My MOOC

MOOC is an acronym that stands for ‘massively-open online course’ and in recent days it’s become an important word to me.

As a part of my effort to grow and develop professionally as I look towards graduate school in the near future, I want to make sure that I’m not just coming home from work every day and planting in front of the TV and watching old Sci-fi reruns- I mean, I did that on Saturday, but I think it’s okay every once in a while.

A friend tipped me off to Coursera.com, a website that offers free online courses run by actual professors at some of the top universities in the US and Canada. A big frustration of mine in recent years is that although I wanted to learn how to program and there is a ton of information on the web available for me, it’s hard to jump into such an intimidating and ‘big’ field without clear structure or guidance. At my friend’s advice, I surfed around Coursera and found an intro to logical programming and signed up for the course to begin on June 3^rd.

As someone that has never taken an online course before, I was a little unsure about it, especially since these classes had the ‘MO’- massively open- attached to the front. An introductory video mentioned that there would be thousands and thousands of students in some of the classes on the website and I felt like I’d probably abandon things after a day or two. I felt like the class materials would probably be subpar and shoddy and that I wouldn’t gain much from the class.

But to my pleasant surprise, I was wildly incorrect. Each class comes with a wide variety of video lectures to be watched each week along with practice and homework exercises, typically followed by a quiz each week to check in progress. A lot of the lectures are made by the professors themselves and actually quite engaging- much better than many of the instructors I had in classes that I myself attended in college. I actually look forward to some of them.

So in addition to the programming course, I decided to sign up for a few more classes- one on the history and development of the internet to help me understand modern telecommunications better, an introduction to Finance course since I don’t really understand business or money, a course on Models and Model Theory to help my understanding of the world and as a potential aide in data analysis, and the programming course. I’m learning straight from professors at universities like the University of Michigan, University of British Columbia and the University of Toronto- all fantastic schools.

It’s four courses and each expects between 5-7 hours of work a week and it’s thus far been a great way to spend my after-work-hours doing something both interesting and productive. I may not be a student, but I’m really thankful for the learning opportunities that our modern world can provide to those who are interested.

So suffice to say, it’s been nice to keep busy J

The Big Adjustment

Moving from two months of unemployment immediately into working full time has been a great deal more physically exhausted than I would have expected.

In terms of movement and physical toll, my job is actually really easy. It’s all done in front of computers so I don’t have a lot of moving around to do- switching work stations, moving floors or going from the training room to the IT department, or down into the call center itself. It’s not at all a difficult job, except that sitting for hours at a time can make my padding-less butt hurt.

But for some reason, I’m always exhausted when I get home! When it hits 4 or 5 or 6pm or whenever I get off for the day, I come home, stuff my face from hunger and want to go to sleep almost immediately. Today, after only six hours, I came home and crashed, unable to stay awake through some of the video lectures that I typically watch at night.

A big part of this adjustment is reprogramming my body’s circadian rhythm. Before I started working here, it was difficult to get myself in bed and sleeping before the sunrise, and suddenly I find myself waking up around 7AM every morning, moving around, eating, and getting ready for the day. In a course of days, I have flipped my schedule around completely. I was so worried about being unable to do this that I set three alarms on my phone and one on my computer every day just to ensure that I don’t arrive to work any later than fifteen minutes early.

In addition to getting my sleep cycle back into a healthy mode, I’ve made some other big changes in my life. When I was still living overseas, my diet was based entirely on my mood- if I wanted to go gorge on Korean BBQ, I would find someone to go with and then sit for two hours, eating and drinking to my heart’s content. Whether it was the BBQ or fried chicken or some other amazing part of Korean cuisine, I chose what to eat for taste and convenience only, thinking nothing of health or my body.

Now that I’m back in a comfortable home with a good kitchen, I decided to take control of my diet again. Starting around May 1, I stopped drinking alcohol entirely, only have a small drink to celebrate getting my job and not even being able to enjoy it because the ‘dry’ life has been so pleasurable for me. I stopped drinking coffee, worried that I would quickly grow dependent on it with my early mornings.

