somehow or another, I do make small bits of progress.

As the term approached its end, I came to realize that I have learned things during my time at Carleton. Shocking, right? It is the sort of thing one hopes will happen, but it is wonderful when you realize it is actually true.
There are the little things- like realizing that my knowledge of the Greek alphabet has expanded tremendously since my old high school days, where alpha and beta and pi and theta were funky things that you used in math every once in a while. By the end of Set Theory and Computational chemistry, Greek letters were being carelessly spattered all over my work. When did gamma and phi and psi and epsilon and sigma and lambda (etc etc) become a natural resource to tap into?

Additionally, I have come to realize that tossing myself into reckless situations can be a good thing.
(To clarify, "reckless" in this context refers purely to academic recklessness. Reckless, indeed...)
For the first time in my life, I had the experience of sitting in a classroom where the teacher could very well have been speaking another language, because I certainly was not understanding what she was saying. She was speaking other languages- the languages of quantum chemistry, kinetics, thermochemistry... Languages of which I only knew a few basic words. I was a tourist in a foreign country hoping to rely on words like "food" and "bathroom" for survival.
But I still remember the moment where I re-read a textbook excerpt that was being assigned for about the 4th time. And that time- I UNDERSTOOD what they were saying. Between re-readings and nearly impenetrable lectures and frustrated struggles with foreign words and concepts... the pieces eventually came together. It was a glorious realization- and it would not have been possible if I had not taken the risk of utter failure. And I shall admit, for a while there I was rather concerned.
But there is something wonderful about going in scared and mostly lost, with only a bedraggled roadmap for company, and to slowly gain your footing to ultimately emerge triumphant.
I can now tell you a story about quantum chemistry, I can model a baby protein for you, I can perform ab initio calculations and tell you a bit about a chemical system of interest- I can do quite a few things I simply could not have done ten weeks ago.

There is also the world of dance. Two years ago, I probably would have laughed and blushed with embarrassment if you were to suggest that I would find myself waltzing freely with others in a couple of months. "Ballroom dancing" was something magical, wonderful, and fundamentally unattainable to those not blessed with extraordinary grace. Admittedly, I have yet to achieve a satisfactory level of mastery, let alone claim beauty in my dancing (alas, I have not been suddenly gifted with heaps of gracefulness), but I have managed to learn a great deal during the last two years. Waltz, foxtrot, quickstep, east coast swing, west coast swing, tango, cha, rumba, samba... even some mambo and hustle and nightclub two-step... Two years ago I knew nothing, and in a few months I will have the privilege of introducing social dance to a new generation of future social dance lovers! It is terribly exciting.

I think that my understanding of things has also become more complex and subtle. Two years ago, I would probably have agreed with the somewhat vague statement that science is true. My understanding of models and scientific progress was limited. I was a naive empiricist.
I may still be a bit of an empiricist, but my appreciation for models has increased tremendously. I now value the utility of a good approximation and I understand the importance of knowing the limits within which a model can operate. I realize that there are ways in which our scientific knowledge is solidly grounded, and yet that there are more fundamental ways in which the scientific quest is deeply vulnerable to skeptic probing.

To focus on this spring, I think I can be proud of my accomplishments this term. Computational chemistry and set theory were both challenging and intimidating, but immensely rewarding. I did not expect computational chemistry to allow me to peer into the beauties of linear algebra. I remember the moment of wonder when I realized what my professor was explaining about vibrational modes- you want to understand how molecules move? Break down the motions in terms of an orthogonal basis set which will span the entire space of their motion, and now you can describe any movement your heart desires. Bam! Amazing.
I did not really expect myself to ever come to peace with quantum, but we managed to end on amicable terms. And set theory... ah, how to describe the beauty of realizing that you have built an entire world out of nothing? Or the beauty of the natural numbers, like infinite Russian dolls? Or the sheer wonder of successive limit ordinals, like dense black holes?

