This isnt related to India, so you might want to stop reading here.
This is a full fledged vent. Prepare yourself.
I am tired of Shamps. (This phrase was brilliantly coined by Tiffany) I am tired of people who suddenly are nice to you when they realize that you have something they want. Or people who decide you are worth their time when they see what you have done and what you want to do without really talking to you.
I try my absolute best to measure the individual on an equalizing level. I dont care who you are/who your family is/where you come from etc. All I care about is the level of respect you demonstrate when we talk, because I will only measure you based on your actions and your interaction with me. Do you value what I have to say enough to listen? Do you think through your opinions and understand where your own doubts are? Are you willing to question and rethink your plans because you can?
What I cannot stand is that so many people are rewarded at Yale for theft of the ideas of others. They are rewarded for being the loudest voice in the room, parading around as if well crafted plans that other people spent their lives designing, were their own. Creating sheets and resumes of their accomplishments, smiling the largest, and preventing everyone else from seeing how little substance they have behind them in order to get ahead.
And when they look back, where do they stand.
Awards that suggest ghosts of success.
Audiences that dont listen or understand what is being said, what was accomplished, and what could be because their reason for being in that room is to be seen. And stand as those cardboard cut outs with whitened teeth that tells us, I am successful. I am everything you want to be.
And you are not. I promise you that. When you look in the mirror you look straight through yourself because there is nothing of substance in front of you.
Yes, you can smile well enough to dazzle everyone in the distance.
But your smile cracks when I ask you: What have you accomplished and how did you do it? On whose back were you standing to be the face of this project?
Never mind that if you were left in the situation alone, you would be powerless to fix anything. Or find your way out of it.
Who has seen you vulnerable and made you stronger, when you dont even allow yourself to see the cracks?
As a generation we are failing if we pretend that all is well and can continue as it was. We are a sham without giving ourselves the time GIVEN to us and INVESTED in us to have this time to understand what we are, on a fundamental level. You were given a gift: the time to see and explore and question and make friends that break you apart, build you up, and support you when you are brittle, stretched, hungry, tired, cold, lost and confused.
And even in this. You have failed.
You know who you are.
This is a full fledged vent. Prepare yourself.
I am tired of Shamps. (This phrase was brilliantly coined by Tiffany) I am tired of people who suddenly are nice to you when they realize that you have something they want. Or people who decide you are worth their time when they see what you have done and what you want to do without really talking to you.
I try my absolute best to measure the individual on an equalizing level. I dont care who you are/who your family is/where you come from etc. All I care about is the level of respect you demonstrate when we talk, because I will only measure you based on your actions and your interaction with me. Do you value what I have to say enough to listen? Do you think through your opinions and understand where your own doubts are? Are you willing to question and rethink your plans because you can?
What I cannot stand is that so many people are rewarded at Yale for theft of the ideas of others. They are rewarded for being the loudest voice in the room, parading around as if well crafted plans that other people spent their lives designing, were their own. Creating sheets and resumes of their accomplishments, smiling the largest, and preventing everyone else from seeing how little substance they have behind them in order to get ahead.
And when they look back, where do they stand.
Awards that suggest ghosts of success.
Audiences that dont listen or understand what is being said, what was accomplished, and what could be because their reason for being in that room is to be seen. And stand as those cardboard cut outs with whitened teeth that tells us, I am successful. I am everything you want to be.
And you are not. I promise you that. When you look in the mirror you look straight through yourself because there is nothing of substance in front of you.
Yes, you can smile well enough to dazzle everyone in the distance.
But your smile cracks when I ask you: What have you accomplished and how did you do it? On whose back were you standing to be the face of this project?
Never mind that if you were left in the situation alone, you would be powerless to fix anything. Or find your way out of it.
Who has seen you vulnerable and made you stronger, when you dont even allow yourself to see the cracks?
As a generation we are failing if we pretend that all is well and can continue as it was. We are a sham without giving ourselves the time GIVEN to us and INVESTED in us to have this time to understand what we are, on a fundamental level. You were given a gift: the time to see and explore and question and make friends that break you apart, build you up, and support you when you are brittle, stretched, hungry, tired, cold, lost and confused.
And even in this. You have failed.
You know who you are.
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