Not only with my liquids, but I’ve cut meat out of my diet, officially a vegetarian for over a month now. As part of an effort to clean out my system and move back into healthy eating, I’ve decided on these rules as a method to take control of my diet and aggressively pursue a healthy, active lifestyle. In the past, I have found that managing my sleep cycle and diet are the keys to finding a good, healthy balance in life.

Of course, all of these changes in such a short period of time haven’t been easy. I’m tired a lot and still feel something like a zombie when I lay awake until 3am but wake up at 7 to get ready for work- but it’s been getting easier. I’m snacking very little at this point, and am back to eating breakfast and packing lunches to work every day. It’s far from anything fancy, but it’s a lot of really positive steps.

I’ll keep this up for the indefinite future, but man- I am looking forward to becoming a morning person again.

The Velocity Of

I chose the name of this blog for a specific reason- ‘The Velocity Of’, with the tagline ‘Finding the velocity of success.’ I intend for this blog to help me in the effort of forging my own path for success.

A lot of times, people talk about the future, and success, like it’s some sort of an accident that we happen upon in life. It’s something that we’re both with, or we achieve success by luck. When I was younger, I bitterly believed in same lines of thought- that since I wasn’t born into some sort of TV-worthy success story, that it was either luck, or the gutter for me at best.

Of course, the reality is that being born into a loving and, though at times difficult, supportive family in the United States of America is being lucky, and is being born into success, and I don’t want to discount those advantages and privileges by any means. I only mean to say that when I was younger, the reality of my own privilege was largely invisible to someone as self-centered and egocentric as an intelligent teenager.

I’ve come to understand that success is something that we make with a combination of hardwork and talent- but even a lot of talent comes from hard work. As lazy and despondent and depressed as I was during the last few weeks of unemployment, and even before when I was living miserably overseas because of money issues and my unpleasant work environment, I let all of my talents and hobbies go fallow, unused and wasted.

The last week has been incredibly invigorating. Things finally began a turn around when I got a call on Wednesday asking me to come in the following day for an interview at a call center downtown. I was wary after interviewing a few other places, so I accepted without letting my hopes get too high. I did well in the interview, and went in for a group orientation the day after the interview. I had been offered a job after two months of miserable unemployment.

Things have been snowballing since then. My first day of training, I was asked to take a logic test after expressing interest in their IT department. I managed to score so well that they put me into training with their IT department immediately, along with a modest raise and skipping the usual 2-3 month waiting period for adjustment before moving agents into departments.

I also have an interview for Kaplan, the world’s gold standard in test prep for a part-time position teaching the GRE. It’s the final, third interview with them and I’m both nervous and excited. I’m feeling excited and enthusiastic, and I’m going to ride this wave of enthusiasm into a really positive and exciting success.

Since the first interview with my call center, I immediately felt buoyed. I finally started this blog, a project that I’ve wanted to begin for a while. I started my personal writing up again, began some non-fiction reading and signed up for a bunch of free Massively-Open Online Courses over at Coursera.com. I feel great, and the more steps towards positivity that I take, the further I want to go.

It’s all a fantastic reminder that in a lot of ways, we build our own futures. This blog is dedicated to my journey. I’m no longer searching for the path to success- that’s something I build myself, out of my own blood, sweat, and tears. Instead, I’m searching for the velocity of success- not the road, but the rate.

Success is my state of mind, and I may be crawling right now, but it’s a hell of a lot better than no movement at all- and it’ll be no time at all before I’m running, and then flying.

Finding the Velocity

Along with this blog, I recently decided to undertake a big project to help me figure out where I’m headed in life over the next while. After working abroad and then coming back to the states to spend nearly a year at Starbucks, then back abroad and back again, I’ve grown tired of the constant moving and the total lack of stability from year to year. I haven’t lived in the same home for more than a year at a time since I was in High School; I haven’t stayed focused on what I wanted to do for a long-term career hardly at all since elementary school, if ever.

