2023: Portrait of a Graduate

It feels as though I always see double

I see double as in the list of names on my ID 

As in the gender marker on my birth certificate 

As in the form of my body in photos 

As in the Tennessee lawmakers 

I always see double

Or triple, or however many visions you want to use to describe a person like me 

After all 

I see double in my birth and childhood 

As in the cultural dissonance of my parents 

As in the range of experiences that come with a skin tone that’s different 

As in what do you do with a Chinese Jew 

My one superpower is that I can hold the duality 

I can handle it. Even if I don’t want to 

So I see double in everything 

The conflicts of diaspora 

The decline of someone you love 

The names, identities, and cultures

I don’t think I can stop writing about this 

For it is a struggle without clear resolution 

It is the endless journey 

Of becoming more human 

___________________________________________

Good evening everyone, my name is Ash and I’m a junior here at Watershed. 

It is frankly trippy to be presenting another PoG. It feels like just yesterday I was doing a similar presentation for 10th grade. Or bundling up during 8th-grade solo’s when a snowstorm hit. Or sitting by the fire and telling my classmates about my change of name on our 6th-grade trip to Crow Canyon. 

Honestly, if I were to sit 6th-grade me down for this presentation, they’d probably get up and leave. I think 6th grade me felt as though they were just beginning to understand. Just starting to map the ways of the world, and while it was a little uncomfortable, it made sense. They were terribly mistaken. What they thought was the tipping point into meaningful and poignant adulthood was actually a stumble and fall into the muck that is living. I must, however, point out that it is better than it was. 

This is probably because even when I was a young child, I was already aware of certain paradoxes. From first or second grade I could feel how the trauma of my adoption shifted my maturity, especially as I looked around at my peers. When I’d express this gap to teachers, they’d respond with something like “College will be better”. I was in 3rd and 4th grade. The push to grow up fast became this ever-present whirring in the back of my mind. I wanted to be 18, 20, 25. Even now, I sometimes will lay in bed and imagine my life if I was 5 years older.

This is a common phenomenon. Most people call it wishing your life away. I think what they mean is that by focusing on another time, you’re missing the now. You lose track of the urgency within this very moment, idealizing something you cannot understand until it sneaks up on you. 

Nonetheless, I did this. I prided myself on my maturity. From second grade on, I never played tag or football. I despised recesses. What a load of wasted time. Time we could be learning. Time we could be having valuable conversations instead of tossing around a piece of leather. Joy made herself small to make room for practicality. 

It’s sad to see how much I missed out on, and yet also humorous to see how what 6th-grade me would have considered childish, is so present in every person I look up to. In pursuit of what they thought was maturity, little me was digging themselves into a hole of burnout, something that wouldn’t catch up with them until high school. 

What I misunderstood about maturity when I was younger is that personal and professional success is measured not by your ability to be solem and consider all these terrible things in the world, but by finding reasons to continue living as fully as possible. There is something here to be said about Emotional Intelligence. That the preservation of a people is so heavily based on our abilities to advocate for change, but also to enjoy life for the wonder it is. That the success of mankind lies in our abilities to be both childish and mature. 

However, even now, with all the work I’ve done to understand my past, I still experience this strange separation from the kids around me. I have more recently come to understand that this is primarily due to nuances of my identity. I came out around the same time my parents divorced. Since then, it’s been an ongoing journey of exploring self and identity. Every year has birthed new developments and discoveries. This year was no different. 

11th grade started with a bang. My initial plans to attend a study abroad in Israel were crushed when I was forced to face the magnitude of my outsiderness as a politically neutral person in a biased program. While I had intended on attending the program to learn more about Israel, Palestine, and the complexities of Jewish identity, I was instead bombarded by a program that looked to the Israeli government with zero criticism. After two weeks of minimal sleep, immense discomfort, and intense dysphoria, I dropped out. 

Upon my return to the States, emotions started to bubble up. In addition to my already gut-crushing guilt and shame at failure, I was forced to stare my identity head-on. This has framed the rest of my academic school year as the program served as a clear analogy to many of my ongoing struggles and the launch pad for internal development.

A major consequence of multiple identities is this constant feeling of being an outsider. That the spaces that exist were never really made for your experience. They can touch on pieces of it, but the uniqueness of your identity isn’t something most people can truly grasp. When I was younger, I coped with this by developing self-reliance, ambition, and a fierce work ethic. Internally, I understood the possibilities of my perspective but lacked the security of a community. Nonetheless, I thrived in my work. I placed so much pressure on myself to turn the outsiderness into meaning, into impact. I was quickly pushed into gifted student classes. I was praised for my work ethic and internal motivation. 

My outsiderness fueled my great work for so long and for so long it worked. But fueling anything solely with fear is a recipe for failure. 

For me, this arose as the internalizing of my individuality. Being an individual is fine, we each have our own experiences, but too much individualism can easily lead to isolation and arrogance. When I convinced myself that no one could get me because of my perspective of the world, I was unintentionally pushing away everyone in my life. 

This is harmful, not just in terms of my personal mental health, but also because it distorts every interaction I had with another. I was noticing differences, not similarities when what you really need to observe is both. 

Quality leadership elegantly demonstrates this. A leader is constantly juggling the needs of the individual against the needs of the group, But one cannot solely focus on the individual as no collaboration can be made, but one also cannot ignore individual differences and tensions. I’ve noticed that I tend to lean more toward the individual side of things. I thrive in the one on one moments and by leading as a quiet example. These also have immense impacts, I just know I am not a leader that cares about who’s at the front when backpacking. 

