This ten-part series will take the theme of semesters that I have taken classes, and thus gained intellectual capital, from Yale over the course of the last four years. In most cases, classes are foundational to my growth; also in most cases, it is the marginal differences in my own status that allow for a certain retrospective mode of self-anchoring. That sounds awfully contrived, so I will just proceed with what I mean by discussing my first semester, F18.
CHEM 174: First-Year Organic Chemistry I
Up until the end of my second year, I would always tell people that this was the most impactful course I had had at Yale. Up until now, I would elaborate on the fact that such immense influence was all for the wrong reasons. My journey with CHEM 174 predated the first lecture. In fact lectures were almost inessential to the way I grew from the course.
My journey with CHEM 174 started as I was questioning the extent of my ‘talent’ coming into Yale. When I entered college, I knew I wanted to major in the likes of International Relations, but I also knew that I verbally committed to my parents a judicious attempt at learning biochemistry. My deviation from the ‘hard’ sciences showcased its first signs in 7th grade when I gave up on trying to learn hardcore maths, and was a done deal by 9th grade when I settled on English as my speciality for the high school entrance exam. So at the point of moving to Yale, I was scared. I was scared that, given how much the 99th percentile of science learners in my high school must have sped ahead of me with three years worth of me not learning chemistry, that I must be similarly relatively talentless at a place like Yale.
I think that I was partially correct. What I seek out of a Yale education is in fact the osmotic learning experiences from people who has published in high school, won a gold medal at the International Chemistry Olympiad before taking AP Chemistry, or done both and had also been a cellist at their state orchestra. I think I was wrong in underestimating my will to parallel such excellence.
I took the placement test to skip the General Chemistry requirement, and to my utmost surprise the test was actually very manageable. This marked my first life-altering experience at Yale. When I was filling out the paperwork, I marked myself as interested in taking the Physical Chemistry sequence instead. Knowing how much people advocated for the First-Year Organic Chemistry sequence (which I would be ineligible for if I had done PChem first), I thought I had to show up to the Director of Undergraduate Studies (DUS)’s office to present my case for rectifying my mistake. While in the waiting room mustering up courage, I met David, who was readying himself for the makeup placement test. Within thirty minutes, David showed me his high school junior year summer’s work at the National Institute of Health on 3D simulation of protein folding, something that he might consider going back to the upcoming summer. This made me realize that I am in fact dipping my toes into the most brutal circles of Yale academics, inundated with people whose brilliance is only diminished by the fact that they have not begun college yet. At this point, I was thinking, ‘why would this guy be even remotely worried?’ David is insane for other reasons, but for now I present my case for my first awe-inspiring interaction.
CHEM 174 of F18 was taught by Professor Scott Miller, different from the years beforehand and afterwards. I had no idea what to expect, because I had no frame of reference. Professor Miller turned out to be one of the most unhinged educators I studied under. He would introduce the definition of chirality by presenting on a paper about a synthetic pathway for a macromolecule by someone who happened to (a) just win a Noble prize and (b) be his roommate throughout his undergraduate time at Harvard. Even worse, people were asking him questions about the paper. I did not know that we were eligible for questioning this work? I did not even know what chirality actually meant yet. Having no frame of reference was the primary decimating factor in my baby steps in education overseas, as I got ahold of my bearings expeditiously the moment my grade for this class arrived.
In CHEM 174, we had three quizzes, three midterms, some weekly homework, and a final exam. There was a solution manual to book problems, so that portion of the grade was completion-based. The midterms were the scary hurdles to overcome. Before his first exam, Professor Miller told students that if we got a 70%, we would not have to worry about our performance in the class. This proved true at the end, but earning a 77-78% was what you needed for an A instead of an A-. The first exam came and I only had David to prepare with. Our materials were the practice midterm, which I mulled over, and a 20-page cheat sheet that David had, according to him, acquired by spending some shady money in his virtual wallet. (At this point I just accepted that Yale students had moved way ahead of me in terms of what I needed to know about the world, and that is okay.) When grades were back, we were first presented with the statistics. The average was slightly below 70, the lowest was in the 40s, and the highest was 99. I got David’s exam back before I got mine, and expecting him to be the 99. He got a 70.
I was absolutely floored. For half a day I was sitting on the prospect of having to drop the class, which involved asking around if that is acceptable. I was recounting all my work, seeing how much I should be deducted for each problem that I felt wrong. I thought that I should get about 5-10 points lower than David, which would be kind of okay. I had three more exams to make up, I thought.
