being an adult, independence, maturity, musings

My bf fwded me an awesome essay entitled, Why Not to Not Start a Startup, by Paul Graham. Here is the link to the full thing.

Basically, Graham takes all of the doubts and insecurities plaguing those who would try a start up, and tries to refute them (or, in some cases, validate them and draw lessons from them). It's quite a long essay, but there are many interesting points.

While it is geared specifically to would-be entrepreneurs, I think even non-entrepreneurs could learn from the way he handles doubts and fears. Those of us thinking about what to do with our lives, whether to follow the traditional path or strike out on our own, all could benefit from his analysis.

In particular, there were a few points that really struck me. First was his definition of "adult" (by extension, definition of maturity), and second was his treatment of independence and determination.

Here are his two tests for measuring adulthood:

When you're a little kid and you're asked to do something hard, you can cry and say "I can't do it" and the adults will probably let you off. As a kid there's a magic button you can press by saying "I'm just a kid" that will get you out of most difficult situations. Whereas adults, by definition, are not allowed to flake. They still do, of course, but when they do they're ruthlessly pruned....

The other way to tell an adult is by how they react to a challenge. Someone who's not yet an adult will tend to respond to a challenge from an adult in a way that acknowledges their dominance. If an adult says "that's a stupid idea," a kid will either crawl away with his tail between his legs, or rebel. But rebelling presumes inferiority as much as submission. The adult response to "that's a stupid idea," is simply to look the other person in the eye and say "Really? Why do you think so?"

I've been thinking lately about what maturity is on an emotional level, particularly, in the way we relate to other people.

(On a sidenote, I got Alanis Morisette's new album, Flavors of Entanglement. Mostly a disappointment, except for the song Versions of Violence, with lyrics here), which made me think some more about emotional maturity. And don't look at the youtube video on the lyrics page, because I think she is a horrible off-key performer).

Anyways, Graham offers a different angle on it than the one I'd been taking. As for the magic "I'm just a kid" button...I don't feel like I'm used to pushing that particular button. But then, I think, just substitute that with the magic "I'm just a student!" button. I think that in academia, at this level, it's not about kids and adults anymore, as far as challenges go. It's more about students and everybody else above students, like, say, professors. There's a pretty rigid hierarchy in the academic world, and you typically know where you stand on it. It's tough to respond to a challenge from, say, a tenured professor at Harvard with anything other than a sense of being !pwned! and throwing up the "but I'm just a student! I don't know anything!" excuse for being ignorant. Well, I think that's just me. There seem to be plenty of people who are brave enough to go head to head with the eminents in their field (or not EVEN in their field!), and they believe in themselves that much. Is that what it means, to be adult? To stop thinking to yourself "but I'm just a student" ? In which case, I need to hurry up and grow up. And to speak up more. Though to be fair, I always to ask critics, especially critics higher up on the academic food chain, exactly why what I'm doing or saying is wrong. No slinking off into the rain. The problem is, I think, that I'm not as willing to defend my ideas? There are pretty famous stories about profs being discouraging to students, who then go on to become really famous or successful with their idea. Then again, I don't think I have any particularly amazing ideas worth defending.


The other doubts that plague would-be entrepreneurs and independent thinkers, Graham says, include worrying that one is not determined enough and worrying that one needs structure.

How can you tell if you're determined enough, when Larry and Sergey themselves were unsure at first about starting a company? I'm guessing here, but I'd say the test is whether you're sufficiently driven to work on your own projects. Though they may have been unsure whether they wanted to start a company, it doesn't seem as if Larry and Sergey were meek little research assistants, obediently doing their advisors' bidding. They started projects of their own...

I'm told there are people who need structure in their lives. This seems to be a nice way of saying they need someone to tell them what to do. I believe such people exist. There's plenty of empirical evidence: armies, religious cults, and so on. They may even be the majority.

