Ep. 2: The Cold, Cold Winter

Notes from the 17th-22nd of January

Another week in the books, and how the time flies. With all the novel memories and connections made, it seems like forever ago that I set out from Melbourne on this journey. There are no grand highlights like a weekend trip to Chicago to report of this time, though the clear highlight was going to my second men's basketball game on Sunday against Maryland. This time I took company in the form of another exchange student from El Salvador, and it elevated even further what was already a phenomenal experience. This game ended up being far closer as well, a lot closer than it should have been on paper, with Purdue turning the ball over frequently in the second half. Tremendous amounts of fun, though, and second time around I was very well versed in all the chants, claps, routines, etc. produced by the student section.

And I had a lovely Sunday evening too! For context, back before I left I had put in preferences for my accommodation and in the middle of December got assigned to the Aspire building along with a particular apartment. Well, I checked the housing portal to find that my roommates were three girls. I was surprised, sure, but had no issues with it especially because I had selected Co-Ed on my preferences because I knew the accommodation availability was limited for the Spring semester. One of the girls kindly reached out shortly thereafter to introduce herself, and I replied...only to then receive an email from the Purdue Housing Office saying that I had been incorrectly allocated and consequently reassigned to another (now my current) apartment. This has largely worked in my favour, to some degree, because I've kept in conversation with the original girl who reached out, and then on Sunday I dropped by their apartment to introduce myself to the other two. I ended up staying for a good hour or so, and of course much of the discussion was driven (as is often the case here) by their interest in Australia and Australian culture. In any event, it was a lovely way to finish the week.

I also finally got around to seeing the new Avatar sequel, and found it pretty enjoyable. The plotline is heavily derivative of the first up to a few small details, and the CGI was of course breathtaking. It felt in many ways like watching a (very, very) long nature documentary. The thing I found most remarkable was how densely packed with features each scene was. I have often been disappointed by big blockbuster movies or TV shows with how empty the world feels, yet such criticisms can certainly not be leveled at James Cameron here. It's worthwhile going to see I think if you enjoyed the original.

On to the details then! Unlike last week, I don't have many pictures and things directly relevant to what I am writing about here, so I've elected to instead interleave some of the better ones at random points throughout the article just to break up the bodies of text.

On Clubs and Societies

The start of a semester heralds many things, including the chance for the ever-proliferating number of clubs, societies and project teams to recruit. Instead of all of this happening during O-Week as it does in Australia, many universities in the USA have a fair on the weekend where each group sets up a booth and promotes themselves. For better or worse, the fair this semester ran on the Saturday we went up to Chicago. So what I spent this week doing instead was trawling through a handy database of all 1000 or so clubs and societies and teams. This had the advantage of allowing me to do all the filtering of grain from chaff in about 60 minutes, but came at the cost that I definitely signed-up for a lot more than I can cope with. Fortunately, most of these sign-ups come with zero commitment (I knew this beforehand) and were more done in the endeavour of finding out about the club and its intentions rather than forming any sort of registration with them.

So what exactly drew my eye? Here is more or less the full list:

• Purdue Brazilian Jiu Jitsu

• Boiler Book Club

• Boiler Robotics Club

• Competitive Programmers Union

• Cult Movie Club

• Cyber Defense Competition Club

• Electrical and Computer Engineering Student Society

• German Culture Club

• Global Engineering Alliance for Research and Education (GEARE) Ambassadors

• IEEE

• Latin & Ballroom Dance Team

• Mathematics Society

• Purdue Astronomy Club

• Purdue Capture the Flag Team

• Purdue Climbing Club

• Purdue Judo Club

• Purdue Muay Thai
• Purdue Orbital

• Purdue Space Program

• Purdue Vertical Flight Systems

• Salsa Dance Club

• Ultimate Frisbee Club (Men's)

Those highlighted represent the ones that I actually have a serious intention of pursuing for the rest of the semester (more on that in subsequent updates...). Situations like this always represent an interesting experience for me; the start of a semester brings with it this rapid inflation and subsequent contraction in (actualisable) opportunities, as I quickly realise the impracticality of joining more than one or two of them at a time. Such a position has never been particularly stable and I am constantly having to remind myself, a person who if left unchecked would join everything listed above, what my priorities are here. The sifting process I used really came down down to three filters, in order of priority.