All in all, I am fairly proud of myself.
I do not think I have been able to say that in a very long time- I do not remember when. But I succeeded in achieving my goals for this term. No, I don't have a perfectly-filled goals chart- there are certainly a number of gaps. More importantly, I succeeded in fulfilling the aspirations underlying the carefully penned goals on my chart.

Three months ago, I was terrified: I really believed that this term was going to be painful, stressful, confidence-destroying, and unbearably lonely.
It has been painful. It has been stressful. I have been less-than-fully-confident at times. I have been lonely. These things are true. But they represent a small minority of my experiences.

I feared that I would have no great friendships during my time at Carleton, but I no longer have that fear. I have grown closer to a number of wonderful people, and planted seeds which I know shall flourish in the upcoming years.

I feared that I would sink into a pathetic fit of loneliness and moping. But I have realized that I am stronger than I believed. I do not have to fall apart when I am alone. Granted, on almost any occasion I would rather be joined by loved ones, but if I must stand alone, I can and I will.

Ironically, it has been one of my most enjoyable and fulfilling terms at Carleton.

I am still filled with fears and insecurities and doubts on a number of points. I still do not know what I shall "do" with my life. I do not know what exactly that mysterious thing called love has in store for me. I do not know what friendships shall blossom, what pains shall be suffered, what life lessons shall be gathered, nor if I shall ever attain beauty in my dancing.
But I am proud of what I have accomplished and excited for the adventures that are in store.

There is hope!
And for now, that's all I ask for.

Here's to the midpoint of my Carleton career. Huzzah!

On Seeking Some Hippiness

I think I want to be a hippie.

I don’t mean the cliché scraggly hair, unwashed, perpetually-high kind. I don’t mean “at peace” because I’m not here, I mean at peace because I am present. Spiritual, mindful, grounded, flower loving and tree hugging… maybe someday even walking barefoot through lush, green grass. I’ve never been good at walking barefoot. I like the protection of socks and shoes.

Becca took me to her yoga/pilates class this morning, and now I am a curious mixture of calm and emotional. I feel as though tears could leak from my eyes- not violently, but like a cup filled to the top drop by drop which slowly overflows- and it would be perfectly fine.

Perhaps “hippie” is too laden with meanings and suggestions. And hippie, even as I envision it, doesn’t seem to capture the full gamut of what I hope for.

On one hand, I want the mindfulness and grounded spirituality which I associate with hippiness. I want to see beauty and happiness in my surroundings, I want to feel united in body and mind- I seek harmony.

There was a time in my life when part of me enjoyed tearing myself down.
I have trouble seeing myself in perspective, judging what qualities I possess or not, and oftentimes I’ve hated myself for being small and tightly wound—timid, closed in, and shamefully afraid of peeking out. In high school, I would not hesitate to remind myself of how weak and pathetic I was. No, far from it. I would put it in writing, I would pen myself into a ball of bitter tears, I would force myself to face the ugly and inevitable truths about myself (my cup has overflown, but the drops are no longer acrid and they will not sear me).
 Do you want to know what I fear most to be true about myself?
I fear that I am boring.
Uninteresting.
That I have nothing to offer or share of myself.

Writing my college application personal essay (or rather, figuring out what to write about), was something vaguely resembling a mild nightmare.

I love hearing other people’s stories. I love hearing their thoughts, I love hearing about their family and friends, I love listening to them talk about what they are passionate and excited about, I love seeing them, because inevitably I find something beautiful and wonderful and unexpected and thought-provoking.

And yet I cringe when someone asks me to tell them about myself, because while it seems that they have so many things to offer- well-polished thoughts, odd trinkets, family heirlooms, germinating ideas, and so much more!- when I peek into my cabinets, I seem to have nothing to bring out.

I suspect an analysis of my verb tense would be interesting to carry out. But I am pleased that I spoke of how weak and pathetic I was, and not that I am.