If you're one of these people, you probably shouldn't start a startup. In fact, you probably shouldn't even go to work for one. In a good startup, you don't get told what to do very much. There may be one person whose job title is CEO, but till the company has about twelve people no one should be telling anyone what to do. That's too inefficient. Each person should just do what they need to without anyone telling them.

If that sounds like a recipe for chaos, think about a soccer team. Eleven people manage to work together in quite complicated ways, and yet only in occasional emergencies does anyone tell anyone else what to do. A reporter once asked David Beckham if there were any language problems at Real Madrid, since the players were from about eight different countries. He said it was never an issue, because everyone was so good they never had to talk. They all just did the right thing.

How do you tell if you're independent-minded enough to start a startup? If you'd bristle at the suggestion that you aren't, then you probably are.

This makes me nervous, because I wonder if I am a meek little research assistant, after all, doing my advisor's bidding. (Well, not this year, because my advisor doesn't have much to say to me). I've had a whole year to work on any number of my own projects. I feel like if I were determined enough (to publish, write a novel, become absolutely fluent in Japanese) I'd have worked a lot harder. All day long. Gotten more done. Basically this feeling boils down to the somewhat depressing fact that I'm staring the end of my fully funded year in the face, and feeling like I haven't got much to show for it. Of course, I've learned a lot this year. I've gained experience in new fields, new methods, etc. But of course, that's what you're supposed to do with failures, you're supposed to learn something. It's the consolation prize. I feel as though I haven't been as happily passionately obsessed as I would have liked to be.

I worry sometimes that I could lump myself in with the drones who need structure in their lives (e.g., need someone to tell them what to do). When the Fulbright year started, there were certainly some fellows who mentioned that they felt a bit bewildered with the sudden lack of structure. I didn't. I reveled in it. Reveled in my independence. But just because I like being independent doesn't really make me suited for it. Yes, I have been independent and loved it, but I haven't been all that productive, either. It could be another way of saying, I love being lazy and on vacation. Who doesn't?

I think about how hard I've worked in my life up until now, and why it was that I was so productive. I can't think of reasons that don't boil down to the idea that there was structure in my life supporting and expecting me to work hard. There were expectations made of me, and I fulfilled them. I took pleasure in exceeding expectations. I liked to please my teachers, my parents, to strive to do my best against a metric that was well-defined. It was always a way of earning somebody else's approval, doing well against someone else's judgment. Typical drone-behavior.

Even in the hobbies--currently, knitting being my current biggest hobby. Even then, I like being told what to do--i.e., to have a pattern to work off of. Sure, I do some design work and a great deal of reverse-engineering, but even in those cases there's a model telling me what my work should look like.

The soccer team analogy is really interesting to me, actually. It reminds me of technical theater, of all things! Something I was thinking about the other day, and how much I missed it, and why, and how I could apply what I've learned about myself from doing tech to my life. In your perfect soccer team/early startup, nobody is telling anybody else what to do, because people just did what they were supposed to do. I think a well-running tech team (for theater) is like that. Nobody is telling the sound designer/light designer/set designer what to do, because they just do what they're supposed to be doing. I like that. There's a great deal of freedom, but it's still set within a structure that sets expectations and determines roles.

Of all the various things I've tried to do in college, none of them really stuck except for tech theater. I volunteered, I played music, I did layout for a magazine, I even did production for theater once, thinking it could have been a good fit. Nothing stuck, except tech. Nothing else was as hard, either, which makes me scratch my head. Tech weeks were hard, food- and sleep-depriving, physically grueling and socially taxing. Come on, separate me from sleep and food? You've gotta be kidding me. And yet, I kept going back to it, signing up to work more shows. Why?

Nobody was telling me what to do. I knew what to do, and I did it. More or less, I didn't have to rely very hard on other people to do their jobs for me to do mine. The commitment was short-term--just a week of tech, maybe a month or a bit more of planning beforehand, and boom! Done. Time for another exciting new project. I didn't sit in meetings in which I didn't have a role other than "passive listener" to play. Very little time wasted in listening to what other people want me to do, sitting in huge general meetings doodling on handouts. If I'm listening to what others want (usually the director) in a good relationship it's more of bouncing ideas off of each other in creative collaboration, rather than a true directive. I entered the theater and more or less from the get go, am on a ladder with a wrench in my hand--less time in front of a computer, writing emails, coordinating meetings, making handouts, asking people for favors.

