i will remember this moment of failure forever. i am better than this.
dear josh May 3, 2011
it’s already been more than 5 years hasn’t it? thanks for showing me what true strength is.maybe i’ll never be god’s gift to women like you were, but i’ll do my damn best.
-skinny little punk ass freshman
drive slow homies
On Chinese Mothers January 10, 2011
EDIT: It is my understanding that the WSJ article is an excerpt of her essay, so there’s a good chance they raped her meaning with that excerpt. I’m not surprised. The media is always about sensationalizing everything…
I sent this to her Yale email from my UIUC email. Hope she reads it. It’s the longest thing I’ve written in years.
This is the article I’m talking about.
Prof. Chua,
Recently, a few of my friends posted links to your article in the Wall Street Journal on Facebook, and as a first generation Asian-American, I must question the validity of the parenting techniques you have described. They may seem to work for your children, but I contend that they could have done just as well without the necessity that you “pretend” to demean them for motivation. I believe genetics has a lot more to do with why Asian Americans have been so successful compared to other Americans as opposed to the stereotypical strict parenting methods. (By the way, as an undergrad in ECE at UIUC, I’m a fan of your father’s studies.) Of course, all of the evidence you or I could provide for our respective cases is strictly anecdotal. After all, your article only justifies these practices with your own experiences and successful children, while I will also only be able to provide evidence to the contrary with what I have experienced. I can only hope to convince you that there may be better ways to raise kids to be highly successful without so much “tough love.”
What I would like to present to you is a happy medium of the strict stereotypical Asian parents and the typical overprotective western parents that I was lucky enough to experience in my own parents. (Not race-wise. My parents are both from Taiwan)
Not once in my entire life has my mother or father told me that I must get an A on every test, nor have they expected that from me. I’m sure they honestly believed I was capable of getting an A on every test up through high school, but they never demanded anything of that nature from me. They would ask me, “Do you think this is really the best you could have done?” at the sight of a subpar test score, and usually I knew the answer myself. If they had called me “dumb” or “garbage” I would have stopped respecting their opinions a very long time ago. That’s how you get rebellious children abusing drugs and alcohol the moment it becomes available to them in college.
I also need to address this slight jab at sports in addition to your opinion on extracurricular activities as a whole:
“Other studies indicate that compared to Western parents, Chinese parents spend approximately 10 times as long every day drilling academic activities with their children. By contrast, Western kids are more likely to participate in sports teams.”
Any time spent on a sports team could just as easily be spent on practicing a musical instrument, which you don’t speak about in the same negative light. Both lead to lifelong passions. Both take time, effort, and usually money. Yet you gave this statistic as if Western kids participating in sports was a bad thing. If anything, I would say that participation in a team sport was more beneficial than practicing a musical instrument for me.
In eighth grade, my mother had told me, “Perhaps you should try doing cross-country.” I heeded her suggestion, but I can assure you that it was entirely my own choice, and my parents never pushed me to run or to do my training. I stumbled through cross country that year (training was very loose since it was still junior high) and before I knew it, I was in high school. The first day of practice for high school cross-country was in late June, just a few weeks after I graduated from junior high. Suddenly, I was at the bottom of the totem pole: a freshman. The older members of the cross country team were running up to 14 or 15 miles a day. The most I had ever run up to that point? 3 miles. It seemed like reaching the same level of endurance as my upperclassmen would be impossible. After all, they were running 5 times as much as I could. But that summer, I went to every single cross country practice, and by the end of the summer I had gotten to the point where I could run 7 miles some days at a mediocre pace, and such a rapid improvement encouraged me. Still, I was thousands of miles of training away from being anywhere near the Varsity guys, and I knew it. All I wanted to do was to keep listen to my coaches instructions: “Never walk. I don’t care how slow you run. Just try your best, and never walk.”
