For some reason this semester started very abruptly. Sorry, I mean the reason was clear: I arrived on campus the night before classes start, thus missing some registration ceremony that I was fined $50 for my absence. I do not know really why I was late though. I booked my tickets as the return leg of my flight to Vietnam to get my visa, and I probably could have avoided that penalty if I had not been in such an emotional rush to book my flight. For this academic year, I lived in a sextet with all the previous members of Vanderbilt E31, with the addition of Kofi and Corin.
CENG 377: Water Quality Control
Water Quality Control was single-handedly the most influential course that I took at Yale, one that almost never happened. I remember having picked out my five courses for the semester, which started at first with Introductory Macroeconomics instead of the Intermediate equivalent. I had got into the seminar-style introductory course, still unsettled by the brutality of the 98-equaling-A-minus curve that the semester prior enforced due to strict grading policies by the department. The instructor, who apparently was very good during the summer, sounded quite harsh when I shopped the class. There were some students who also seemed a bit too eager to answer the most trivial questions, indicating to me a desire to signal intellectual preparedness that I found off-putting. The professor kept insisting that enrolled students needed to have taken or placed out of introductory microeconomics, which was not applicable to me, technically speaking. I decided it was not worth the mental toll to stay in this course. I switched to the Intermediate level, which forced me to swap out Introductory Physics. I did not want to take another Global Affairs elective. But I could perhaps shop a Chemical Engineering elective, albeit designated at at least the junior level.
The first lecture led me down a shadowed corner of the Davies-CEID complex, in a poorly maintained classroom with zero reception. I was so nervous: I was barely toying with the idea of being a Chemical Engineering major. I assumed an interest in geopolitics, reflecting upon the oft-repeated proclamations of the vastness, diversity, and complexity of natural resources Vietnam boasted. To some extent, water had been a thematic inspiration up until then. For IVMUN 2017, I envisioned this pan-conference crisis that pertained to clean water access, maritime disputes, and oceanic resource allocation. I interned for a water civil engineering nonprofit in 11th grade. Water debt in the form of water-intensive product exports was one of the rare lessons I took away from my first-year seminar. I was fascinated with the entwinement of natural resources and socioeconomic developments, which, in my opinion, primarily involved energy, water, and food. Global Affairs at Yale, unfortunately, barely focused on geopolitics; I was then pressured into finding an academic locus that could satisfy both my interest in the hard sciences and an extensive exploration of the water-energy-food nexus. I switched from Molecular Biochemistry & Biophysics to Chemistry, to Geology & Geophysics (now known as Earth & Planetary Sciences), to Environmental Engineering, to Chemical Engineering ABET. The first switch was out of disinterest in the biological sciences; the second, discomfort with the future of being a chemist; the third, an unwillingness to work in the petroleum industry; the fourth, the additional flexibility of the most vague ABET-accredited engineering discipline. I had hoped to immediately join the workforce upon graduation, doing something practical and high-impact. This class felt like a topically apt foray into what I was signing up for, especially as it was the major with the most course requirements at Yale.
CENG 377 required “ENVE 120, or permission from the instructor.” The last time I opted for the second prerequisite option was for ECON 121, when Professor Chalioti asked if I was mathematically competent and I gave a half-truth. I was so nervous that, after arriving five minutes early and realizing I knew no one, I walked out and tried to stay in a bathroom stall in the bathroom outside. When I had mustered the courage to go back to the classroom, I saw a grey-haired man with a tall figure washing his hands in the bathroom. This clearly is the Professor. Something must have overtaken me, as I hesitated squeezing behind his back to exit the bathroom.
‘Are you Professor Kim?,’ I asked.
He turned the faucet off and turned to the side. ‘Yes I am,’ he said. He was ready to leave the bathroom anyways.
‘Is it okay if I take the class if I have not taken the intro class?’
‘You might not survive the class if you are not good at Math.’ He gestured for us to have this conversation in the hallway.
‘I think I will be fine.’
‘Then I am fine with you in the class.’
It took me a while to realize how awkward conversing with strangers about serious matters normally would be. I still felt like an imposter, especially after staking my reputation on my mathematical capabilities once again. I sat on the right side in the second-to-last row, deflecting any and all attention from myself in the event that I had to drop the class out of embarassing incompetence. Professor Kim walked in, his slow gait exuding the unperturbed confidence of an erudite village elder, and passed out the only notes he printed that semester.