Because, to get back onto the original path which I was walking, at some point, after getting to college, I just grew tired of beating myself up. I guess that was a good start, but I must say, that’s not good enough for me anymore. No, because merely tolerating myself is not enough. To get back to what I want- I want to be healthy.

I don’t just mean healthy in an eat-your-fruits-and-vegetables kind of way (though I definitely need to work on that). I mean whole.
I speak of well-being. I speak, again, of harmony. I want to run, I want to stretch and strengthen my body (and mind). I want to become an embodied spirit- otherwise known as a healthy and mindful person.

I want to be at ease with myself, I want to frolic in pretty outside things, I want to walk with hands outstretched. I want to forgive myself for being tightly furled, and to give myself time to open up a bit. I want to laugh at myself as I pick myself up from having tried something new and failed at it- and then I want to try it again. I want to lose myself in thought, I want to solve puzzles, I want to ask difficult questions and accept only sound answers.

I want to listen to other people’s stories- to your story. I want to see a bit of your soul, because I know it is beautiful and wonderful and surprising and that you deserve a bit of love.

I also want to find my own story, and at some point I would like to show you a trinket or two.

Some Thoughts on Stepping into Twenty

My dear Reader, I am now twenty years of age.

If you are well acquainted with Anne Shirley- or are well acquainted with me and are tired of hearing me speak of her- then you know that age twenty is a significant landmark.

My eighteenth birthday, though a small and lovely affair, seemed rather silly in the way of adulthood. Eighteen year olds, in my path of life, are not to be seriously considered as adults. Yes, I suppose there are some nice legal doors which are unlocked. No need to turn to parents or guardians for signatures, and guys get to register for the draft. That's cool... Oh, and you can smoke and vote. But by and large, eighteen year olds are hardly treated with any sort of gravity or respect, and at eighteen I thought it a joke to consider myself an adult. (Then again, I suppose I still feel that way. I wonder if shall ever not feel that way...)
As for the twenty-first birthday- for one, it seems rather silly to remember that it is actually the drinking age, as most everyone violates that particular law, and second, I happen to be minimally concerned about alcohol, so I am not particularly worried about whether or not I am allowed to legally purchase and consume it. The point of the matter being, no, twenty-one isn't it for me either.

No, the big "coming-of-age" year for me is age twenty, courtesy of L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables. The twentieth birthday marks the end of the teens, and thus the end of one's "formative years." By age twenty, we select the path we choose to travel. I do not speak of a career path- though in Montgomery's days you should have had a pretty good idea of how you plan on making a living by this point- but, much more importantly, of a moral path, as Anne girlishly explains:

It's such a solemn thing to be almost fourteen, Marilla. Miss Stacy took all us girls who
are in our teens down to the brook last Wednesday, and talked to us about it. She said we couldn't be too careful what habits we formed and what ideals we acquired in our teens, because by the time we were twenty our characters would be developed and the foundation laid for our whole future life. And she said if the foundation was shaky we could never build anything really worth while on it. Diana and I talked the matter over coming home from school. We felt extremely solemn, Marilla. And we decided that we would try to be very careful indeed and form respectable habits and learn all we could and be as sensible as possible, so that by the time we were twenty our characters would be properly developed. It's perfectly appalling to think of being twenty, Marilla. It sounds so fearfully old and grown up. 

So, this is it for me. Twenty years of age, and my character has been fixed for good or for bad. Sort of.

At any rate, the realization that the fateful twentieth birthday was upon me was a daunting one. Is a daunting one. Once upon a time, twenty sounded like a ripe old age, and now it seems a very silly one... and yet not so silly. It is very strange. I feel much like Anne, who on her twentieth birthday cannot quite believe that is has come to be, who realizes that her character is still filled with cracks, and yet also realizes that there is some truth in her old schoolteacher's words.