Fast forward to the end of my high school running career. I was running upwards of 90 miles many weeks. I had run a 4:33 mile. I was the second best guy on the track team’s distance crew. (I was probably about the 40th out of 60 boys on the team my freshman year. The best guy was top 25 nationally. You’d need a little more talent than I had to beat him) My long runs were 16 miles on Sundays, and I ran doubles (doing two runs in one day) a few times a week. How did I get to this point? I spent all of my sophomore, junior and senior years finding ways to improve. At first I went from running 5 days a week to 6 and then 7. And then I began changing my diet and working on my core and upper body strength after my runs. And of course I could always do my training runs faster and longer. I even began sleeping more. (Think of how influential this sport was. It caused a high school student to go to sleep early…) I did this early on because I saw how much work my coach and my upperclassmen had poured into our cross-country team, and I couldn’t let them or myself down. But later, it changed such that all I wanted was to improve myself and see how far I could push my limits. No one forced me to change my lifestyle to become a faster runner. This was the type of dedication that can only come from the true love of an activity. It gave me the confidence to succeed in all other facets of my life.
Team sports teach exactly the same lesson that Chinese parents forcibly impose on their children: hard work leads to success, and the harder you work, the more successful you can be. In fact, the team sports probably teach them more effectively than strict parenting ever could. Multiple psychological studies have been done on the advantages of intrinsic motivation over extrinsic motivation. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivation#Intrinsic_and_extrinsic_motivation. I know there’s a good chance you look down upon referencing Wikipedia, but I’m sure a psych professor at Yale would be happy to explain it to you better than a paper or article ever could)
This leads into my next point: That you should let your kids pick their extracurriculars. I’m sure while you were reading the bit about my cross country experiences you were thinking “Not every kid is going to buy into their sport like that. Not every person who has run cross country has changed their diet, slept earlier, and overall learned about the values of hard work.” That’s where I think you’re wrong. If you allow you children to choose an extracurricular that they truly love, they will, without a doubt, to pour their heart into it. There’s no guarantee being forced to play the piano could do that if your child’s true desire is to be in theater (the school play).
The success that Asian-Americans seem to enjoy over their fellow Americans is more from their genetics than their parenting. This is not to say that Asians are more intelligent than other races. Their parents, immigrants from Asia, must have needed a certain level of success and intelligence to make it out of their respective countries and into America, especially considering the poor state that most Asian countries were in when they immigrated here. Thus, their children are much more likely to have a set of genes that would make them more intelligent and predisposed towards success. There are millions of poor, unintelligent, lazy workers still in Asia living under the same social norms of parent-child relationship as Asian-American children. That also would explain why we see similar academic success from non-Asian cultures as well. (The Irish, Korean, Ghanaian mothers you refer to at the beginning of your article)
I don’t entirely disagree with you though. When I played the piano, I couldn’t have been nearly as successful without the help of my mother. She let me know when I still wasn’t playing a piece correctly, even when it sounded good enough to me, and then she would sit beside me and have me play the incorrect part until I could do it properly all the time. I wouldn’t have been good enough to perform at Carnegie Hall without her help. However, I don’t believe she ever threatened to not feed me or throw away my toys. I don’t believe that should be necessary with any kid. (It sounds awfully scary. Depending on the kid and age, they could actually believe you to be capable of starving them. That can’t possibly be good for your relationship with someone later on.)
Your husband has an excellent point: “Children don’t choose their parents. They don’t even choose to be born. It’s parents who foist life on their kids, so it’s the parents’ responsibility to provide for them. Kids don’t owe their parents anything. Their duty will be to their own kids.” Your response was, “This strikes me as a terrible deal for the Western parent.” If it’s such a bad deal, use birth control! My parents have shown me that they share your husband’s philosophy. They’ve done everything they possibly could to support me financially, emotionally, and physically. (My father once told me that if he had to sell the house to pay for my college education, he would do it easily with no regrets. That statement has been the source of my drive in college) Because of this, I couldn’t be more thankful for them, and I attribute much of my success to their willingness to let go and have me choose my own path. I strive for myself as well as them, knowing that they went “all in” on me and my sister. (“All in” is a poker term. In case you’re not familiar, it’s where a player places a bet that comprises of all of his remaining chips. You are betting everything you have.) And it certainly helps that they had no influence on what major I chose for college. No one ever told me I had to be a doctor or a lawyer. Instead, I chose on my own, and I am currently studying Electrical Engineering, a field that I love and wouldn’t trade for anything in the world. I wouldn’t be pulling 3 all-nighters a week studying for something I didn’t love.