Our first two classes were a crash course on wastewater treatment. There was a constant stream of new vocabulary like flocculation or coagulation that describes the technical steps of handling wastewater. The first problem set was issued on the third class, which consists of two theoretical questions and an essay. ‘It will start becoming difficult very soon,’ professor Kim said to the class, as I sat confused by the 500-word composition on the importance of wastewater treatment. I made friends with Alec, who was the only person seated further away from the professor than I was, who turned out to also be a sophomore. He majored in Environmental Engineering and English, a combination that arguably paralleled my intentions.
As soon as it cost $20 to drop classes, the course picked up in its difficulty. We started learning the chemistry/physics of each step of treatment, not without taking to heart how to set up mass balance and the logic of chemical reactors. The third question on the third problem set required us to apply trapezoidal rule of integral computation, plug-flow reactor mechanism, and non-dimensionalization, in such a convoluted sequence of steps that TA recitations were a must. There I met David, the course TA, then a second-year student in the professor’s lab. He would sit on the left corner of the classroom next to his skateboard, legs crossed in camo jeggings, hair pulled back under his snapback, scrolling Reddit on his laptop. He would come into our recitations louring, probably focused on his own research problems, but would instantly switch to a very caring disposition as he explained every detail of every problem in order. Problem set six was the first time I could do more than half of the problems without his help.
By the time of the first midterm, the class had followed the instructions of Professor Kim to a tee. Every lecture, he would introduce new components of each treatment step, and proceed to mathematize their mechanisms with differential equations across six moving black boards. The lectures were somewhat repetitive in its procedures, though Professor Kim would begin and conclude every complete mathematical rationalization with an attempt to make it intuitive; in some cases, they come through humor at the expense of Alec. I skated by that fate for sitting in front of him. Our midterms contained series of multiple choice questions that asked about the treatment steps we learned, except they tested the implications of our mathematical derivations that we barely absorbed. Professor Kim would repeatedly open himself up for lunch so that he might spill some secrets about the exams.
Professor Kim was a fellow of Timothy Dwight College, which earned him free meals in exchange for some service. We got lunch in October in Silliman Dining Hall on a Thursday before class time. At this point, I was already in the finishing stages of preparation for YMUN Korea, hosted on the SNU campus. I told him about my Thanksgiving plan in his hometown, to which he asked if I wanted him to ask his former students who were professors at SNU to welcome me there. He asked me about my childhood in Vietnam, how much I was aware of the overperforming U23 Vietnamese soccer team being coached by a former Korean player, and how he used to have beer and fried chicken by the Han river when he was still in Seoul. He said I should not even worry about the exam, and asked whether I was enjoying the course. It was clear how much he liked talking to students.
Whenever people asked me what my best class at Yale was, I would talk about CENG 377, but I could never talk about what exactly about the course content that warmed my hearts so much. It was the only class that skipping lectures never came up in my mind, a fixture in my Tuesday/Thursday afternoon schedule I would clear all activities to avoid coming late. I had prided myself on my ability to learn better than attending lectures ever could, but there was something different about this course that made it rewarding to come. I felt as if I was not just learning about water quality control, but some epistemology of science or attitude to scholarship that I had yearned for since high school. The night before the first midterm, I studied in our classroom knowing that it most likely was empty. I used the chalkboard to create and solve variants of free-response mathematical questions provided in the practice midterm, relishing in contrived solutions of weirdly shaped reactors. At 11PM, my mom called me on her lunch break. I think I might actually like doing research, I told her.
Towards the end of the semester, Professor Kim wanted a more interactive classroom environment. He gave mini-lectures about innovations in wastewater treatment, most importantly his master’s thesis on desalinating wastewater from kim chi production and his current work with the School of Architecture on solar disinfection in mobile homes. He agreed to host a class in the Silliman courtyard, where he paused teaching about air stripping using Henry’s law to ask David to buy everyone Whale Tea boba. He took us to a local treatment facility, where I wore the white puffer jacket that was extremely popular among Koreans that helped him recognize me without even seeing my face. He told everyone to dress up in Halloween costumes if we wanted him to show up in full Darth Vader gear, and he kept his promise. I made more friends: Renee who normally did p-sets at the same pace as me, and Megan who was also a Global Affars major. Recitations became more like class outings in a not-so-secret meeting room on the second floor of 17HLH. I felt like I just walked into my academic safe haven, certain in my desire to be mentored by Professor Kim, David, and this departmnet. I felt at peace.
