can you just tell me what to do?
🎶 Winter Wonderland - Kaskade
I can't believe we're midway through December already. This year has truly flown by! After Ultra and Coachella (both of which were 2020 ticket purchases LOL), I've been so worried about my book and my future more generally that I didn't want to plan any vacations. Just grind it out, I told myself, Q2 will be relaxation and research, Q3 will be the book proposal, Q4 will be a content sprint, and then you can relax. Last night, Nathaniel and I sat down to try to plan a vacation now that I finally have some clarity on next year, and I got so overwhelmed by the idea of vacation in January instead of setting up interviews, reading, and researching for my book and online content that I... pushed our vacation to March.
I don't want to be one of those workaholic Americans yet constantly find myself to be exactly like the other workaholic Americans. In other words, I'm adding "go back to therapy" to my new year's resolutions.
you won't win life by hacking it.
Often times, I wish I could abdicate responsibility for my own life. I am excellent at following instructions--I am less comfortable with deciding things for myself, probably because for so many years, I never decided anything for myself. I was told when and where to go for school, shuttered between mandatory classes, and picked extracurriculars from the pre-selected activities that my parents felt were "suitable."
And even when I did feel like I was deciding something for myself--those Limited Too jeans in sixth grade, trying out for high school dance team, dating a supposed "bad boy"--those weren't, in fact, my choices at all. It's not like I dreamt of those desires in a vacuum and woke up one day wanting those things. Instead, I filtered the dreams, hopes, desires of those around me into myself through various mediums: TV, magazines, overheard conversations. Without the stated preferences of other people, I had absolutely no preferences of my own.
This is a tough realization. Even now, I'm trying to unpack the implications. Did I even want to attend Yale in the first place, or did I want to go because so many others (including Rory Gilmore and Blair Waldorf) wanted that? Did I ever want to be a lawyer, or did I just want money and to be respected and spoken highly of, the way that I saw people speak of lawyers (when they weren't making lawyer jokes)? What parts of my life are truly my own, and what parts are mere figments of other people's desires?
Unfortunately, my online presence is also a hodgepodge of other people's desires, for the most part. I'm no aesthetic genius, and I certainly do not have an innate eye for filming and editing. To figure out what I should post, I watched popular videos and tried to synthesize the common elements--showing food, talking about money and spending and consumption, cute animals. I focused on making videos with those elements, sometimes all at once in the form of vlogs. I even had an internal checklist of which events should go into a vlog to maximize its chances of "success" (AKA views). (In case you're curious, it included: a nice view; working out; brief description of work (emphasis on brief); a perk at work; and after-work event such as drinks, dinner, or a concert. It was the Bend and Snap of TikTok vlogs. I still find these elements present in many popular vlogs, particularly the law/tech/banking/consulting girlies. I had a separate checklist for the "chaotic vlog," which focuses more on overwhelming the viewer.)
The problem with any type of hacking--growth hacking, life hacking, study hacking--is that at the end of the day, you are working within the existing system. Hacking assumes the existence of rules and order, or else it would have nothing to disrupt. You can't hack nothing. And while I love a good cheat code (looking at you, rosebud; ;) as much as the next person, I've come to understand that a life preoccupied with hacking will never reflect interests and desires outside of the existing structures. I didn't want to feed into the content mill's obsession with consumption and glamorizing capitalistic endeavors, but by trying to hack TikTok views, I ended up doing just that.
A few weeks ago, I had dinner with another content creator who made a lot of videos about her job, and we both had the same question on our minds: What do we want to put out into the world? In a lot of ways, this is the same tension that we had to negotiate at our jobs--being enough "of the machine" to fit in while not erasing ourselves because we, as women, were never meant to be part of the machine in these traditional corporate environments in the first place. It's a challenging balance to navigate and one to which I was curiously attuned when speaking with female law firm partners. It took me a good five years in biglaw to figure it out for biglaw, and now that I'm in the great unknown, the question arises anew: how much of me is acceptable, and how much of them do I need to emulate in order to survive?
✍️ ask cece
how do you deal with the "model minority" myth?
Q: How did you deal with the 'model minority' phenomenon being Asian? In an academically rigorous area such as law, being an Asian woman, I always found that it was expected of me to excel by my peers and educators, and anything below outstanding was failure.
- Shanne-Pearl
A: I am so sorry that has happened to you! How frustrating. Being perceived as a "model minority" in the workplace can indeed be frustrating, because it orients you towards a fear of failure rather than continual learning and improving (which is the more realistic--and healthier--approach). With the caveat that I'm not sure I have completely figured this question out, either, I'll tell you my approach for at least lessening some of the burden and pressure on myself over the long run.
When working with a new supervisor, I would always aim for "outstanding" for the first six months. Of course, it's impossible to hit it all the time, but the point is more so to be on higher alert than normal and ask questions when there are mistakes so that it is obvious that you are engaged in learning and improving. Basically, I put more effort in the first six months with someone new in order to create a halo effect.
After the halo has been established, I let myself work at a more normal level of alertness. It is simply impossible to be on high alert for years on end--it will cause needless anxiety, stress, and likely sleep issues. But if you've established the halo in the first six months, they will subconsciously view your work more favorably and give you the benefit of the doubt. Still ask questions and make it clear you're engaged and want to learn, but don't stress yourself out about being "outstanding" all day, every day from then on. Do what you can, and rely on the trust built up between you and your supervisor(s) to carry you through. At some point, if they hired you, work with you--they have to trust you, just as you have to trust yourself. Give them a reason to trust you, and then let them trust you, even if you do make mistakes every once in a while (which is normal!).
With all that said, if you encounter someone with no allowance for error, no room for mistakes, don't take it to heart--they likely have unrealistic expectations of both others and themselves. I'll find trusted colleagues to vent to but then just move on. You can't change someone else's unrealistic expectations, whether it's rooted in the "model minority" myth or something else altogether--you can only try your best. Be gentle with yourself, even if others are not gentle with you.