1. Is this club involved in something in which Purdue are globally renowned?
2. Is this club involved in something which I will not have access to at Monash?
3. Is this club involved in something where I readily anticipate meeting people who will have some subset of shared interests as me?

Purdue Orbital, a team that designs, builds and tests rockets, clearly falls in category 1. For those who don't know, Purdue is one of the best schools in the world when it comes to aerospace engineering. They have a massive department, copious amounts of funding, and there alumni include 27 astronauts, most notably Neil Armstrong, after whom the main engineering hall is named. So it seemed only fitting to at least dip my toe into an arena that has long since fascinated me - space - whilst I am at an institution that can afford me handedly such an opportunity. The motivation for the astronomy club runs along very much the same lines, though also falling into category 2 as well. Since Purdue is located ages away from an major cities, it offers great star-gazing opportunities, and the school has a number of telescopes, etc. that we can use to do so.

Only time will tell how many of these clubs I actually hold to, but at the very least this week served as a mechanism to peel back the layers on as many different reaches of the university as I can, and that is worth it in and of itself.

On Semesterly Grind

The second week of classes brings with it the steady slog of assignments, homework and tests, and therefore comes to resemble the time that the reality of another university semester sets in. Especially in Winter, where the days are short, the sun may not come out as much, and rain (snow, here) is commonplace, I have often found myself in the first few weeks of past semesters in a state of malaise, especially once the novelty of new classes or the residue from the previous holiday has worn off.

The structure of the US semester lends itself even more to this melancholia. My body and mind have become well accustomed to 12 weeks of classes, a week of SWOTVAC, and then a scattering of exams over the course of a few weeks, but this time around they will have to contend with 16 weeks of classes. The first 15¹ weeks are for content, and then week 16 is finals week and you have all four exams in one hit. I have often been quoted as saying that I would prefer if all my exams were in one week so that I can start my holidays sooner, but that is when I have a week of SWOTVAC...it will be a rather interesting experience to see how I fair with this. The breakdown of in-semester marks for my units is rather different as well. American colleges prefer to have 2-4 midterm exams that receive a fairly high amount of weighting, to the point that conversations I've had with students here in which I mention the usual 60% weighting of exams at Monash end with mouths agape. With that said, it was I who was aghast when speaking with a Spanish exchange student when she mentioned that 100% of their mark comes from their finals...

I have a strong preference for the American model, because:

• It reduces the stress and associated taxation on student mental health that comes along with a big final exam, and

• It encourages more consistent acquisition of knowledge throughout the semester, rather than being able to wait until the final weeks and cram as much content as possible into short-term memory.

On a more personal note, this time of semester also brings with it for me a mind that repeatedly questions the motivation for being at university at all. Emerging from a holiday period where I was at liberty to spend time doing only the things I was passionate about, the cold plunge back into study and revision is often met with contemplations of what life would be like if university were no more. In my first few years, these thoughts were even more pronounced, however they have tempered slightly as I've gone on. I trace this back to being due to two factors. The first is that I have become more engaged in things outside of my coursework at Monash (and now at Purdue) that allow me to sustain a more genuine interest in all aspects of my life, including the units I am taking. Secondly, in every way possible I have attempted to gamify the way I approach my study, turning it into a quest towards optimisation and high levels of effectiveness that will then free up more time in my schedule to do the things that I care about. I am hoping that this will be easier to do at Purdue because (a) my timetable is extremely structured (Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays are identical as are Tuesdays and Thursdays) and (b) as mentioned last week, the number of contact hours I have is signficantly reduced.

On Writing

With this being the third edition to date, I wanted to reflect on how I have been feeling about this writing process and the practice itself. After all, the first is a one-off, the second a coincidence, but the third represents an engraining of a new habit. Or at least I hope.

The initial comment has to be that once I have finished writing for the week, I am extremely glad of the time spent. Ever since the age of 8 or so² I have kept on-and-off (but mostly off, until very recently) a journal of important trips and periods of my life. And it ceases to bring me no end of delight to pour back over these pages and relive an instantiation of Nick that saw fit to preserve itself so carefully for perpetuity. If you haven't ever had a routine of journaling (even of photos), I can only implore you in the strongest possible terms to start doing so. There are two quotes I love about the practice, which for me captures both its simplicity and magic:

"People who keep journals have lived twice" - Jessamyn West

And also:

"Journaling is like whispering to one’s self and listening at the same time." - Mina Murray

The first resonates with me because for the longest time, there has been this conflict I've struggled with of feeling as if every day, whilst I'm in it, draws out seemingly in eternity, yet casting my mind back over the weeks, months and years gives the impression of my leaving in memory only the smallest of wakes behind me. So anything I can do that allows prolonging of recallable experiences is worthwhile in my eyes.