CHEM 332: Physical Chemistry with Applications in Physical Sciences I
I always wonder how much I should speak unfavorably of past experiences, especially if it involves human beings with professional reputation. I do not think that my stories will impact their career in any shape or form, but I am just afraid that it reflects poorly on me as a person who cannot tolerate criticism or resists being intellectually challenged. That said, the purpose of this series is in part to committing to digital paper how the best parts of my life unfolded, and in part to allow others to compare against their own experiences. I have learned that Yale memories, good or bad, linger with you far beyond the Yale bubble.
The P-Chem sequence was also influential in confirming that I would benefit from not being a Chemistry major. CHEM 332 was the rational next step from finishing organic chemistry. There were maybe ten of us from CHEM 174/175 here, with the majority of the class being juniors. The class met at 9:25AM on Science Hill three times a week. This means that however much I resisted going to O-Chem lectures the year before, the inertia was multifold this time. Even worse, there seems to be less of a camaraderie among students–especially from my perspective as a non-junior uninterested in the knowledge that physical chemistry was willing to impart.
I think the initial parts of P-Chem was not abhorrent, but I could sense something was off. By this point, I have taken huge liberties at Yale in terms of picking which classes I take regardless of their prerequisites–and gotten away with it. Even with organic chemistry itself, I started the class feeling like I lagged behind others, but somehow ended up fine. P-Chem also made me feel like a fish out of water, but I could still follow the overarching flow of the class. It should start with the First Law of Thermodynamics, then the Second Law, then the Third Law. Heck, the first lectures discussed the Zeroth Law, which should be intuitive.
Perhaps it was my own arrogance that led me down a path of no return. The first moment that I could sense this class was different was when we started discussing Van der Waals equation and more complex equations of state. For reference, this means that we started introducing non-idealities in real gases: how the intermolecular forces and the exclusion volume of the gas make the “PV” side of the ideal gas more accurate when set equal to the “nRT” side. I could finish the homework, but something was not fully clicking in my mind. Maybe it was the TA? I would go to section and space out midway through, because everything kinda makes sense and not really at the same time. My first midterm reflected this sentiment: I could go through the motion of solving a problem without actually feeling like the pockets of knowledge I had intellectually cohered.
The second moment that I actually sounded an alarm in my mind was moments before the second midterm, where I took a glimpse of our provided equation sheet. By this point, we had covered some heat engines, the theoretical construction of thermodynamic entropy, and some coefficients that represent non-ideal gas behavior (I still do not know what fugacity actually means). The equation sheet was an overwhelmingly dense compilation, crammed edge to edge with formulas that seemed to follow little logical order–less a reference guide than a device of academic intimidation. As far as I could remember, the first midterm also had an equation sheet, but the Professor had decided to use the same amount of real estate to cover double the amount of knowledge. This environmentally conscious move unsettled me seconds before I sat the exam, and forced my long-held reservation to reveal itself: I do not know which equations to use in which scenarios. For this midterm, I scored about one deviation worse than the class average.
Thinking back about the class, I think I was by no means a student exemplar. I was skipping classes and suffering because of it. Usually, the instructional materials were provided online, and they were sufficiently organized that I would have no trouble catching up. This class was different, because it was taught by Professor Patrick Vaccaro. I cannot speak to his stature in the Department of Chemistry, but I know that this was his first time teaching P-Chem I for at least 15 years. He previously taught the Lab course of P-Chem exclusively, a course that would reliably snag a spot in the top five worst reviewed courses at Yale. Much of this disreputation was owing to his meticulous teaching. Based on the reviews, there were lab reports due every two weeks, some of which border on the three digit page count. I remember talking to an alumnus of Chemical Engineering who asked if we were still required to take P-Chem Lab (we were not), because five years after graduation that one course was single-handedly the most remarkable academic experience at Yale. I am confident that was not an honorable mention.