I got a 78. My emotions were probably best described by phenomena associated with cognitive dissonance. I just could not fathom the fact that I was doing somewhat above average in the class. I felt like I was understanding certain things, but not enough by a mile. I could not fathom how I could have, in this one test, outperformed David, ever. In some strange twists of thought I felt betrayed by the fact that I could be above average in this class.
CHEM 174 was held in Sterling Chemistry Lab, upward the proverbial Science Hill, at 10:35AM on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Before Yale, I was always playing the risky game of going to bed at 2AM but telling my parents that I slept at midnight. So when I was suddenly given the lease of life, by which I mean the unbridled liberty to decide my bedtime, I went all out. Joon was also an enabling factor in worsening my sleep schedule (as I did with Joon’s). Throughout my first semester, I only woke up in time for three breakfasts. I was never in the mindset of trying to make it to this class’s lectures. If I woke up, opened the shuttle bus app, and saw that there was no reasonable way for me to make it to the bus stop in time and not be late for class, then I would fall back asleep. My next class was not until 1PM, and it was closer geographically too.
Thanks to David, I thrived on a regime of asking him to ask others if we would have a quiz the next week, and then pre-emptively made up my mind about attending class or not accordingly. The problem sets are posted online, and I could just frequent my section at 7PM on Thursdays to submit my homework. At some point some people in class recognized me as the guy wearing slippers barging into class with 15 minutes left in session. And that was on a good day, when I decided to show up.
I made up for this by trying to teach myself the book materials I was missing out on. As you might expect, on many occasions I found myself grossly underprepared to answer book problems, so I had to scroll up a chapter and spent extra time compensating for my laziness. What you might not expect, and neither did I, was that I was unintentionally getting ahead of everyone. You see, the Chemistry department at Yale has this practice of assigning problems for the content to be covered the week after. A rationalization of this process might be that students show up to class knowing the basis of what will be taught, so the discussions become richer. You might agree or disagree with the pseudo-flipped classroom model, but I was just unaware. I only found out by showing up to office hours this one time for problem set 7 and asking about an advanced problem in the question list. The other people in the office hours asked me how I could have known about doing any problem at all, if he had not even covered the concepts in class. (I think it was learning about Sn2 and E2 reactions). I confessed to not going to class at all, and had a shocking realization that that was helping me.
With the help of my Teaching Assistant, I acquired a set of problems to work at home and became fully detached from lectures. I remembered spending pages trying different answers to a six-step cyclization mechanism, googling “stereoisomers exceptions” and learning about allenes, which was in fact a trick question in the third midterm, or using Elliot’s petite white board to attempt a graduate-level synthesis question. For Professor Miller, he amped up his teaching techniques by giving exam questions for first-year Yale Chemistry PhD students on our final exam. But this escalation of insanity, one that would have led people to question the purpose of a Yale education in general if my knowledge came from myself, culminated in one of the hardest-hitting As I had acquired ever: it was my first. I was actually far above the threshold for an A as well. It dawned on me just how much I had held in this inquisitive energy from high school years of coasting on my middle school hard work. I found something I actually liked, in a organic way to boot, and I felt extremely refreshed.
CHEM 222L: Organic Chemistry Lab I
I felt way more underprepared coming into lab than the main lecture series. This was a decided weakness of the Vietnamese education: it was too impractical. We would always learn the mathematical versions of chemistry problems and never how they occur, or why. The labs for organic chemistry were also not class-year-discriminate like the lectures, so I just feared my fate.
The boon of CHEM 222L was that I got to appreciate the class not by having survived the Gen Chem equivalent. That is taught by someone named Dr. G at Yale, a controversial figure that I have heard dispiriting tales about at length. Dr. Christine DiMeglio (I always prefer addressing people as Professor) was much nicer, with way less stringent requirement. We did not have a mandatory lab lecture; there were only two lab reports, and yields are not quantitatively graded as long as sufficient error analysis was provided. Regardless of how you did in lab, as long as your final practical was higher than 90%, you get an A.
Probably the highlight of this class was my interaction with the Teaching Assistant, Leah. I think Leah was a first-year student in the chemical biology track of her PhD, and I sporadically enjoyed listening to her talk about her interests. For the first post-lab assignment, she gave reasonable feedback as I also had no confidence about my first scientific writing. It was the second post-lab assignment that some hell broke loose. I stayed up overnight to touch up on my report, incorporating previous feedback; in turn, I got a 71. Inasmuch as grades are normalized by your grader, I only knew what the overall population’s grade distribution was, and I was more than 2 standard deviations below the average. The actual feedback felt jaw-droppingly tedious: saying “we” in the introduction got me marked down by 2 points twice, starting a sentence with a number docked off another, or using past tense in a sentence took off a whopping six.