I keep trying to make sense of what my twentieth birthday means to me. In my strange and sentimental way, it is a true coming of age for me. It stands as a bit of a warning sign-- real and scary decisions are in my near future. It also stands as a warm welcome, beckoning me to enter a new realm where I may uncover many surprises and great happiness. It is a pat on the back accompanied by an understanding smile and laughing eyes, saying, Yes, you have done some good things, but my dear girl, how much more there is to do!


I have learned remarkably little in my twenty years.
I have learned that, surprisingly, it's the small things that really matter to people. Yes, sometimes there's something tremendously large at stake, but often what matters is taking the time to talk to someone, or making the effort to move to where your friend is and sitting by them, or remembering to show support for a loved one. We love in small, ordinary ways, but that doesn't make it any less beautiful or important.

I think I have learned that many of the "big" things aren't really all that great, and that the small, silly things are usually the most wonderful. Prom? Yeah, dressing up was fun, but, honestly, it wasn't the fancy dinner and all the glamour that I enjoyed about that day. No, it was definitely the exhausted silliness of trying to recall (and terribly botching) the words to the national anthem (and the consequent laughter-induced aches) which I remember most clearly and most fondly. Actually, many of my fondest memories seem to share the properties of silliness and hilarity: laughing over terrible word plays (or a large number of terrible things) with мой друг, baking monster cakes/singing&dancing crazily/composing poetic masterpieces with my best friend, utterly destroying the brilliant lyrics of the latest boy band with my sister, totally failing to make balloon animals while almost managing to die of laughter in a crowded mall... Yes, the best moments seem to come unplanned, when I feel sufficiently comfortable to embrace a bit of playfulness.

I think I've also learned that goodbyes are never very convincing. It's hard to believe that the person who has become a happy part of your life won't be there the next day or the day after that or even a few days after that. I've also learned that with good friends, that's okay. A lot of days after that, they'll be part of your life again. And really, they were part of your life all along.

I have not learned how to say eternal farewells. (Do we ever learn that?)

I have learned that I am reserved, and hesitant, and scared.
I have learned that I am playful and eager to love.
I have learned that I would like to be confident and warm. And graceful. And interesting.

I have learned that there are many things that I wish to learn and think and feel and see and do.

On my twentieth birthday, I sat down and looked around and more or less settled on a certain winding path.
And now there's a whole lot of walking (and running and skipping and sitting and jogging and standing and sprinting and dancing and leaping) to be done.

On Souls and Occupations

Research, internship, and job applications terrify me.

This is becoming all the more clear as I try to narrow down the list of programs/REUs I plan to apply to for the upcoming summer. I will look over a program, survey the application process- and then become terribly frightened. I am already anticipating the pain of failure. Even worse, though, is the fear of embarrassing myself and disappointing others in the face of sweeping rejection. I can too vividly imagine all of my tentative plans slowly crumbling before me, leaving me in the awkward position of explaining to those with a general interest in my hopes and goals that I have sadly failed... but... umm maybe next year will be better? It'll be nice to have the summer to relax....
...Yeah.

Somehow I need a strong dose of confidence. Ideally this would not be baseless confidence. But it is a problem when I shy away from completing an application because I feel as though I have nothing meaningful to contribute- so why bother applying?

Remember the previous Slow Swan discussion? Yes, well that is a ridiculously wishful term.
At present I am a timid creature, trembling within my tortoise shell and struggling between tip-toeing off to a safe corner and forcing myself to poke my head out and be brave and strong.
It's so much easier to hide in corners!
But it does make it so much more pathetic, too. That is kind of a problem.

Part of the problem is also my identity crisis. My quarter-life crisis, as my brilliant (and very supportive) roommate terms the stage of uncertainty we are passing through. The more I ponder the issue the more knotted up I seem to become. I find myself straddling the fields of philosophy, chemistry, and mathematics (this complicates program selection considerably). I think I could pass as a philosopher, but I fear I would make a dreadful guise for a chemist or mathematician. I feel strangely trapped between being inquisitive and feeling like an impostor. Others seem so certain about their passions, goals, and identities... whereas I seem to scramble for sure footing.