The same sentiment carried over to this course. He taught the class with a cohesive scientific narrative, sparingly referencing his well laid-out notes during lecture as if he had committed them to memory. In fact, this was highly possible given the rumor that he would be writing a textbook on Thermodynamics as an end-of-career move. His notes were so thorough that the undergraduate learning assistants took the offer to help with this course because they actually wanted those notes for themselves in graduate school. They were so thorough, yet at the same time, so exclusive. Perhaps to encourage attendance, he never published anything on Canvas, instead putting a copy in the custody of the Marx Library in the basement of Kline Tower. Students were allowed to borrow them in two-hour intervals only if they sat down right there to read it, with no recording devices or methods of digitization permitted. I do not know of anyone who actually went to the stake in pursuit of this rarefied manuscript; I was never going to make it, because this library’s circulation desks only worked until 5PM, and my workshifts most days involved me staying until 5PM.
After taking the O-Chem sequence, many of my friends started talking about Professor Miller and how he was their academic hero in an overtly facetious manner. I never really understood that, but when I took the P-Chem sequence I realized Professor Vaccaro was exactly that for me. You could say he was harsh, but he was always fair. There was an air of haughtiness with how his class handouts and homework instructions were interspersed with Latin phrases; I did not understand if this was unique to his pedagogical approach, or rather representative of the echelon of senior academics who insist on one correct interpretation of things. I did not spend too much time evaluating if I was anyhow correct (later, I would check with my classmates if they shared any sentiments about the class; many agreed with me, but I did not know if there were social pressures involved). I just realized that whatever gut reactions I was harboring was pushing me away from a full-fledged career in Chemistry, and fortunately for me I was falling in love with a different department at Yale at the same time.
I did fine at the end. The second segment of this sequence, though, left me completely shaken.
ECON 122: Intermediate Macroeconomics
With the momentum of conquering Intermediate Microeconomics, I decided to press ahead with Intermediate Macroeconomics. My mentality for this class was similar to ECON 121, wherein intuition came after the math. I should just solve equations first, and let the results tell me what to think.
In reality, the course involved a bit more fundamental understanding than Microeconomics did. There were many questions about the relationship between gross domestic product, “technology,” and “population” that did not involve mathematically deriving a result than I hated to admit I never bothered to learn. There would be a True/False section during exams that served as intuition checks that I never got all correct. At first I was pretty frustrated, because I felt like my intuition was right and those questions were trying to trick me. I learned to eventually give up this pretense of knowledge, especially given that this was my first macroeconomic course, and wrapped my intuition around the result of those statements. I did not enjoy that process, as I thought they were exactly what I wanted to avoid by not taking the introductory sequence. But who is to say who knows better, centuries of economic knowledge, or me?
Eventually at around before the half-way point in the class, everything fell in order in favor as we moved to using Lagrange multipliers for constrained optimization for everything again. There were pretty insteresting algebraic manipulations for calculating population growth and technology growth, which made for lengthy solutions during the final exam. I was not crushing this class as I was with Micro, but this class did not contribute any amount of stress to my academic life by the end of the semester.
This class was when I interacted with Monique the most, who was a year below me and the future Secretary-General of YMUN. We befriended after recognizing each other’s presence both in the class and during YMUN meetings; inasmuch as I was a bad student, she was one of the few wwhose name Professor Peters remembered. I would check my homework with her and try as much as I could not to let my subpar class participation rub off on her.
GLBL 376: Asia Now: Human Rights, Globalization, Cultural Conflicts
I was very excited to begin taking Global Affairs seminars: the major was always a fixture in my academic planning, and it would cement my chances of being accepted into the major if I could get into this class (the application took place at the end of this semester). I forgot if there were additional motivations for me to take this class. It involved Asia, was a Humanities credit, and seemed to cover decently interesting materials. Usually the class size for seminars at Yale did not exceed 20 people, but somehow this class had more than 25; I suspect they increased the class size to accomodate everyone.