Leadership and any effective communication with another also relies on the consideration of intention and impact. This theme is everywhere. You can only have so many conflicts before someone mentions intention and impact. Therefore, for the sake of everyone’s sanity, I’m only going to speak on it briefly. The intention is the personal piece, your thinking coming into an interaction, and the impact is how it actually lands. The spectrum between the two gives space for disparity and disjointedness. 

One of the major ways I’ve explored the balance of effective communication is through the use of storytelling to highlight misunderstood, underrepresented, and greater social justice stories. Each of the works I’m most proud of this year, and in the past, could be considered in this light. 

That is what my Ism’s analysis paper on BDSM practitioners was about. It is why I still haven’t finished the booklet I made on Latinx Immigrant Stories for Spanish. Why I picked the topic of African Americans in front of and behind the screen for my final Cinema Studies reflection, instead of the other, more traditional genres. And, to consider earlier work, it’s the why behind my Social Entrepreneurship Project and my Borders History Paper. I work hard to uplift people and communities in hopes of lessening the blows of isolation and invisibility. 

Storytelling also feels impossible to get right. There are so many variables to consider. What is the perspective of your subject, your audience? How much of it is about you? Storytelling certainly also plays into the greater questions surrounding craft and artistry. As a creative, there are always two big questions bouncing around in my head; how do I know it’s done, and how can I make it better? You can turn in 20 drafts of your paper, and each time it will get better, but at a certain point, the paper must be turned in, and perfection is, as we all know, an illusion. 

The same can be said of art,  poetry, or any piece of work. When is the want to deliver a product greater than the want to improve within the process? It is just as valuable to know when to stop, as it is to continue.

An antidote I’ve found to this dilemma lies in where we focus our energy when creating great work. Many of us are attached to a destination, a grade, an acceptance, or accolade. The issue with destinations is that we lose track of the process, and often, our intentions. For example, one paper I wrote in my Rise of Ism’s class felt amazing. I had clarity the entire process on where it was going and my intentions. The other, not so much. My message was unclear and my motivation minimal. Guess which one I aced? Enjoyment of a process is ultimately huge in the execution, and if it can’t be enjoyment, clarity is the next best option. 

There is a therapy-related concept that argues that goals are like destinations on a map and values are like directions on a compass. If you solely rely on your goals you will likely end up headed in directions that contrast your values. However, if you have no goals, you may end up wandering aimlessly in a direction with no real conclusion. Goals can tell you when a piece of work is finished, but only considering your direction, your values, can distinguish what will make the piece better. 

So while the artist is having struggles within themselves and with surrounding their work, they are also facing the challenges of society. As an artist, a creator, it often feels that we live in a society that doesn’t so much value the subtle art form of story, meaning, and impact, as much as it values practical analytical application. Even when story is included, it’s often to churn out more product, to play with the pathos portion of our brains. 

This reality would shut down a large portion of my passion for storytelling in exchange for the security of a job that required more analysis and less balance. I was probably stuck in this rut for a year, maybe two, and only have just climbed out. 

As I reemerged from my fears surrounding my career this year, I’ve also found some courage, and have reopened myself to the breadth of wonders creativity can contribute to great work. Instead of meticulously planning and then step-by-step actualizing, one end of the spectrum for courage, I’ve tried to make room for some trust and faith. Trust that the values I’ve held so closely, which no longer serve me as they once did, will make room for values that will serve me in the now. 

But to finish my thought on creativity, one interesting thing I’ve come to understand is that while creativity can and should be utilized in the classroom, it is more valuable to me as a mostly personal process. The lasting impacts of perfectionism, a consequence of my obsession with controlling my outsiderness, has placed insurmountable pressure on me to perform, in school and often in life. I’ve come to recognize that everyone needs a way to express and explore themselves without the pressures of delivering. 

This has always manifested as writing or drawing for me. For several years now, I’ve meticulously journaled all of my experiences and feelings. I don’t intend on doing anything with these, despite many people telling me I should try to publish them eventually. They’re not designed for the audience's consumption, they’re art for the sake of art. 

This was a vital understanding for me. I often attempt to turn every experience into content, and not just content that’s good, content that could be hung on the wall. This has only added to the immense pressure I already feel, setting me up for failure. 

Sometimes, you just have to create to create, and live to live. 

Nonetheless, there is a sweet spot between creating for a product, and for something personal. And like all spectrums I’m sharing here, they aren’t mutually exclusive. 

In Pablo’s class on China this year, we learned about Taoism. In Taoism, there is the Ying and Yang. They are not opposites, more so flows that neutralize each other. Nothing is best in absolute form and everything is changing. In this way, the Taoist principle provides no definitions or rules. It encourages you to naturally find where you sit on the spectrum. 

Similarly, what I have shared with you offers no definitive answer on what it means to be a good leader, a good communicator, a craftsperson. I also cannot offer you an absolute answer on what it means to be me. To be queer, to be Asian, adopted.  

And truthfully, if I could, I’d probably have an incomplete picture. Nothing is so simple. I am not, cannot be, just Jewish or Asian without losing so much nuance. Just as you cannot be solely a leader that considers impact; you’re missing so much. 

Each year, as I get older, I just see more perspectives. It's daunting, difficult, and oftentimes destabilizing, but it’s also human. This year is the first time I started to be ok with that. Owning up to my history, culture, and identity is huge. I’ve loosened my grip on who I decided I needed to be in order to see what I might become. 

In this, I’ve also accepted that sometimes things are going to be complex, they’re going to make me come home exhausted, and they’re going to be disheartening and confusing and beautiful. And that’s ok. That’s good. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. 

Just remember, 

Life happens, not in the extremes, but the in-betweens.