So all that makes me suspect that I would have the capacity to work hard on my own projects. I have. Well "own project" being a relative term, since a show is the result of a collaboration of many people, and is more a product of the director than anyone else, I guess. But yeah, I can play soccer, work for an already-existing startup. But the structure is already in place, the goal predefined (put on a show, win the game), expectations and roles set.

Research is different. Writing a novel is different. The kind of independence that I've had this year is totally different from the kind I have within the confines of working a show. With research, you set your own goals and expectations, truly. Nobody is really counting on you to produce anything, except maybe yourself. Well, I don't know how true that is of research in the real world, but at least it is true of writing and of how this year has been for me. It makes me worried that I can't handle true independence, can't spearhead my own project and make my own goals and have the drive to see them through. I'm feeling a lack of inner motivation, and it worries me.

Next year I'll be plenty motivated, by zillions of external factors. But I don't think that's really enough to achieve anything other than the bare minimum of success. I'm still trying to find the right environment for me--maybe what I should be shooting for is finding that magical combination of independence embedded within structure.

to give and to receive

A of big part of the Japanese language that is typically introduced in beginner's Japanese is all the forms of giving and receiving that abound. There's give, of course, ageru, and receive, morau. There's even a third one, kureru, which means "give to me," so there's an implied receiver of "me" built in to the verb. Pile on top of that the humble and honorific forms, causative and passive forms…it can be a mess. I remember when I first learned them, I was thinking what all the fuss was about, just two verbs, giving and receiving. They are not an integral part of the English language--or rather, they are not verbs that hold a status any more special than other verbs, like read, eat, sleep. It wasn't until very recently that I actively realized that the Japanese use those three give/receive verbs far more often than we in English use "give" and "receive." Of course, I knew that they were an integral part of the formal language of making requests and especially in customer service. But I also realized recently that it's not just customer service and requests/gift giving where you would naturally bring up "give" and "receive." Those three Japanese verbs can be tacked on to nearly any other verb to make up compound verbs. Contexts in which we would not normally think to include a "give" or "receive" as part of the sentence in English are natural in Japanese.

The example that really brought this to the fore was the ending of Shall We Dance, a fairly famous Japanese movie that is, more or less, about a middle-aged midlife crisis salary man who starts ballroom dance lessons without his wife's knowledge. Near the end of the movie, he and his wife are in the process of "making up" and his daughter commands (or beseeches) him to dance with his wife. In English, this would be an impassioned "Why won't you dance with her! Dance with her!" In Japanese, it came out to something like "odotte-ageru"--"odoru" = dance, and "ageru" = give. Upon further reflection, I think that a lot of phrases we would say "doing X for so-and-so" in English translate in Japanese with a give or receive verb. To my English-thinking mind, it seems as though it's the act of giving and receiving, rather than the giver or recipient that is emphasized.

Of course these are probably fine grammatical points that I should have grasped a long time ago. I'm no expert. I *still* can't effectively use ageru, morau, and kureru. But I think, more than the grammatical points, thinking about how these three verbs are used makes me think about how the Japanese fundamentally organize or conceive of their society. Such a great number of actions are conceived of as exchanges involving giving and receiving, something that I think is fairly absent in American society. Gift-giving culture is even more enormous in Japan than in America, particularly the souvenir culture. (Ok, this is a digression, but Chinese people give expensive gifts, but usually for a particular purpose, like social bribery. Japanese people give relatively inexpensive gifts and souvenirs to all sorts of people, all the time, not necessarily for a particular purpose but just to oil the social machine.)