In reality, the class was a bit of a letdown because there was an overwhelming focus on East Asia, in particular with issues involving China in all directions. Most notably we discussed the Belt and Road Initiative (in retrospect, this has dwindled in relevance), the history of Chinese influence, and Taiwanese affairs; the class was co-taught by a Stanford professor who actually focused on Southeast Asia, but, given that fewer than three people including myself knew what ASEAN was, spent a third of his time guest-lecturing introducing everyone to the region. There was a noticeable rise and dip in excitement during the half-hour period before and after that first class on Southeast Asia, and eventually I learned to let go of my demand for regional attention and started working on my laptop to pass time during class. Professor Jing Tsu, the primary lecturer for the course, seemed to be taking on additional responsibilities as US-China relations became more complicated as the class went on, and as a result the end portion of the class felt a bit more unstructured and we would get out of class early consistently.
For the final project, we had to write a twenty-page research paper on something related to the course title. At this point, this was by far the most amount of writing I had to do, and I really had no clue which topic to pick. This was a few months after nearly forty Vietnamese citizens were found deceased in an industrial freezer en route to the United Kingdom as the last step of a long human smuggling journey. The news was more heart-breaking than eye-opening; it was no secret among Vietnamese nationals that there were people who found their way to foreign land through a combination of legal and illegal channels. As an international student who volunteered to travel abroad for education, my motivation and path to immigration were completely different from those lost souls in the story. Unlike Chinese or Korean immigrants, the Vietnamese immigrant community was (and is) separated roughly into two based on the context of their immigration: one compelled to move because of political alignment, socioeconomic opportunities, or family reunion purposes, while the other, like me, foregoing our privileges in the motherland towards grandiose educational or professional aspirations. It is rather recent that these sub-communities intermingle.
I wanted to take a look into what the motivations might be for this smuggling scheme to exist. If you think about the challenges they might face in the UK, if they were successfully smuggled, then the benefits of going through all such trouble would not make sense. They would have to give up their family and community, all forms of cultural and language familiarity, to work in a completely strange environment where they would have to tiptoe around the law in every aspect of life to continue being there. I surmised that the people who would choose to go with this scheme were often marginalized by the modern Vietnamese society in some form: those in underprivileged communities with poor access to education and employment, who were then promised an opportunity to change their lives by recruiters who were often themselves success stories of past schemes. There was also a strong religious factor, though we might never be too sure: though modern Vietnam does not discriminate against any religions, the historical North-South rift was partly motivated by the South establishing itself as a stronghold of Christianity in Vietnam. The first wave of Vietnamese immigrants (who left for political reasons) was thus predominantly of some Christian denomination, and sentiments of religious maltreatment persisted until today. I found that a statistically significant portion of the 39 victims followed some Christian faith, which was in agreement with the categorization of the first sub-community of Vietnamese immigrants, albeit with a new dimension of analysis.
I am not super proud of this paper, as I frequently relied on my own translation of Vietnamese sources that could indicate a degree of unprofessionalism (though I trusted myself with portraying the state of affairs accurately). On the other hand, this was my first implementation of the “one hour for every page” rule on Yale campus that I developed for myself over the summer. I started writing after my ENAS 194 final (which ended at noon the day before), spent a few hours breathing and preparing my body for an intense lock-in session, slept a full eight hours, and finished the paper by 11PM the next day. In total I spent 35-8-3=24 waking hours on writing the paper (I had written an outline as a checkpoint submission before)–not too shabby, but definitely not a proudly practiced habit.
ENAS 194: Ordinary and Partial Differential Equations
I am very neutral about this class. The strongest point of the class is the Professor, Professor Mitchell Smooke, who at this point just resumed teaching. He was a very effective communicator who spared us of complicating something as straightforward as homogenous ordinary differential equations. The weakest point of the class was the lecture hall: Mason 2-something. Unfortunately Mason Lab is one of the few homes of my department, and I still openly share my distaste for the building, notwithstanding its historical significance (it is old, and old-looking). The lecture hall was badly lit such that there was no point coming to class if you sat further down than the sixth row of seats. Thankfully, the class was straightforward enough that I could attend it occasionally and feel up-to-date.
Yale Model United Nations Korea
Apart from my a realignment of my academic goals, YMUNK was probably the other thing I dedicated myself to this semester. I might go back and expound upon how the YIRA ecosystem worked a bit more, but I had been working as the Under-Secretary General of Design for YMUN Korea since first-year spring, throughout the summer, and into sophomore fall. Given the international organizing options at the time, Korea felt like the place I most wanted to visit (there are now so many more international conferences that YIRA organizes). Being the Design person involved heavy use of the Adobe Creative Suite and managing public relations–activities that I had become introduced to through IVMUN and the extravagant machinery of Vietnamese high-schoolers’ event-organizing. This was an opportune nexus of my interests.