Quarter life crisis indeed...

The other day, maybe about a week ago, I had just finished a math problem set and found myself, unsurprisingly, pondering this issue of identity. At the time I think I was feeling more certain about the possibility of mathematics (this semi-confidence has since vanished). But I realized that the problem was my fear of not having a "mathematician's soul."

Naturally, this brought me straight to thoughts about Plato's The Republic (haha).
In The Republic, Socrates argues for a state ruled by philosophers, among other things. Some of those other things included a process for selecting who receives the privilege of an education on the route to philosopher-kinghood, and who got put into the category of baker, artisan, et cetera.
I was not at all pleased with Plato on this account. Who gets to decide who becomes a baker? Who gets to decide who becomes king? How do they do this, and what right do they have to make this decision?
Of course, Plato was operating on the idea of a soul. Simply put, there are people with baker souls. There are others with philosopher souls. By the time you're a child one should be able to detect signs of what kind of soul you have, and place you into the appropriate category accordingly.
But I was strongly resistant to this whole notion.
First, what do you mean, we have souls that match us to an occupation? Nonsense!
And second, even if such souls exist, it seems ridiculous to posit that a young child clearly demonstrates the qualities of a baker, miner, or academic! To lock individuals into occupations on the theory of soul struck me as dangerous nonsense.

And then, here I am, fretting over whether I possess a mathematician soul, or a chemist soul, or a philosopher soul or... what kind of soul do I possess??

I still refuse to concede Plato's soul point. Despite my fretting, it seems incorrect to suppose that there is a clear line between "soul" and vocation.
However, it seems clear that there are certain qualities "requisite" for specific occupations.
If you’re going to be a doctor, you need to be driven by concern for the wellness of your patients.
If you’re going to be a teacher, you need to find the process of helping children grow rewarding.
If you're going to be a biologist, you need to be struck by the magnificent mechanics of life.
If you’re going to be a philosopher, you need to love sitting and pondering interesting questions (and it doesn’t hurt if you ask annoyingly insightful questions, Socrates-style).
If you’re going to be a mathematician, you need to be moved by the beauty of an elegant proof.
And so forth.

I don't know which occupations I would best fill. I appreciate all of them. I appreciate and admire the sorts of individuals who appear to possess these "souls"- whether or not that term is quite inappropriate- and somehow or another I want to find a place I can fill with pride and excitement.

Yet again, it seems the best I can do is to conclude with an unsatisfactory "I'll just have to wait and see."

...But will "waiting and seeing" really cut it? Can a tortoise hiding in her shell suddenly make sense of life?

It would be nice if enlightenment and passion suddenly struck me and everything made sense. But I don't think that's how it works.

I guess I'll have to force myself out of a shell and wander around until I stumble upon the answers to life.

Easier said than done.

Thoughts on Being a Slow Swan

And so it has begun.

A new year has been born. New classes have commenced. I have embarked on a new voyage bound for wonderful, unexplored lands.

Given the many opportunities waiting to be seized, it seems appropriate to do a bit of reflection and deliberation.

So, about a week ago, a few dear old friends of mine and I decided to go ice skating. Think of this as an analogue to my summer chess adventure, except slightly more terrifying. (Yes, I recognize that this may be a tad bit dramatic.)

Ice skating began a bit roughly for me.

Hmm, no.
 'Roughly' suggests images of jerky motion. Motion was somewhat lacking altogether...

Ice skating was going nowhere for me. Literally.

Hmm, better. Except that a literal reading makes it seem as though ice skating is an independent entity which heartlessly denies performing favors for me. Actually, I don't mind that reading. It is ice skating which is the problem, not me. Of course.

Okay how about...