The second has its place, because sitting down and writing has the effect of shoving you right up against this inherent paradox, almost Gödelian in quality, about the nature of experience and statements you attempt to make about your own experience. There are these strange loops and circularities present whenever the mind is forced to be both author and audience, to introspect on its own contents, and journaling repeatedly reminds you of the unsteady, subjective ground on which you are viewing and later recalling the world³.

With all this said, writing each week does take up a considerable amount of time. Though I am expediting (read: skipping) any sort of editing and proof-reading (please forgive me), I am outputting somewhere between 5-7 thousand words a week of thoughts: thoughts which, I would like to think, offer some level of intrigue and insight into my journeys here. So, I am presented with a conundrum. Before the semester started, I claimed in my whitepaper that the process of reflection I am embarking on here actually unlocks a deeper level of enjoyment from my time at Purdue than would be garnered from spending the 3-5 hours a week (approximately) on other pursuits.

Surprisingly, I've found that proposition to be even more true now that I am underway with it. Because you have to remember in situations like this where you evaluate the effectiveness of a particular activity to think on multiple time scales. Most frequently, first and only consideration is given to the short-term. For me, that manifests as two questions:

1. Is what I'm doing right now setting me up to have even more great experiences in the coming weeks?
2. Is what I'm doing right now something that I will be glad to have done when I pack my bags in May to leave this place?

Under these lights, inspection of journaling appears to hold up, certainly more I would argue than any other 3-5 hour substitute could. The beauty of it as well is that I am not beholden to write at particular hours of the day, and recently I have been doing so whilst eating in the dining courts, so I am tapping into hours of the day that had been set aside for nothing really. And should something seriously worthwhile arise, like a trip or night out, then I am afforded the flexibility here of doing that instead.

But there is also the long-term horizon to examine. Namely, how will I reflect on what I am now doing in 1 year, or 5 years or 50? And in these terms I think is where the merit of writing really strengthens immeasurably. I write for the current me, and for you reading, but an eye is always cast now and again down the line to the version of me⁴ who will pick this up again and explore each and every word and thereby relive each and every moment once more.

One downside worth noting as I conclude here is that I do wish all that I am putting down here were written, not typed, because I think the former gives it even more of an inimitable timestamp; each dot of penstroke more of a brushstroke that combines to produce a canvas of myself at that time. In this vain, therefore, I am simultaneously keeping an analog journal each day, though the contents of that are far less expansive, and far more personal, focusing readily on particular emotions and thoughts rather than the highlights from the week.

All of this is to say that I don't ever want this to become burdensome, but that this pressure is easily sidestepped when I think about both the short and long-term benefits of what I am producing here.

On Performing

Perhaps the clear and most fundamental of differences between the American and Australian college model is that at the former 90+% live on campus, while at the latter 90+% live off campus (roughly). The reach of this fact though, extends a lot further than one might initially think.

There are the more shallow considerations to be made of course, such as the fact that the campus itself is orders of magnitude more busy at all times of day than Monash ever would be. Seemingly, as well, every nook and cranny of every building is occupied to some extent here. Contrast that to Monash, where outside of the large spikes in student density around the major buildings and restaurants, one can easily wander off in apparently any direction and quite quickly find themselves in a ghost-town of sorts.

Delving another level deeper, the colocation of home and university means that at every waking moment, no matter how tacit or subliminal, the idea of education, study, classes, homework, etc. nudges on your thoughts. In the same way that many people struggled in the transition to working from home as it prohibited a clear separation of concerns from their professional and domestic lives, so too is there an element of this overreach and subsequent burn-out/fatigue present at American colleges.