YMUNK moved me closer to the familiar faces that I had met in YIRA in previous conferences: Annie, who was my Tech-Branding pair for many YIRA things, Ornella, who was my boss both here and on the Executive Board, Henry, who was my Secretary predecessor, and George, who I was one of my Intermediate Microeconomics buddies. The big boss of the conference is Richard, who otherwise would never involve himself with conference organizing on campus, and whose journey at Yale is simply funny. Richard was accomodating to the rest of the team (which included another half that I worked with less often) in ways that pushed his own comfort zone, and I am so glad that, after all of that, he still considered me a good friend. Given my support system, I was allowed to take immense creative risks with how I wanted to promote the conference (the website, social media fanpage, booklets, banners, prospectus, and even font stylization). I am proud of the decisions that I made; Annie later walked back on some of the promotional materials I had created when she became the Big Boss of YMUNK, and I just repurposed them for my own sake.
Preparation for YMUNK was smooth sailing for the most part. I think the team anticipated a lot more hurdles as other conferences at the time had a more solid financial backing or delegate base, so we overcompensated by preparing things in our control way ahead of schedule. The location, for one, was going to be a major hurdle, as the SNU campus was relatively inaccessible no matter how prestigious it appeared. Even if we did not have to provide all meals, access to food was challenging for overworked supervisors and impatient adolescents to manage. Their stress reflected on us, equally new to the SNU campus, but obviously shouldering more responsibility to know the layout of the hosting locale. Nothing was worse than my first time being the Secretary-General for IVMUN (having to manage accommodations for a similarly distant venue), and my visa application was surprisingly low-stress to boot.
Before YMUNK took place, the Secretariat got to explore Seoul, and our journey was similarly chaotic. We moved AirBnBs twice: one was planned, and the other was when we realized the advertisement was deceptive and ten people could not fit into that square-footage. There were fun coordination problems given the bathrooms (or lack thereof), and we did not realize that you could lock and open it from the inside until the last day (by pushing the lever up). There was a karaoke night that started with some tears and ended with 4AM convenience store runs; there were photoshoots in the tradtional village and Hongdae shopping sprees. My biggest lesson was that I actually did not enjoy authentic Korean food as much as Korean food in Vietnam. I could not eat hot spice, and I was drinking water for soup for my first meal in Seoul.
I felt like I got a lot out of the trip to Korea. I got a haircut at a high-end salon with George and a white ankle-length puffer jacket, also with George. I got to meet Inseo, one of the Korean high-schoolers that we recruited to help with the on-the-ground operation, who got into Yale two weeks after the conference. I became closer to all of my tripmates, with many memories that were better off staying in Seoul, and many that we still bring up whenever we see each other to this day.
YIRA Executive Board Secretary
Yale International Relations Association is the parent organization that housed the conferences that I have mentioned (many of them involving Model UN), as well as other programs that I endedup not participating in (like our traveling team, educational program, or student-reviewed publication). There are nine programs and conferences in total (when I was on board), and the constituent program heads, together with five elected representatives, form the Executive Board of YIRA. The election can be contested; mine was not. The Secretary is usually a sophomore, responsible for notetaking during official meetings and weekly newsletters to all of the members, typically anyone involved in any opportunities hosted by YIRA.
The Secretary role has little administrative oversight, and most of what the Secretary is liable for is also covered by the President. This did not mean that I was considered secondary; it just allowed me to have relatively little stress about anything beyond collecting news updates from constituencies and neatly organizing them into a Mailchimp mail blast. If anything, the Secretary is often the bridge between the underclassmen who were likely not in supervisorial capacities, and the Board comprising mainly of juniors who were quite removed from the last time they were just a member. Once again, I got to exercise immense artistic liberties as I revamped our website, designed some merch items, and introduced a new logo as the United Nations itself asked us to.
I decided not to run for more senior roles in the Executive Board (which the Secretary usually did) as I felt like it would take away the joy I experienced and bring on the stresses. I saw my peers occupy those positions, still privy to some of their troubles and discussions as I was still in senior roles in constituent programs, but thankfully relieved of any potential direct involvement.