I’m a smart guy and I know it. I breezed my way through my early years of school, stressing out more about the drama of high school than focusing at all on my studies while still earning nearly a full ride to a fantastic university in a challenging new program in their engineering program. Without a minute of studying for either the SAT or ACT I scored well; with a great effort of studying for the GRE, I scored in the 97^th percentile. This isn’t a vehicle for bragging; I’m just trying to paint a picture.

But for all of my supposed intelligence, I’ve always allowed myself to be lazy. I never liked working hard or appearing to put any effort in anything. I mocked my high school classmates for caring too much about their grades and college apps, and bragged about the little effort I put into anything. I wanted to be that ‘cool’, effortless smart kid who never worked hard and wowed everyone around him with his natural strengths and talents.

It all failed for me eventually. Now attending a good university in a difficult program, I quickly realized that my lack of discipline and study skills was no longer something to brag about. Within a single term, I was forced to switch majors because I couldn’t keep up with the work, and by the end of the first year I had to switch away from the sciences altogether because I lacked any sort of ability to organize my life, attend lectures, or even do my homework. I grew nervous and anxious; I lost my scholarships.

Back then, I almost laughed at the whole thing because I wanted to remain that sort of ‘effortless’ genius, but internally I grew worried. I eventually graduated with poor grades with a double major of Linguistics and Korean. I finally began to take things seriously but couldn’t help but look back at my previous years as a sort of failure, a secret disease of indolence that I didn’t want anyone to know about. Though it’s been burned into my head, I don’t think I’ve ever spoken my college GPA out loud, my shame sewing my lips shut.

And now that I’ve been out of college for more than three years, I find myself in the same city, only a few minutes away from my first apartment back in 2007. Earlier today, I walked around my old school, remembering all of the adventures that took place on campus. When I go jogging through the streets surrounding the campus, I remember who lived in what apartments and what parties I had attended where and when. It’s stuffed full of good memories, and I’m torn between nostalgia and embarrassment.

You see, there’s a part of me that sits here and feels like I’ve failed. I’m back in a city that, upon leaving in 2010, swore that I’d never live in again. I feel like I’m in the same place that I was three years ago except I somehow have less money than before, more debt, and am 25 years old. I’m still unsure of my future and what career to pursue. It feels uncertain and awkward, and I still balk and telling some of my more obviously successful friends what I’ve been up to.

But then I’m reminded that things are, in fact, not at all the same. I’m fortunate that in the years between then and now that I’ve matured a great deal. My time abroad pushed me to develop true independence- physically and emotionally. I take good care of my health and pay attention to my finances more than ever before. I’m a great deal more practical than I used to be and have learned how to avoid a lot of the old traps that I used to fall into so easily.

So now that I’ve examined the present and compared it to the past, it’s time to think about my future. More on that in the next entry!

Overindulged Expectations

One of the things I’ve come to notice about my short time back here in my new city is that I tend to build these really high expectations- not only for myself, but for the friends and acquaintances that I knew from before or have met since. Having high expectations for yourself can be a really beneficial thing, but when in a transplant, expecting too much from your peers or friends can be a dangerous thing.

Like I wrote about in my last entry, sometimes a micro-cataclysm can be a good way to shake things up in our lives so that we can get a fresh start or even a new burst of energy to help us power through some of the humdrum of everyday life. But the tricky thing about these micro-cataclysms is that they’re often very personal and internal motions and rarely directly affect even our closest friends.

A transplant is especially tricky. Everyone who knows you’ve moved and changed locations is aware of what your big change is but they can be unsure of exactly how they should be reacting. For myself, I’ve been in the city for just a little over three weeks- not very much time at all, in the long run- but due to my unemployment during that time, it felt like a very long time indeed. In fact, it felt almost like an eternity as I sat around, all day, sending in job apps, mulling over my future, and waiting for some sort of hero to come in and save me from the doldrums. I began to grow frustrated by my friends for not contacting me and offering to help me out or celebrating my big return to the city, shades of bitterness holding me back from even wanting to contact them at times.