It's true that I'm highly individualistic. I try not to make a mess, and when I do, I try to clean up after myself. This is because I don't want to clean up after other people, and don't expect them to clean up after me. One might say that I have a sense of boundaries about that. I don't litter, but I don't go around picking up other people's litter either. It's as though there's a strict separation: you|me. I do feel as though that separation is hazier here. People clean up after each other, and in a culture of such cooperators, there are surprisingly few defectors who free ride off of other people's cooperation (the only exception I've seen are some guys, and important-ish male people, like important-ish professors and such). But in groups of peers, people do each other's dishes, clean up together, bus each other's trays. The devastation of the auditorium at UCSF after us prospective students were done with it…the dropped forks, plates, paper cups, bagels cream-cheese-side-down on the beautiful carpet…what a far cry! It's offensive. It goes beyond individualistic; it's irresponsible. But of course, I didn't pick it up, either. Maybe I should have? I don't know.

So, anyways, I guess the not-so-original insight is that the interdependence of our society is reflected to some degree in our language. It shouldn't surprise me that giving and receiving is built so integrally into Japanese language in ways that my American mind had never considered. I don't think of my actions in terms of giving and receiving, so to think that way in Japanese and come out with natural Japanese seems like a part of being socialized into Japanese social interdependence.

Every step of the way here, I have relied on the kindness of strangers to help me out on critical things, from housing to classes to traveling. I think I've become somewhat less neurotic about being overprepared for every situation. I've learned to relax a bit, because I've started to trust in the kindness of strangers. I can ask for directions. People will help me. In some ways it's been a relief. I wonder if when I go back, I'll be reverse-socialized and go back to being a neurotic control freak again. To some degree I do believe that social ties are created out of favors done for and by other people. To be too independent, too self-sufficient is to cut oneself off in some ways, even though independence and self-sufficiency are traits that I admire.


Alright, I've run out of rambling thoughts about social ties for now.

flies

I. hate. houseflies.

Fruit flies, I can deal with. They are small, quiet, fairly harmless, stupid, and easy to kill. HOUSEFLIES!! I HATE HOUSEFLIES!! They are big, ugly, buzz incessantly, and are really hard to swat. I've killed 3 today, shoo'd one out the balcony door, and THERE'S STILL ANOTHER ONE BUZZING AROUND MY HEAD!!!! I need it to land somewhere obvious and stay still while I bludgeon the hell out of it.

cali weather?

So happy today! :-D

Bright blue sky, not a cloud in sight with lovely sunlight. And 80 degrees of dry heat...I couldn't figure out why I was enjoying it so much until I realized that it was just like a lovely day in the Bay Area...

And I got to break out my halter tops today...freedom for my shoulders! Makes me grin in girly glee! Of course, I wasn't nearly brave enough to wear something *so scandalous* outside in Japan. Thank goodness for light linen jackets.

rotary club speech

First, a correction to the name of that cool award from the Emperor. Perhaps it translates to something more like, The Order of the Sacred Treasure and Rising Sun. The neck ring thing? I dunno, maybe means something like collar. Like the name of another imperial award, something about collar of chrysanthemums. Haven't quite figured it out yet.

Rotary club speech was today. Eh, it went alright. As I suppose I could have expected, everybody was very gracious, said it was great, despite my screw ups and nervousness. I should have adjusted the mike ahead of time, because it was a tad bit too tall for me, adding to my bizarre posture and nervousness. Then I had the paper to prompt me, the computer buttons to push next, and a laser pointer to point at stuff. Wayy too many things in my hands to keep track of and look at. So it was all around somewhat awkward. Ah well, a learning experience! And I'm extremely glad for everybody who has helped me out along the way...