I remember receiving my grade as I was picking up my package from 250 Church St. My next class was the EERE seminar, but with one email I felt such a surge of rage tinted with confusion at how ludicrous my grade was that I spent a quarter of the seminar rereading my submission. I sent my first complaining email to a dismaying response. Then I proceeded to compile a list of itemized penalties I felt were unjustly doled out. In my mind, I would have felt comfortable with something like an 80. But there were just so many mistakes that were not even mistakes: the exemplary report that Dr. DiMeglio had put up on Canvas was using “we”, the past tense, and a sentence in the procedure section that started with a number. Shout out to Leah for germinating this habit of writing incredibly detailed emails with full-fledged reasoning for me.
I was insistent on being in the right, and never got the actual closure I wanted. I earned my A in the alternative method of the class, and so did almost everyone in my section as I found out the highest grade for that assignment in my group was a 79. I did chance upon another TA, whom David befriended, three weeks later as I queued up again in the package center. It was opportune that I got to know about how the TAs were also concerned with how grading would unfold, and that my section was one of the discussion foci among the teaching staff. I do not harbor any resentment—I have hated no more than one person that I actually know—and I was glad that I did not let grades sour my relationship with other people.
GLBL 121: Applied Quantitative Analysis
I knew early on that the pursuit of the Global Affairs major was of interest to my Model UN fanatical self. I also knew that it was a selective major, in the sense that there was a selection process. I did not really have a plan as to how to approach my first shopping period, so I thought I might as well take care of this requirement of the major.
Legend has it that AQA was about statistics, with a lot of scrutiny into the true nature of statistics. That turned out to be a gross overestimation of the class content, as the professor probably wanted to soothe the worries of social science majors regarding their sudden quantitative training. The most scrutiny I was afforded was the four assumptions of a paired t-test that I have re-written nine times in one problem set, and I really doubt that that was the hardest topic in the field of data science. We spent too much time on what mean, mode, and median truly represent. I still got marked down here and there for my exams, but my concerns with the class were trivially excessive.
The best memories with the class were definitely the people. I found my first space on campus outside my suite by hanging out with some senior Global Affairs majors in the Silliman buttery (Sillibutt, for short). I made friends who were people I worked under in YIRA, and found a place that nurtured me for the next three years, with or without these initial study buddies. Knowing Muriel was definitely a highlight, but it was really not because of this class.
The distinguishing fact about this class is that I befriended Brian, one of the TAs (but not mine). I think it started because I was infrequent in my class attendance, and chose to sit in the back in the event that I became tired of the content. Brian was also always sitting in the back, and would have the grossest-looking protein mix I had ever witnessed. We briefly talked because he saw me at one of the information sessions on getting visa sponsorship for international students, in which he was sitting with my TA for GLBL 101. He joked about how I should not have to think about the ordeal that is work authorization yet, but my presence proved conducive to greater things. Our friendship did not grow that much until the next time I would be his student.
GLBL 101: Gateway to Global Affairs
The theme for this first semester was really about not attending lectures. This class was the ultimate no-show for me. Its premise was that we would have a topical reading list every week, with two guest lectures by Yale faculty members, and a required section with about 18 students in a 200-person class. When I signed up, I thought the course was a requirement for the major. I did not know that it was more of a mosaic interpretation of what falls under the purview of IR history with some actual relevant lectures towards the end of the course.
This class taught me that you do not need to learn from your classes. Or maybe you should, it is really up to you to decide how much you want to gain. This class is better off as, truly, a gateway to understanding about other topics. Given the attraction of many first-year students, it would have been comical to sandwich too much depth. It was probably an informed choice to spread the class thin. The professor lowkey wanted to promote the reading of her own book, as it was the assignment for the midterm paper and the backdrop for the final one.
I also felt like I cashed my luck in other places than this course. My section was uninspiring; it was funny showing up to sections and getting away with not actually reading anything, not just because the lectures were not even related, but also because there were so many people who just did not know why ISIS was being discussed. On top of that were some students who later became defined in the lingo of Yale students as “section assholes.” I bonded with someone over our silent resentment of the same section asshole in this course, but I digress.
