A Little Stupid is Good for the Sanity

Second guessing is a lifestyle. You rarely just do it once or twice, but rather, habitually and often subconsciously.

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I'm glad I chose to come to Minerva. I think it's the right place for me. It provides the diversity and intellectual challenge that I value and need to feel motivated and on my feet. What it lacks, though, is a cohesive sense of community. And for me, a sense of belonging.

Diversity is a good thing- on the whole. It fosters empathy and the sort of progress that comes from building on each others perspectives. It's necessary so you don't get stuck, both as an individual and as a society. But Minerva is intentionally diverse. The cultural diversity that is so pervasive does not necessarily result in a diversity of thought or ideology- though that is often the expectation.

We are all from different countries, but we think the same: global progress, generally liberal opinions with few exceptions, high achieving, academically motivated, and curious. I guess those are the most ideal and "smart" students that any university would want at their university.

But I think you need a little stupid in your life.

Love, to be successful in my opinion, should contain some element of irrationality. If you don't "love" someone beyond the more logical "similar interests" or "intelligent," then when differences start to unravel the relationship, there will be no reason for you to prioritize the union over the simple logic of the situation. For example, a couple that is dating: one organized and proactive, the other always unprepared and short sighted. They have a fight one day about one stressing the other out because of their counterintuitive and inconvenient habits. Whether they stay together or not, depends on whether they both love each other even though their habits are incompatible. That little something that holds them together without having a logical explanation is what we call love.

Why I bring this up is because I think there is a similar kind of irrationality that you have to have in order to remain friends with someone and continue to settle with their more irritating incompatibilities. And perhaps different people have different thresholds for that sort of you're-stupid-but-I-still-love-you mentality.

Having 150ish students doesn't provide much variety of choice, even though the group itself is wildly diverse. Even if you have one of each type of character, it means that even if you gel with some specific type of people, if they don't reciprocate, then you're fresh out of luck. You'll go four years convincing yourself that you have friends and come out of the other end without anyone to blindly lean on when you need them.

At Minerva, everyone is smart, but the smart ones are usually the ones that second guess. They're usually the ones who have failed and succeeded enough times to be motivated enough to want to maximize their successes over failures, and thus, they get stuck in the decision making process longer than it would take for them to just jump, fall, and pick themselves up again.

At my highschool, in retrospect, there was plenty of stupid. And by stupid, here I don't mean people who are not intelligent, but rather people who are deliberately ignorant. The people who live life not worrying about the world's problems because "somebody else will deal with it." The one's who don't care and are okay with not caring.

Those are the people that are the happiest- the people who know what they want and know that learning more about the world means sacrificing bliss and ignorance for the sake of frustration and knowledge.

I've been a little distant lately- trying to escape the Rez and the people and the socializing that everyone tries to capitalize on. The only one that seems to be there when it counts, seems to be me. And at some point I get tired of my own company. The older Minerva students seem to be cool, and frankly I've always gotten along with older people more than my class, but Minerva doesn't make it easy to get to know people from other classes, and in all fairness, the only constant in the equation of the next four years is M22, not any of the staff or other classes.

I guess I'm just trying to be a better friend to myself. I'm trying to not need anyone else since anyone else doesn't seem to need me. I asked a couple friends to join me to get donuts the other day because my friend was in town, and they quickly declined. Obviously it was a school night, and obviously they were just lazy to get out of the Rez, but I can't help but feel that at some level they didn't choose to prioritize my potential happiness over their convenience. Isn't that what good friends do? They do things with you because they think it'll make you happy, not necessarily because they think it'll make them happy too? IDK.

That's a bad example and it's just me being cranky, and just that I tend to say yes to more people than they say to me, but literally two of my closest friends, Daniel and Gracie visited me in freaking San Francisco because they wanted to hang out, and I can't get someone to go get donuts with me at night unless they feel "morally obligated since it's late."

I just don't get it. Does it come with time? That doesn't make sense, Gracie and I barely have existed in the same physical space for more than two weeks in total, tops. Does it come with talking to each other more consistently? Mansi and I barely speak to each other, but for some reason there is an implicit confidence that no matter who calls, the other will pick up and just chat. And it honestly scares me that these people that seem to care won't be more accessible when we travel around the world. Who do I lean on if it's late at night for everybody when I'm in Seoul and freaking out? Why is it so hard to find reciprocation in a place that is supposed to be the "best of the best"? But I digress.

I visited Berkeley today and I was surprised to learn that one of the students I spoke to regularly doesn't do her readings and still passes because "it's easy to guess the right answer without having to know anything." Minerva is structured in a way that this is pretty much impossible. Going to class without doing the pre readings is like throwing darts blindfolded- there's a chance you'll hit the board, but there's no expectation that you'll hit it at all, much less in the center.

I think I miss people who are just irrationally happy. The people who don't care, are the people who you can ignore the world's problems for a minute and just exist with, without having to second guess yourself. There's no competition of wits, no expectations that opinions are backed up by evidence, and just for a second, no need for progress- just existing. The people who deal with your shit even though they don't have to. The people who don't second guess when prioritizing your happiness over their convenience.

That's why Minerva is so exhausting. Because though we are all from different places, our perspectives about things aren't very different. We all care about "making the world a better place" and sometimes you just need to empty that bucket that's quietly collecting all your leaking dissatisfaction in order to continue with life and forget that the crack is still there.