55 Whitney Avenue
I spent a lot of time in this one building my sophomore year. The spring semester before, I was selected as a First-Generation Low-Income Ambassador (one of seven), which meant that I would help organize some activities for the FGLI community and earn some additional income as a student worker at the Dean’s Office, located on the second floor. At the same time, I was recruited as a student worker at the Yale Center for International and Professional Experience on the third floor, which covered all of the Study Abroad programming, Office of Career Strategy, and Fellowships management. I was working about five hours in each office, often in two-hour intervals sandwiched between my academic commitments. (This was also why I could never go to the closed circulation desk to ask for the only available copy of P-Chem’s notes.)
I would consider this my first official employment, though part-time. I had previously gotten paid for my work, but such occasions were most often one-off. For both of these jobs, I would get a paycheck every Thursday morning and a W-2 at the end of the year; my tax returns became ever so slightly more complex. The pay was incredible for all I knew–I was paid about 13-14 an hour pre-tax, and that was enough to offset my surprisingly frequent takeouts and boba purchases. More than that, I learned how to navigate office politics, exchanging pleasantries with workplace regulars, and follow orders with enough reliability that I would be allowed to do my homework in between tasks.
There were fringe benefits beyond the compensation. I discovered a fondness for Welch fruit packs, which left me spiritually satiated for quite some time until I realized they were not remotely made with real fruits. Conversely, I discovered a disdain for licorice-flavored sweets, which one of my previous coworkers insisted on restocking. I met Joe, who turned out to be my long-time friend’s First-year Counselor, and also a friend of Muriel (who was the YIRA President when I got to campus) by virtue of Trumbull College, and assuredly at least one more way of being interconnected in the webs of Yale. I made good friends with the other FGLI Ambassadors, especially after asking them if I just witnessed an X-Comm session in real time (I did). I appreciated knowing where things were, especially on the administrative side, lest I should need help.
Ending Notes
The third semester of mine at Yale was still tumultuous, but tame in comparison to what had happened. Perhaps it was because as sophomores my friends and I had gotten into an acceptable groove of living while still exposed to the experiential learning aspect of the Yale bubble. Kofi, one of my new suitemates, started doing yoga in the common room after finding himself on his trip to Japan. He had a fridge that we were only allowed to put veggies in (for context, Kofi was previously the number one consumer of Popeye’s Chicken in our friend group). Slaveya, who at this point devised an unnecessarily contrived plan to not stay in her original residential college, basically moved to the suite upstairs of ours when a third of that suite left Yale (some permanently), and slowly emerged as our beloved agent of chaos when her birthday cake featuring her name showed up with “ya” missing. I was not actually in the suite that much: our suite was messy, there were occasional tourists peering into my first-floor room, my bed was lofted, the Harkness Tower would ring precisely when I would try to nap, and I did not enjoy food in the Branford Dining Hall. I split my social life across multiple circles, and luckily my friends were always there for me.
I did not know this Winter Break trip would be the last peaceful break period, so I chose not to go home. Instead, I went to California for the first time: one week at my friend Tuan’s place in Mountain View, and half a week with Joon in his hometown of San Diego. I enjoyed traveling by myself and did not mind the most economical transportation options, so I took an overnight bus from San Jose to Southern California where Joon begrudgingly picked me up at 5AM. California was calm, and at this point I did not have much connection with the state. Joon took me to the San Diego zoo, where I alluded to my second (or third?) crush at Yale. I had my first bites of Mexican cuisine and realized like, much like Joon’s favorite places in San Diego, my most cherished spots in Hanoi had nothing to do with their objective beauty, but rather the formative memories that took place there.
I managed to spend New Year’s Day in New York, catching glimpses of the ball drop before making it onto the last train back to New Haven. I stayed in the Omni, thanks to the International Office’s accomodations, and worked at the Visitor’s Office as a Tour Guide. I got to learn more cool things about Yale of the past and sprinkled in my favorite factoids about Yale of the present; unfortunately no one decided to tip me an iPhone as the tales professed. Instead, I heard about dramatic events that were happening around campus: a game of who’s who that reminded me of the quiet power and far-reaching bonds of the Yale community.