Finally, I want to make you aware of a crisis that is affecting Asian-American males everywhere: inability to attract girls. Think about how many Asian-American males get dates with non-Asian-Americans. Now think about how many Asian-American females get dates with non-Asian-Americans. The discrepancy is staggering. The reasons for this are low self-esteem, social ineptitude, and stereotypes regarding penis size. The low self esteem and social ineptitude stem from the type of parenting that you condone. Maybe the penis size too. Calling your son names and forcing him to study and get A’s instead of hanging out with friends is just asking for him to be socially inept and suffer from low confidence. You might wonder why Asian-American females don’t suffer this hit in sex appeal. Due to natural selection and man’s previous hunter-gather society structure, women are hard-wired physiologically to be more attracted to men with a more aggressive and confident disposition. On the other hand, this is not true of what men look for in women. Meanwhile, on the social ineptness, we can both agree that females are naturally inclined to be much more social than males. Thus, they would be more likely to overcome the social barriers that a childhood of missed playdates and friends. That said, this Asian male crisis is just something I have noticed. Obviously it doesn’t apply to every single Asian male, but it certainly seems like they have a lot less success with the opposite sex… (disclaimer: I’m lucky enough to have a girlfriend since I never had these parenting and self esteem issues. I’m not complaining just because I don’t get any action :P)
I hope you don’t just delete this email before reading it….
Regards,
Bert
PS: I can understand Asian parents wanting their kids to learn an instrument, but why must it be the piano or violin? It has boggled me for years. The guitar, saxophone, and percussion all require just as much skill, and they’re all well appreciated in the world of music.
Starting up again maybe? December 14, 2010
Damn this semester has been tough. I passed out at 11 last night, woke up at 3 am, and haven’t been able to fall asleep since. I’ve got my last final tomorrow in diffeq, but I’m pretty confident about it. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same about the finals that I’ve already taken…
I’ve literally done nothing this semester aside from academic work. I don’t anticipate myself doing any extracurriculars or whatever for the rest of my undergrad. I wish my GPA and time for running were mutually exclusive of each other….
Hell, I’m 50% done with college after I finish my final tomorrow. Can’t wait to be paid for working my ass off. Hopefully I can get into a decent grad school or get a decent job. Either way, I want to be in California. UCSD or UCLA would be fucking amazing.
I really need to step up in my academics. My grades aren’t good, but it’s not too late to step up. I still haven’t taken the vast majority of the classes in ECE I need to graduate, and those definitely hold more weight. It’s been really tough to have not-even-decent grades the first few semesters with getting mono, being in weed-out classes, and not being a pro at college. (Not cheating doesn’t help either. It’s incredible how many people get by in college doing zero work in some classes) I need to be talking to more people about my classes outside of class. I basically never talk to anyone in my major outside of class, and it occurred to me this semester that this is a major disadvantage that I can’t afford to have dragging me down anymore. There are quite a few chill people in my major; I just happened to not talk to them very much.the first 3 semesters of college….
I started typing this post out of boredom. I couldn’t sleep, didn’t want to study, and couldn’t eat (no food left at the apartment except turkey, pasta, and no bread =[ ) I’ll try to post more often. Assuming more significant things happen after this semester. Honestly, nothing worth posting about happened in my life this semester. I’m not sure if I’ve ever had a more non-eventful 4 month portion of my life.
July 25, 2010
Below is a comment from maati on this engadget article. Huzzah science. My sister still hasn’t gotten her iPhone 4 so I still don’t have first hand impressions.
@bighap Apple failed.
And they’re lying about the nature of the problem.
No other phone suffers from the same issues.
Here are the facts, the real ones:
Anandtech has shown that the Nexus One’s signal drops by only 10dBm when holding it normally, while the iPhone 4’s signal drops by 24dBm.
Even when gripped tightly, the Nexus One’s signal drops by only 17dBm, compared to 24dBm on the iPhone. And of course, nobody holds his phone like that in normal use.