Some of the memories I made from this class also stuck with me farther into my undergraduate career. I was so impressed with the guest lecture by the late Professor Nuno Monteiro, that I did not hesitate to sign up for his annual course in the Global Affairs major, not knowing that would be his last time teaching. I saw the leagues of professors who founded the Grand Strategy program. I met some of the World Fellows, especially a prominent reporter who asked me to become his tour guide as Professor Sky and he visited Hanoi in the winter. I was mediocre at best, but it felt surreal to my first-year self that I was making such personal connections to cool professionals.
G&G 010: Earth, Energy, Resources, and the Environment
We have come to probably one of my lowest points in my undergraduate career. Yale has a series of first-year seminars open only to, unsurprisingly, first-year students, and I wanted to check out this cool opportunity to learn about a subfield of long-term interest to me. There were cool people in the class: someone who already had a Wikipedia page wherein he was featured with Lady Gaga, a D1 athlete who later studied geology for real, an unannoying class clown who is a current member of the Whiffenpoofs.
I just really did not learn much from the class. The premise of the class, once again, is one guest lecture from a Yale faculty member on various earth topics, followed by a discussion panel among the students. Some of the lectures were impressive; I remember distinctly that of Professor Karen Seto, who was recently elected to the NAS, that propelled me to write about the Urban Heat Island effect in my midterm research project. But the discussions were incredibly shallow. It was bad that we were instructed to discuss niche scientific subjects like archaelogical evidence for the presence of atmospheric oxygen some million years ago because none of us had the expertise to debate on it. Instead was myriad pseudo-ethical thought experiments on what planet would be the most likely to sustain life, or the future of nuclear power in offshore Connecticut. Then our research projects were supposedly literature reviews papers with an insight that also could not exceed eight pages. I received feedback that was ambiguous and unconstructive, while being further docked off half a letter grade in general for one unexcused absence (that I was not aware was part of the grading scheme).
Was it mostly my fault? Most likely. It was my lowest grade in college ever, and I was glad it never amounted to some semblance of a demoralizing effect on my pursuit of energy-related studies. It probably made me a lot more cognizant of the mechanics of grading in college, and how I had to play by the rulebook to boost my odds of securing good grades. I despise that. I believe that if your lectures only have people because you penalize people not showing up, then the issue lies in your class engagement. I hate having to cope with time-consuming quasi-educational activities that serve little pedagogical sense under the guise of participation. This of course goes both ways: there are classes with such enticing methodology of teaching that I could not help but regularly attend. I felt the pressure in following semesters to hunt down classes that would have the highest likelihood of genuine enjoyment.
Vanderbilt B31
By far the most notable part of my first semester at Yale was my suite. We briefly exchanged pleasantries the preceding summer. There is Mitchell from rural Virginia, whose hyphenated last name made me believe he was engaged prior to college. There is Elliot who hails from the windy city of Chicago, or I guess right outside. And there is someone named Joon that none of us could pinpoint the entire summer. It was not until August, two weeks before my day-long flight to NYC, that Joon replied saying hi.
I am member of Branford College. First-year Branford ‘Squirrels’ reside in Vanderbilt Hall on Old Campus—yes, it is the same Vanderbilt. There was nothing special about our living assignment, except that whoever grouped us together did some magical organizing. I came to the suite first for my international orientation; Joon and Mitchell went on FOOT hikes, and Elliot was doing a program called Harvest. The first night we all gathered in person, we ordered pizza and hung out in the common room past midnight. Joon and I spent the first night talking about ourselves only to realize that we were really similar people. We paralleled each other’s high school escapades, college applications, and even choices of major—the specifics differ, but that is more down to the path-dependent nature of our lives.
My first semester was a fever dream, in the sense that I just did not have any social hiccup. Our froco group hit it off our third day meeting together: three of us had done a very spicy test online, and the other nine or so did it as a group exercise. We lived in vertically adjacent suites (except for one that I was close to individually), and there were several nights of us packed like sardines in a nostril-sized common room, watching movies together. This was the said reason why I would just never go to bed in time. I had too much fun.
YMUN 45: Assistant Secretary-General of Technology
I knew of Model UN at Yale before even applying here. When my IVMUN predecessor was an ASG for YMUN, he asked me and a friend to help him write a topic guide. We both wore it with a badge of honor in high school, but I was the one who got closer to being an actual part of YMUN.
The Model UN scene in Vietnam is very different from that of… anywhere else. There is a strong hierarchical structure that functions on familiarity, awards, and respect; some people even do it after graduating from college. In the US, the most robust and active programs focus on high school students. Chairing or organizing are tasks people do out of their appreciation for MUN, less so for the respectability component. I think I agree with this point of view entirely, except that Model UN in Vietnam is still in a growth stage where people genuinely look to innovate and improve.