Uchiko

On Sunday my friend Tomoko came over and we went to Uchiko, which is a little town an hour and a half's drive away. It's primarily known today as a sightseeing spot for machi-nami, or like oldtimey streetscape. Lots of traditional looking houses and such. It used to be a huge town for wax production--perhaps the wax production capital of Japan in the late 1800s and early 1900s. In fact, Uchiko wax was world-renowned, known in Europe and the Americas for its high quality. It was exhibited at world exhibitions (like in Paris, Chicago) and even won prizes. So, the home of Mr Waxmaker was quiet educational. I had always assumed that wax meant beeswax. I had no idea that you could get wax from berries of trees...the sumac tree, in this case. I learned all about the complicated mechanism of hand-making wax, pressing the wax out of the berries, etc. etc. and how wax is used obviously in candles, but also in makeup, hair pomade, etc. Vegetable wax. Very odd. It's tough and hard, not very waxy-feeling. Feels more like soap.

The other thing that was cool was the house itself. It wasn't as nice as Yoshijima-ke in Takayama, but it was different. Many of the beams in Yoshijima-ke were machine-planed, but this house (Haga-ke?) had beams that were basically trees! I went up to the third floor attic sort of thing, and couldn't help but touch them. They were wonderfully crooked and unique and cool-looking. Pictures on facebook soon, I think. No nails, of course, all joinery, which added to the charm.

We also walked to Uchiko-za, a Japanese theater in the traditional style. We went in for free because they were rehearsing some sort of play, Love Letters. Pretty much couldn't understand any of it, but felt kind of nostalgic anyways for the whole tech thing. Like, look! the sound guy! and the lighting guy! well, gal in this case. And the theater was set up rather differently, on account of it being Japanese-traditional style. The balcony on either side was lined with cool looking lanterns.

the Order of the Sacred Treasure with Golden Rays and Neck Ring

I kid you not. I went to a very formal awards ceremony today for the illustrious Miki-sensei. It was quite an experience.

Miki-sensei is the reason I am at Ehime University. He did Fulbright to the U.S. himself, many many years ago, and has since gone on to have a great career as a dermatologist/educator? He is the former president of Ehime University, former president of Shikoku Fulbright alumni association, and organizer of a great many Japan-US exchanges, collaborations, etc. He is an extremely charismatic, humorous, powerful man. He was the one who ensured my placement here.

Tonight was his awards ceremony. He got a very prestigious award (translated as the above) from the Emperor himself. I imagine it is not unlike a British Knighthood. While the actual awards ceremony was in Tokyo (with the Emperor, I think perhaps, and definitely the prime minister and such), tonight was a dinner party (about 100 ppl) in his honor. I had no idea, but the mayor of Matsuyama was in attendance, as well as the governor of Ehime Prefecture, the current president of Ehime University, president of Iyo Bank (the bank for Ehime prefecture, at which I bank too!), President of Matsuyama University, various presidents and representatives of MassComi(such as Ehime Newspaper), and pretty much every dermatologist in the city. Well, maybe not every, but at least one or two representatives from every dermatology clinic and hospital with dermatology department. Sometimes way more representatives. Retired department chairs, current department chairs, etc. etc. etc. Feels like nearly everybody important around here knows him...Umm..yeah. I was told to dress up nice, and I sure am glad I did! There were several ladies in kimonos as their formal wear (I love that Japanese culture still permits wearing their traditional clothing in non-cultural events). Of course, I was by farrr the youngest person in the room. I didn't get to meet the mayor or governor or anything, but it was pretty interesting nonetheless. And exhausting. And yummy. It strikes me that I'm at these events not because I've done anything cool, particularly successful, anything like that obviously. More like the expectation that, like Miki-sensei, I might be successful in my future, wherever I go. I'm someone to watch. It was a bizarre realization, laden with expectations, and made me feel...weird? I've always gone at it thinking "OMG, I don't belong here, I'm so young and these are all such important people...What the hell am I doing here..." Maybe if I thought to myself "I might not be great now, but I *will* be great in the future!" I could relax a bit and stop acting like a nervous idiot. Hah.

My speech for the Rotary Club is on Tuesday. There were several Rotarians present. I am informed that the company at the Rotary club might be even more...high up? The party might be bigger, fancier? geezuz. My only idea of Rotary club was a speech contest I did in high school, held in a dingy cafe with old unimportant people. It's certainly different here!