In the beginning, I did not ice skate. (I like this. Hints of dramatic foreshadowing!)
So maybe I was moving at a rate of about 1 cm/min, but I think we can agree that this does not in fact count as ice skating. Ice skating is gliding smoothly and beautifully across the ice. Creeping along painfully slowly whilst hopelessly trying to shake off terror? No, there was no ice skating going on.

So my somewhat wacky (understatement?) friends and I decided to come up with alliterative, bird-themed nicknames for each one of us brave adventurers. There was Tanner the Jittery Jay, Araceli the Graceful Goose, Denney the Pompous Puffin, and myself- the Slow Swan.

As I slowly made my way around the ice- accelerating ever so slightly (no longer moving at 1 cm/min!) while making sure to keep my momentum at a relative minimum so that when the dreaded fall or collision came about my impulse would also be at a low- I contemplated, among other things, how surprisingly fitting our nicknames were.

Denney was already a beautiful ice skater, gliding swiftly and effortlessly across the ice. But Denney loves slipping on an oversized coat of fine pompousness in daily life... so the name is fitting. In fact, he pompously termed himself the Pompous Puffin. Go figure.

Tanner was hilarious to watch- though I made sure to keep my distance because his unstable, jerky ice skating method promised his downfall... and if he fell in front of me I would be almost certain to go down with him in an effort to not run him over. The flailing arm motions in the event of a fall would also be likely to bring me down. But Tanner's approach to the novel idea of balancing on thin blades and somehow using them to propel yourself across ice was to just go with it- shaky and jerky, awkwardly hunched over, dancing along to the music until having to brace himself from falling- he just kept making his rounds. His facial expressions would vary frequently and vividly- going from sheer hilarity to terror in an instant.

Araceli's technique was wonderful and adorable. She reminded me very much of Dora- except instead of "Just keep swimming," it was "Just keep skating." Araceli would simply briskly walk-skate her way around the rink- there were some falls, yes, and perhaps her technique was not perfectly kosher, but Araceli does not permit trivialities to prevent her from achieving her goals! She can be a goose- but she is a graceful goose. A bit silly and wacky, but determined and poised in accomplishing what she sets out to accomplish.

And then there is the Slow Swan. Alas, alas, it's true- except maybe the swan part... though that would be nice.
I have a marked tendency to be hesitant and to back away from scary situations. My instinct is to pull away, to retreat to a solitary corner, to shrink into my shell. Perhaps I would more aptly be termed Torpid Tortoise- though that does lose the avian theme.
My own skating technique, as aforementioned, is to reduce my velocity such that I diminish both the probability and consequence of failure (This "failure" is rather undefined. Does it refer to the instance of falling/collision in itself, the embarrassment resulting from such an event, or the consequent physical pain? This strikes me as an interesting and important question. What is it, exactly, that I dread and wish to avoid?); the flip-side of this cautionary method is that, relative to others',

 

(where v is the function of my ice skating velocity)

In other words, this method gets me virtually nowhere in a typical time-frame. 

This can be problematic.

To be fair, my method worked- given that the intent was to prevent "failure," given the non-definition earlier provided. I managed to avoid falling.

Moreover, there was marked improvement throughout the course of the evening. I went from virtually not moving to moving at a satisfactory, if low-momentum, pace.

So do I maintain my low-risk ice skating methodology? 

(Transition into life-talk.)

On one hand, my torpid tortoise method prevents the pain of literal and metaphorical scraped knees. That's nice, right?

Yes... but no. Scraped knees are not, in fact, the end of the world. (Even if I seem to act on the opposite belief.) 

And, more importantly, the torpid tortoise method can decline into a stationary-snail way of life. It's one thing to be slow and steady, and quite another to stop cold.

So for the new year? 

I hope to renounce the Stationary Snail altogether and to become a Slightly Slower Slug. 

Maybe next year I can upgrade to a swan.

On J.K. Rowling, Success, and What-the-hell-am-I-going-to-do-with-my-life?

Every now and then I am struck by a harrowing pang of bewilderment. 