Although YMUN officially takes place at the beginning of the spring semester, the preparation long predates the conference. I was onboarded late September in a cohort of 20-something first-years spread around 12 functionalities. I was the only Tech ASG, under the guidance of the great Lauren. It is definitely glaring the differences between conference organizing at Yale and at home. I think Vietnamese students are stellar at logistical management, having personally seen people fundraise for an event with no revenue stream, build a stage with full lighting, and design every logo for every committee. My perspectives on the capabilities of a conference organizer were really complementary to a side of YMUN that was used to be secondary to the committee portion, and I felt like home from start.
As an ASG, my power was restricted. Most of the job was to learn what was involved in the preparation of the conference, and the contributions came in the form of facilitating the process and innovating along the way. I helped with filming the Online Practical Training, using the camerawork I learned from the IVMUN’s excellent media team. I automated some website changes, and tried my best touching up Secretariat members’ candid headshots.
It was amazing nonetheless to be part of a conference that made profit from registration. YMUN is one of the better-known conferences, attracting close to 2000 students every year in a four-day conference saturated with activities in and out of the committee room. The hectic schedule during the conference time was heart-warming in the sense that I was constantly reminded of why I loved Model UN and the memories it evoked. I benefited from having less stake in the success of the conference, as I was able to talk with delegates more and see the sparks here and there among the flocks of children. The last time I was in a Model UN conference, I was so nervous about every step of the way. This time around I took more of a deep breath, allowed the forty committees to just take its course, and immersed myself in the jubilation of others. The pre-conference activities were pleasant, and the friendships that sprung from this one opportunity remain close to heart.
Yale Movement: The Eve
On the contrary to the activities I sought to repeat from high school, dancing was a complete wild card. My sister and I partook in these urban dancing classes the summer prior to my departure, but it was mostly to be less physically awkward. At the back of the Extracurricular Bazaar of 2018 were sounds of Twice that, at this point, I did not expect to hear at Yale. It turned out that Movement was just founded that year, and wanted first-years to sign up.
There was an audition process that was graded on your relative improvement over two workshops, which I liked and succeeded in. For the first show, I signed up to direct a song I really liked called ‘The Eve’ by EXO, thinking that (a) it was just for fun and (b) I wanted to pick a song wherein my EXO favorite, D.O., was prominently featured. The latter mission was accomplished, but the former assumption proved a bit more challenging. You see, directing a dance means that you are in charge of the choreography, formation, and stage direction of the dance. I had not learned any of the moves, had never been in a group practice, and was the only member not on Board in my dance.
It was still a lot of fun. I had the right mentality of not expecting to benefit from anything except experiential learning points, and it paid off when I elected myself D.O. and learned how to swoop down to the floor for the highlight move. Even more risque was the fact that my final paper for GLBL 101 was due during the final showcase, so I cornered myself with my laptop in the dressing room, got up to perform, and seceded into my space. I got to miss the first Branford formal with Audrey, who went on to miss out on every other Branford formal with me in the future. The experiential learning points were earned in abundance.
Ending Notes
I had not booked the return leg of my flight to the American land this first semester, so when I made travel plans to go back to Vietnam the first and only winter break I could do so, I could book my flight from Hanoi to JFK. This means that Yale started to become a permanent reality: I would be trying to come back here as much as I could come back to Vietnam. It was not home yet, but realistically for four months the Yale bubble was the only place that occupied my mental space. I left New York on Christmas Day when all flight tickets halved in price, got home at midnight and devoured a bowl of salted peanuts (Elliot’s allergy meant I could not eat any nuts in the suite, and I also behaved like I had the allergy myself.) I toured Hanoi like I had left the place for a decade–it lowkey felt that way, as new commercial buildings had mushroomed along the same road I biked on everyday just a year earlier.
My first semester was definitely not the prettiest. I almost forgot that anyone of importance to me in Vietnam existed, ate unsalted food for two-thirds of the semester, and worsened my dry-heaving by implicating myself in events I was not even aware were stress-inducing. In the grand schemes of how I have changed throughout Yale, it was the fulcrum I needed to break down the inhibitions that I had felt coming to college. I got to finish this writing as Joon sat next to me, peering into my writing periodically while he browsed some esoteric website only chronically online people would patronize. (He was not, but let’s say that for the sake of it.) My first semester readied me for believing in myself, recognizing the path-dependent ways that my to-be best friends had led me to them, and set me up for success, however loosely that is defined.