Source: http://www.anandtech.com/show/3821/iphone-4-redux-analyzing-apples-ios-41-signal-fix/3
CNET have done a video that has shown that, even when the iPhone 4 has 5 bars, by just touching the weak spot, the person on the other end can’t hear you anymore.
Source: http://cnettv.cnet.com/iphone-4-antenna-tests/9742-1_53-50090044.html
German Stiftung Warentest have done scientific testing and seen the iPhone 4’s reception drop by 90% when the weak spot gets touched.
They could not make other phones drop more than 25%, even when gripping them tightly.Source: http://www.test.de/themen/computer-telefon/schnelltest/4116516-4116521/
Steve Jobs himself has confirmed that the iPhone 4 drops up to one more call per 100 than the 3GS (it must be very close to one, otherwise he would have used other numbers). AT&T’s average dropped call rate is 1.44%, they claim.
If the iPhone 3GS is an ‘average’ AT&T phone, that means the iPhone 4 drops about 67% more calls than the 3GS. A HUGE increase!Source: boygeniusreport.com/2010/07/21/att-we-have-a-1-44-dropped-call-rate/
The real issue is not that you can make the signal drop, but HOW and by HOW MUCH.
HOW: Hold the iPhone 4 naturally in your left hand, like everyone does while surfing or making left-handed calls.
That’s very different from ‘death-gripping’.HOW MUCH: 20dBm vs. 10dBm or 90% vs. 25% or 99% vs. 90%, depending on your system of measurement. Or, in other words: Much more than with other phones.
And I can even explain to you WHY the iPhone has those problems and other phones don’t.
The iPhone 4 is the only phone that lets yoou ground the antenna by bridging it with other metal parts.
Other phones let you shield the antenna, which of course causes attenuation. A drop of 10dBm means power drops by a factor of 10, or 90%.
But that’s very different to grounding the antenna, which causes it to become completely ineffective. A drop of 20dBm means power drops by a factor of 100, or 99%.
That means, if you hold both phones naturally, the Nexus One still recieves ten times the radiation power of the iPhone 4.
At -91dBm (the minimum for full 5 bars in iOS4.0), the Nexus One only shows 3 bars, but it can still easily make crystal clear calls when held naturally, even though it loses 10dBm, whereas the iPhone 4 gets very close to dropping the call, which happens at -113dBm.
Bars don’t mean anything. If one phone shows 4 bars at -90dBm and another shows 4 bars at -80dBm, the radiation power recieved by the first phone is still 90% less than that recieved by the latter.
By showing us bars, instead of doing real reception and audio quality measurements, Apple essentially admits that other phones don’t have any real issues
now for the post that doesn’t suck… July 19, 2010
School is going to be hell this semester. My grades have been well below my standards in college for reasons that are sometimes out of my control. I can’t afford to let anything affect my grades negatively this semester. FOCUSSSSSS POCUSSSS (yeah, i don’t know what this is either. it sounded catchy in my head while i was typing.)
Summer break is about 2/3 over, and I’ve done nothing of value thus far. I’m ok with it though. If it means I have a little more mental energy for better grades fall semester. Besides, I have an internship starting Monday (Yeah it means I only have a 2 week internship….) so the summer won’t have been a waste.
ALMOST FORGOT!!!! Last Thursday, I pulled off an epic snipe on ebay for a pair of GOLD JS WINGS. Within 5 minutes before the auction ended, bidding went from $65 to $85 when there were only 30 seconds left. Then, with 15 seconds remaining, I placed my first bid, a maximum bid of $90 which brought the auction up to $86. With 5 seconds left, in a last ditch effort, another bidder placed a maximum bid of $89, which my $90 max bid automatically outbid, giving no one else time to react. I’m sure it doesn’t seem nearly as exciting when you’re reading about it. But I’m sure most people can appreciate this level of awesomeness: the gold colorway of JS wings retail for $240 and they rarely go for under $135 on ebay. I’m still waiting for them to ship, but here’s a picture to save you people the trouble of googling if you don’t know what JS Wings look like:
SORRY LADIES YOUR SHOE COLLECTIONS SUCK MINE IS BETTER
I got a massive haircut yesterday. It’ll grow back eventually.