(That is to say, I peek at the tangled mess which is the what-am-I-to-do-with-my-life question, and wonder how in the world I shall ever set about undoing the hideous knots and imposing an acceptable degree of order upon my "adult" life.)

Today I spent a good bit of time pursuing miscellaneous activities, and in the process I did manage to strike a bit of gold. Apparently J.K. Rowling gave Harvard's Commencement address two years ago.

I found her address delightful and inspiring and exceedingly relevant. I have always felt that Rowling must be a wonderful creature to be able to write the profound, life-shaping passages found in her books, and hearing her speak only reinforced this belief. I tend to credit Montgomery, Alcott, and Pierce for most of my childhood-shaping, but Rowling (and Hugo!) certainly deserve to be up there. The Harry Potter books brought me to tears of laughter and sorrow on many an occasion. (Yes, maybe Harry was a little dramatic in book five, but I'm certain I shed tears of rage and mourning right along with him, as he sent Dumbledore's possessions to a crashing end in a senseless effort to protest Sirius' death.) 

There are certain things that set my heart ablaze. 

One such thing is the pure friendship embodied in the Harry Potter books- having people of virtue and integrity willing to risk their lives for love of one another. There is something incredibly beautiful in the friendship between Harry, Ron, and Hermione- but not just them. The Weasleys, Lupin, Hagrid, Sirius (to Wormtail, "You should have died! Died rather than betray your friends, as we would have done for you!"),  Dumbledore... there's so much of loyalty and love that permeates their actions.

Another (related) is Harry's realization in Half-Blood Prince that he is in control of his fate, despite the prophecy.
[Oh dang. Things just got serious. I strode to my bookshelf, pulled out book six, and turned to chapter 23.]  There are a good four pages worth of quote-worthy material at the end of that chapter, possibly my favorite conversation of the series. Yep, it's quote-time. (But not four pages' worth.)

(Dumbledore is trying to persuade Harry that the prophecy is virtually irrelevant. Harry isn't getting it.)

"But-"

“It is essential that you understand this!” said Dumbledore, standing up and striding about the room, his glittering robes swooshing in his wake…. “By attempting to kill you, Voldemort himself singled out the remarkable person who sits here in front of me, and gave him the tools for the job! …And yet, Harry, despite your privileged insight into Voldemort’s world…. You have never been seduced by the Dark Arts, never, even for a second, shown the slightest desire to become one of Voldemort’s followers!”

“Of course I haven’t!” said Harry indignantly. “He killed my mum and dad!”

“You are protected, in short, by your ability to love!” said Dumbledore loudly.

….

“But, sir… it all comes to the same thing doesn’t it? I’ve got to kill him, or- ”

“Got to?” said Dumbledore. “Of course you’ve got to! But not because of the prophecy! Because you, yourself, will never rest until you’ve tried! We both know it! Imagine, please, just for a moment, that you had never heard that prophecy. How would you feel about Voldemort now? Think!”

Harry watched Dumbledore striding up and down in front of him, and thought. He thought of his mother, his father, and Sirius. He thought of Cedric Diggory. He thought of all the terrible deeds he knew Lord Voldemort had done. A flame seemed to leap inside his chest, searing his throat.

“I’d want him finished,” said Harry quietly. “And I’d want to do it.”

“Of course you would!” cried Dumbledore. “You see, the prophecy does not mean you have to do anything! But the prophecy caused Lord Voldemort to mark you as his equal… In other words, you are free to choose your way, quite free to turn your back on the prophecy! But Voldemort continues to set store by the prophecy. He will continue to hunt you… which makes it certain, really, that-"

“That one of us is going to end up killing the other,” said Harry. “Yes.”

But he understood at last what Dumbledore had been trying to tell him. It was, he thought, the difference between being dragged into the arena to face a battle to the death and walking into the arena with your head held high. Some people, perhaps, would say that there was little to choose between the two ways, but Dumbledore knew- and so do I, thought Harry, with a rush of fierce pride, and so did my parents- that there was all the difference in the world.