But at the deepest level⁵ is this notion of performance, or performed identity. It seems clear to me that each of us harbours something akin to a split-personality disorder insofar as there exists the version of ourselves we maintain when alone, and the version of ourselves we project outwards into the gaze of others, or society more generally. Now, it is of course possible and very likely desirable for one, through various self-development, mindful practices or otherwise, to minimise the mean error between these two planes of existence. However, the claim is that the two will always remain partially disjunct. For one, imagine how awkward it would be if every internal conversation you had to yourself was suddenly broadcasted openly to anyone within earshot, The Knife of Never Letting Go style. You'd be mortified. And for good reason, because despite the seeming nobility of 100% transparency, I would suggest there immense benefit on many levels to withholding at least in part some aspects of the self. In time, perhaps all may in the limit be disclosed, but it appears a fact of direct experience that at any moment of being alive, some parts of our thinking, mental models or behaviours are not quite ready yet to bear the scrutiny of the social eye. They need time to be developed, nurtured, etched over and erased, in some cases completely inverted, before they emerge, fully-formed and robust, for us to usher in as offerings to others around us.

So, finding time to be alone⁶ is critical. But this should not be confused with the literal state of being by oneself. Because troublingly, aloneness is on the decline, if not out of vogue, and particularly in my generation due to the viral proliferation of social media. Because despite having no one around, we are implicitly forced (or else desire) to offer up our performed selves through these platforms.

For the punchline, though. My suspicion is that the on-campus lifestyle of American colleges is yet another renting blow in the campaign each of us wage to be alone. Whilst for me living in an apartment, I can legitimately escape to my own thoughts as I please, for those living in dormitories there is no such luxury on offer. You are at the whims of your environment, and this is an environment where you are constantly rubbing up against others in close proximity, whether you like it or not - they are, after all, your roommates. At a place like this, it is harder to walk around between buildings and not run into someone or see something of interest. Being in the spotlight of a public gaze is taxing. So I have spent much time in deep concern for those who live in the residence halls, wondering just how they survive this constant voyeurism - not too mention some of the disastrous mishaps with shared facilities I've heard of - unless they can somehow, with strong intention, find the capacity for regenerative alone time.

On Last Times

The main thread of thought I have found myself coming back to this week concerns last times, or finality. There is, of course, a last time for all that we do in this life, and the way we interpret this fact I would suggest strongly correlates to how much you can get out of your mortal coil. Most of the time, though, I find we do a pretty poor job of believing this fact at the necessarily deeper levels of experience. Take someone that you haven't seen in years like an old teacher, friend or, if like me you have had a strike of misfortune, a significant other. The last time that I spoke to any such person in the flesh, I can guarantee you that it never once crossed my mind that this might be the last occasion I ever see them again in my life. But now, seemingly eons later, I am presented with this sobering reality. There are countless examples of this, and I encourage you to reflect on whether there are any such seismic examples in your own life, ones that when you become aware of them detonate with a wave of sadness, nostalgia, longing or some other cocktail of emotion.

As it relates to my time here at Purdue, I am observing a growing chasm between how an exchange student like myself and a regular student interface with their college experience. In both cases, each knows that their time at this institution is limited, yet for one party, this awareness is far more acute. Despite the number of semesters in a degree being not only countable, but very small in size (about 8-10 for undergraduates), it appears that cognitively such a time period is on a scale that we fail to appreciate. To put it differently, one may know that he will be at Purdue for 4 years, but he does not believe this to be true. And the belief changes everything. Because without it, you (subconsciously) always suspect there of being a next time. A next time to join a team, to introduce yourself to someone, to visit this or that city, to take this or that class, to start this or that project. And as it goes in the saying,

Someday is not a day of the week.

On the flipside, the number one is just small enough for us to comprehend its terminality. One semester. And so, I feel emerging from that an intense inertia of doing, a level of energy that particularly in the first days and weeks was at odds with the jet-lag and lack of quality sleep I was getting. At bottom, it is what is driving the desire to make the most out of this exchange, and so though there is a sense of disappointment in not being able to stick around for longer, reflecting on the ephemerality of this chapter can only serve to bring a greater sense of fulfilment to the overall trip.

I would be remiss to point out in closing that the attitude of the regular student is exactly how I view myself as behaving at Monash, so there is nothing to condemn here, merely observation is what I wish to make. It has however, prompted me to unpack my Monash experience and what remains of it under different terms, terms I hope that will provide the most fruitful rewards from however long left I have there. Because my days are surely numbered.

Footnotes