Look forward to more frequent but shorter posts once the school year starts. (Plus an epic Australia post)
Less than 3 weeks until Australia (and APEX, but I probably can only go for day 2), and about a month until I move into my apartment at UIUC. Time is flying. Good thing I’ve got wings for it now. (JS WINGS LOLOLOLOL GET IT?)
difficulties
My body is refusing to cooperate with me. I fear that I won’t be satisfied with my running for many months. Maybe that fear will blow over once I’m at school and running with the club everyday. For now, I feel pathetic when I run. I barely make it through 40 minute runs, and it’s quite common for me to have to stop 20 minutes into a run because I’m winded and my muscles feel like they’re failing. This isn’t a mental issue. It couldn’t be. I’ve been patient with my body up until this point, and the occasional terrible run (in reality, this occurs more often than not now) has become impossible to ignore. This isn’t a self pity post though. The only realistic solution is for me to to accept that fact that my body is going to need substantial time before that 4:33 mile PB is changing.
I’m rather curious why, on a biological level, it has been so difficult for me to regain fitness. Is it because my bout with mono took away so much from my body during the initial illness (2 weeks) that it is still recovering? Or is it because my body is still constantly debilitated by the long term effects of mono? (4 and a half months later) I’m not sure if my sentence structure properly distinguishes the two scenarios I visualized in my head, but hopefully it does.
All I need to feel much better about this period of terrible running is some sign of improvement. I’ve been unable to move up from 40 minute runs to 50 minute runs, and as soon as that happens, I think I’ll be in much better shape psychologically.
a brief update to hold you (mostly sam) over July 13, 2010
It seems I’ve gone another 2 weeks without a post. It was a pretty non-eventful 2 weeks.
Last week, I went to rutgers to visit aaron (doing research for the summer). we smashed and got pho with jon (cute underclassman coming to UIUC), cathay, (no comment) and lisa. (no comment as well) I mention this only because sam is a pho-freak. (Try saying that IRL; it sounds weird.)
It would be really nice if I could stop losing weight. (Mom’s good cooking is making me eat a lot more, but it’s not helping me gain weight at all…) I’m below the weight I was at when I started college. Rather frustrating considering I’ve been trying to gain weight this entire time. I weigh less than a few too many females.
Running
It’s frustrating. I ran into Mccaff today at the park, and he said it’s normal for my body to be taking so long to regain fitness after mono. So I guess makes me feel a little less shitty about it. Still very shitty nonetheless. These past few weeks of running have been as frustrating as my racing was junior year. Eventually it will get better with training, but it feels like it’ll be an eternity before I’m doing runs that I can be proud of. I need to do a lot more of my runs with other people because the mental difficulty of running alone when out of shape is compounding my problems. I’ve reduced all of my core and upper-body stuff in an effort to focus all of my energy on getting my legs, heart, and lungs back.
My internship with AT&T still hasn’t started. The application processing is taking forever. At this rate, I’m going to set a record for shortest internship ever.
I finally got around to setting up my wii for homebrew and more importantly, smash texture and audio hacking. It was a painless process. They’ve boiled down the instructions to the point where even a trained gorilla could do it.
I don’t think I can bring myself to write anymore tonight. (Writer’s block. I feel like I have other things to write about, but nothing comes to mind at the moment) I’ll play some DS (Ace Attorney Investigation: Miles Edgeworth. I highly recommend the entire Ace Attorney series to anyone who hasn’t tried it. It’s great for some relaxing logic and reasoning.) before I hit the hay.
Finally stuff happens June 24, 2010
Got a call from an AT&T recruiter today. There’s a pretty good chance i get an internship for the rest of the summer. I have no idea what I’m doing yet, as the job description was fairly vague. I finally have something to do this summer besides running.
Speaking of running, it’s pretty frustrating. I’m beginning to suspect more and more that my bout of mono in March is still hurting my running somehow. When I had that short training stint in January-February this year, I got in shape a lot more quickly than I did these past few weeks. But I suppose I’ll just have to be patient and grind out some more miles.
