(I)

Happiness is a Butterfly by Lana Del Rey can be broken down into roughly two equivalently structured sections. Though not in the pop sense, there is a repeated section that can be considered its ‘chorus’, in which the midpoint resolution for the first instance lacks the synth or electric guitar riff of the second one. This complements the song’s commentary on happiness being a butterfly that Lana tries to reach, yet can never fully capture. The first time we hear of the lyrics, without the riffs, feels more somber; the second has the effect of a withering fire that once was but no longer is.

(II)

As a college student, I am permitted a liminal space of having not determined yet what is instrumental to me. Here, I extend the semantic domain of the word ‘instrument’ to cover not just the device, but the way I use the device, and the relative value I assign to the bundle of devices in each subspace of my interests. But as a graduating college student, the pressure to figure it out is encroaching with a precarious speed. When I look at people who have apparently figured it out, their advice seems inapplicably simple. My utility function seems too multi-dimensional, my constraints overspecified, my desires multitudinous, that I might be better off having a unidirectional approach to life after college.

(III)

In several of the scientific fields such as physics, quantum mechanics, or materials engineering, some of the most highly decorated works in the past as well as some of the contemporary cutting-edge advances are with regards to measurement. Precise calibration of things on the nano, femto, or smaller scale is costly and requires ingenuity to engineer a proxy for characterization. How can we quantify the level of heterogeneity in polymer samples that are theoretically synthesized in mechanistically distinct pathways? Tools like particle accelerator or gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, in less than a century, have been so institutionalized in scientific research that it is sometimes just remarkable to witness the granularity of information we can obtain.

(IV)

I am a proponent of the liberal arts education. This might have had a stronger case sometimes one hundred years ago, where the construction of my identity would be a lot less interdependent of society at large. The liberal arts education provides me with the liberty to construct the ideals, the means to ideals, and the means to figuring out such means, that transcend the time and space known to present man. In the same way that the lives of people fifty years ago have grossly differed from mine, I desire the integrity in my modus operandi, my means, that hopefully holds up against the winds of the world.

(V)

Expertise in the financial markets can be laughable, but for what it is worth any degree of predictive consistency in the face of chaos, without manipulation, is god-like. Hedging risks occurs in any market-like platforms: one could argue that the working model of the NSF or the NIH has been concerned with making the best judgement on what will become worthy of investment. A lot of spin-off startups from pioneering labs face the inevitable hurdle of scaling, wherein the intellectual faithfulness to truth has to accommodate the bottom line that distinguishes the financial, political, or socioeconomic currency with which the innovation can amass. Similarly, some of the most impressive ideas in developmental economics leverage the most quotidian angles to representatively sample from the chaotic nature of society. Truth is abundant, yet hard to ascertain. The competitive edge lies not in the provision of information, but the ordering of it.

(VI)

I have so much to figure out, but I have figured something out. To quote Defying Gravity, ‘something has changed within me, something is not the same.’ Today I had the chance to bask in the sunlight pacing around the Harvard campus with my friend Nữ, whose journey has not paralleled mine in ways beyond the one time we were in the Hanoi team for English competition in 2016. Yet we both felt like the enunciation of our interests, overanalyzing commercialized music or transnational advocacy, has taken on another layer of complexity that could only be produced by cycles of exploration, education, and internalization. In this sense, I only regret that I have but one life to experience college. I do not know how much I have grown beyond the surface, but the seeds of the liberal arts education have expressly sprouted. I just need to know what to do with them.