Let us pause for a moment and allow that to soak in.

So, my point. My point is, Harry Potter invigorated my stubborn resolution to prize love as the most beautiful and empowering and noble of human actions.
The love of Anne Shirley (Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables) is light-hearted and uplifting (I dream of being an Anne-ish friend, teacher, and mother), but, though I do not doubt its resilience, it is unmarked by the suffering which is the unique product of gross injustice. Harry Potter adds so much in the way of silent strength and poignancy. The love of that world is love in the face of murder and torture, fear and anguish. It is daring to hold on to beauty and hope in the face of those who would rip all goodness from the world. It is what we would die for- but, more importantly,  it is the love that we live for.
Oh, Harry Potter! J.K. Rowling is a kindred spirit. Definitely.

What I was going to say... before delving into the Harry Potter portion of my soul... was that Rowling seems to understand my feelings concerning life/success/failure perfectly.
Coming from parents with an "impoverished" background with serious concerns about the practicality of their dreamy daughter's desires for life... Hmmm... I think that sounds a bit too familiar. [I also definitely appreciated the part where she said her parents may not have found out she was studying Classics until the day of her graduation. I have certainly been tempted to do just that (only with philosophy, of course).]
I always enjoy the rants which follow any mention of my latest philosophy class, complete with heated claims that philosophy is for those not good enough to do science or mathematics, bleak predictions of future joblessness and subsequent starvation, sour threats to retract all forms of parental support in the case that I nevertheless insist on pursuing such a foolish life-path, and other forms of, generally speaking, overwhelming support for the notion of a philosopher daughter. It's encouraging, really.

But, like Rowling, I understand my parents' perspective. Okay, maybe I don't fully understand their viewpoint, but when I can step back from the stinging sensation in my chest, it's evident that what they want is for me to move forward in life. They want me to be able to provide for myself, and, moreover, to flourish.

Now perhaps this is simply my trying to be philosophical, but that last statement seems to introduce a desperate need for a definition. What in the world does it mean to "flourish"? What is my standard for success?

For my parents, wealth is an obvious component in this calculation. [Points against philosophy.]
For myself... Don't get me wrong, it's tempting to adopt that as a criteria, but I'm not sure that riches really get to the heart of my desires. I don't care about flashy cars or mansions or pointless displays of opulence.

Current requirements for my "house of dreams" are a lovely garden, enough space for a happy family, general freshness/quaintness/cuteness, and an awesome library.
(Admittedly, I would be willing to put a good deal of money into that last one.)
I want a career that is intellectually demanding, rewarding, and conducive to forming meaningful relationships or human connections.
I want to do work that has a positive impact in terms of improving the lives of others or contributing to justice.
I want to contribute to the beauty of the world.
I want to be a confidante and mentor.
I want to be a loving (and beloved) wife, mother, daughter, sister, and friend.
I want to be a life-long lover of ideas.

The question is... how do I find the connection between my standard of success and selecting a clear career path? Would I do best in education or medicine? Should I teach, counsel, provide therapy, or practice general medicine? Is it justifiable to spend a life writing papers when I could help someone regain the ability to walk or speak, or help provide care to the millions dying of malaria, AIDS, or other diseases? But surely an educator plays a crucial role in the way of fortifying and enlightening minds!
What would I be best at? What would make me happiest? What would bring me the most success?

Nope, I still have no idea how to untangle the ugly mess. All of this...to no avail.
I find myself hoping that, slowly, things will be made clear and the knots will ease up a bit. Somewhat magically, relatively painlessly, and swiftly enough that I evade the failure I so greatly wish to avoid.

I'm reminded of when I complained to my friend that I had no idea what I was going to do with my life.
And she (Brynna) would have none of it. "You're going to be happy, that's what you're going to do."
But, but, but!- I wanted to protest.

...Somehow, I'm thinking she's right.