Optimistically Jaded

In freshman year, I was named the forever freshman.

People attributed it to my optimism and my happy-go-lucky demeanor towards any and everything. I remember writing a speech for the CPW TimTalks that year and it was full of absolutes: "MIT is #1 for so many reasons" and "MIT is undoubtedly the best place for students to pursue their dreams."

I reread this love letter to MIT with a raised eyebrow but a warm heart, amused yet nostalgic of my idealistic freshman world. I remember a conversation I had then in which I vehemently defended that MIT is objectively the best school out there. Not surprisingly, my friend and I both came out of that conversation with unchanged opinions.

Since then, I have learned to look at things more critically. Call it realistic or call it jaded, but I've learned how valuable it is to have a critical perspective on things. I remember when jadedness took its roots in me sophomore year. I was confused why every situation didn't have the same glow of perfection, the same aura of amazing. But then again, there were people facing real problems, so my late blooming reality check seemed trivial.

And it didn't turn out to be such a bad thing: sure I don't see everything as rainbows and unicorns anymore, but that's just a side effect of growing up, and one that I am grateful for. Looking back, I realize my jadedness was a result of my intense desire to make an impact. In order to continue growing and improving, I needed to look at everything with a critical eye. Only by looking at things critically can we improve, because being aware of flaws is the first step to fixing them. Thus, my negativity is a result of my productivity. The problem is, now I have trouble turning off my critical lens to see the unfiltered optimistic side of things with the same ease I once had. As a product of constantly looking for ways to improve, I now risk thinking myself into a frenzy of negativity.

However, I now strive for a better blend of innocent optimism and experienced guardedness. I still look for ways to improve, but I also push myself to consider the promising positives of every situation.

Admittedly, I've been a little harsh on my Cambridge experience, which is what triggered this post in the first place. It wasn't what I expected, but there's a lot to be grateful for. Nevertheless, whenever I spoke about my experiences, I noticed myself bringing up the negatives more than the positives. Conversations about my time at Cambridge always started with "It's great but..." and then spun off into what could be improved. However, the way I frame my experiences affects how other people view them as well. Taking a polarized stance can close off new ideas and turn off people from thinking in a different way. My tendency towards extreme opinions is why I'm sometimes shiet at giving advice or have trouble getting people to see things the way I do. Extreme positions seem personal and emotionally driven, and that's not convincing anyone.

So now I'm working to both internalize and externalize a more balanced perspective of the world. And I'm still working on this balance. I take criticism a bit too far at times, while giving too much benefit of the doubt at others. My perceptions influence the lens through which I view the world, tuning the jadedness dial up and down based on my preconceptions. But its important to practice objectivity in every situation. We have control over how we view the world around us, and that means we should responsibly tune our own perspectives to be a little more understanding. By being aware of our biases, we're able to give everything and everyone their due consideration.

It's kind of ironic then that my jadedness was a result of one of the most positive experiences of my life. My time in Singapore the summer after freshman year was the catalyst to my passion for impact, but was also what started me on the relentless path of making impact happen as fast and as often as possible. But rather than approaching improvement in the blindly critical way that I used to use, I'm trying to tune my mindset to one of optimistic jadedness. I still want to see problems as improvements to be made, but I also want to see them as a projection of a better world in the near future. It'll be a process, and I'm still working towards this happy medium. 

Or maybe I'm just working towards happy :)