But this is a very inaccurate and selfish manner of thinking. You see, although I may have an open, free schedule because of the transplant and the on-going search for employment, the people who are already settled in with routines and obligations and slews of responsibilities that I know nothing about certainly lack the free time that I do. For many of them, my return may have gone unnoticed due to their busy and hectic schedules, yet I sit on my couch, surfing Facebook and growing annoyed that no one is coming around to save me from my boredom.

It’s pretty stupid and immature of me to act that way, but I think it’s a natural reaction to the mini-cataclysm that recent months have thrown at me. Of course my move back to the United States from Asia and then to a new/old city has been huge! Enormous! Life-altering! to me, but to anyone else, it may be good news indeed but nearly as impactful.

And because it lacks the same sense of urgency and appulse to anyone else as it does to me, my overindulged expectations will naturally fall flat as they run around with their lives, unable to abandon all of their responsibilities to indulge my boredom and frustration. As always with unrealistic expectations, it can be toxic to a relationship when you begin making demands, even if they’re internal and voiceless.

All of this is another reminder that if I want to live an adult life, I need to act like an adult. Assertiveness has often been difficult for me in the past but if I really want something, why not attempt the more proactive route? I need to be the one scheduling lunch-dates or tea-times with people if they’re significantly busier than me, regardless of what they’re busy with. It’s an okay thing to do. It’s an adult thing to do. 

Micro-Cataclysms

Continued from ‘Enervation’.

When we get caught up in the negative and unhealthy cycles that can come to rule us, it can feel like an impossible task to derail ourselves. Like a highway with no exits, it becomes a wait for that pre-built path that leads us away from perdition. We wait and we wait as we continue driving in the blackness of night, going forever on the highway with no street signs.

But the fact that we wait is nonsensical in the first place. This highway may lead us to a place that many others have gone before, but the road we ride is one that we build ourselves. A psychic journey to our own personal misery, the trail we take is always one created from our own choices and decisions. If we can’t see an exit as we drive, it’s because we didn't build one for ourselves. There is no exit because we didn't give ourselves one.

And so the wait becomes increasingly illogical the longer that we take this highway. But that doesn't mean we’re doomed, it just means that we have to find a way to get off-road on our own. If you hate the one-way road you’re on with no exit you’re on, sometimes you have to steer into the sidelines and pray the vehicle survives.

I like to think of this action as a sort of ‘micro-cataclysm’. It’s a bumpy, tumultuous event that shakes up pieces of our world into uncertainty and moves us far into the unknown. It’s a scary process and at times can be extremely painful, but the movements that we take are sometimes necessary to lead us away from the land of misery that we dread entering so much yet have lost any idea of how to avoid.

A micro-cataclysm can be finding a new social circle to surround ourselves with in order to get away from friends who hold us back. It may be moving to a new city or changing jobs. It could be ending an unhealthy relationship with a significant other. The strange thing is that we can often see the shackles that hold us in bondage.

In tarot, there is a card called ‘The Devil’ in the cycle of the Major Arcana. It is a frightening image of a great demon that has apparently enslaved two naked humans.

The Devil card as shown in Tarot [Source: Wikipedia]

What is interesting about this card and what it represents is that the bondage is often willful on part of the humans. Whether or not they walked into the demons grasp willfully, the idea is that the shackles around their necks are loose- they could be removed if the two slaves made the choice to take the chains off. It depicts an image of fear and fright for those who are unable to leave behind that which is unhealthy and damaging in our lives.

So even if it is shocking and difficult to leave behind our demons, even if it means that we have to experience a mini-cataclysm, sometimes that’s the only way to shake ourselves out of the negative cycles and habits that we’ve allowed ourselves to continue living with.

Instead of living in such negativity, why don’t we take those steps? Like the slaves on the card, let’s throw off these shackles and move towards a greater future of health and positivity.