In related news, I just weighed myself for the first time since coming home from college, and I’ve lost weight…. This totally contradicts the fact that I’ve been eating better (mom’s cooking ftw. all you kids who haven’t been to college yet wouldn’t understand.) and working out a lot. I was aiming to get to 140 lbs by the end of freshman year but I’m under 130 instead…
iPhone 4 came out today, and reviews have been out for a few days. My sister is planning on getting one, so I could probably get some impressions on it once she does. But I wouldn’t trade my Nexus One for an iPhone 4 in a million years. I respect that there’s a hi-res IPS display at 640×960, but that’s practically just catching up to and barely surpassing the latest Android phones, considering the old iPhones were on 320×480 and most Android phones are 480×800 nowadays. And Steve Jobs is sorely mistaken if he thinks IPS technology is better than AMOLED. I’ll admit IPS is sweet, but the pros and cons balance out pretty nicely against AMOLED. JK no iPhone rant. Most people who want to get an iPhone will still get one even after I go through the effort to break down exactly why iOS/iPhone would be better or worse than Android/NexusDroidGalaxySEverythingelse in every aspect.
Going to Princeton saturday with Frank James and Aaron for a smashfest. It’s going to be a good time. I’ll try to train my Falcon a bit more tmw, but after saturday, I’m going to start training to use Peach again so I can use her as a secondary.
Sudden revelation recently: My life is pretty sweet. It could have sucked a lot more – I could have not had my stunning good looks and raw sex appeal and talents in all facets of life 😉 But anyway, your life probably is pretty good too. You should enjoy it, brah.
jC June 21, 2010
I’m still not blogging consistently yet.
I changed my mind and switched (back) to doing C++ for this summer. (Java just didn’t seem like the logical thing for me to learn at this point) I’m understanding a lot of the lower level stuff (and in effect how the higher level stuff works) a whole lot better now that I have some semblance of an understanding of C. Now to figure out this whole OOP thing…
Running is getting better. I’ve been running with Joe the past week. I had forgotten how much easier it is to run when you’re not running alone while not in the best of shape. I’m have a ways to go before I get back to “Oh hey let’s go for a 94 minute long run alone on the roads and go up Takolusa twice and dip under 5:20 pace for the last mile” form. Anyhoo, I supposed I’ll be whipping into great shape again sometime relatively soon.
I couldn’t borrow Oscar’s pullup bar because he couldn’t find his. And he still uses it sometimes, so I guess I need to buy my own anyway. Dips, pushups, 15 and 3 lb dumbbells and non-equipment core work doesn’t quite cut it for an Abercrombie model teehee.
Smash is supposed to be getting better. Hasn’t been quite as good as I’d like it to be. My johns: can’t play often enough because everyone is gone. Princeton biweekly tourney this weekend and APEX in August right before I leave…
I watched the movie Invictus today. Morgan Freeman is sweet. Movie was so-so, but it’s a Clint Eastwood movie so… I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean.
Reflashed the Nexus One to the Kang-O-Rama rom. (FROYO! I’ve had stock Froyo installed since it came out a month ago, but that’s so bare compared to the custom roms. Can’t wait for CyanogenMod 6!) Every time I reflash, I feel like I just bought a new phone. It is the greatest geek pleasure, I can assure you. And it’s nice to actually understand the more complicated things that people talk about on XDA forums even from just one year of EE education at UIUC. It would be sick if I could get the know-how to help develop roms at some point. I’d probably need at least a year and a half to get near that point though…
I am going to Australia in August right before I go back to UIUC. I’m going to visit my aunt and my half-aussie cousin, whom I haven’t seen in 10+ years. Lisa has requested that I smuggle a kangaroo for her. Apparently they are like the deer in NJ. People hit kangaroos with their cars and they are all over the place etc. But I think most people like kangaroos a lot better. They’re just so silly. Kanga and Roo are pretty high on the list of favorite Pooh characters. There wasn’t a deer in Pooh yet there were two kangaroos, so we can conclude that overall, kangaroos >> deer. I think this is a good place to stop writing. I need to do this more often.
pickaxe and elephant 