[27] Odes On Orientation.

An Op-Ed on Orientation week (and beyond), tied with a wavering self-perception and a reflection on reflecting.

1 CORNELL KILLED CHIMP

It’s always felt redundant for boarding school admission officers and Gold Key tour guides to reiterate how this institution would help prepare me for the college experience. 

The pipeline ultimately fails because there is no such thing as acclimation for what’s to come, instead only an appetizer of it. Here, I’m stuck chasing a high that Choate so graciously granted, which wouldn’t be a problem in and of itself if all I set out for was an imitative rerun, but alas, I seek an iterative improvement — and so, I try to sniff up as much good with as little bad, but by then, there’s nothing worth sniffing. 

This lack of sniffables isn’t necessarily a mishap on Ithaca’s end. Rather, it seems to be universal in the college experience itself — the grass is just as gray on the other side. It’s dejecting to come to terms with the inevitability that, at any given point, I’ll know less people in my vicinity than I do know. It, then, dejects me further that this know-how extends beyond knowing them personally, or even knowing their names, but of having known their faces. Through and through, I’ll end up a stranger amongst strangers. 

2 BUT IT’S PROVOCATIVE, IT GETS THE PEOPLE GOING

My persona leans pungent. I’ve been startled many a time to stumble across an opinion from someone whose opinion isn’t warranted. It’s perhaps a tad self-centered to bloat and blame others for having discussed me in ways that (supposedly) do me a disservice, but I assure you that all I’ve taken away from each stumble is that others may pay more attention to me than I thought I’d be afforded. 

In all fairness, I’ve been knowing me to be polarizing, especially since I sought it as per provoking others. When you spew some stank shit, you’ll sure shoehorn yourself into minds and memories — if I had a loud personality to boast, I’d guarantee that I’d be heard. 

But I didn’t clock that being heard ain’t the same as being heard out. In the same way that I don’t, it’s unlikely that the run-of-the-mill guy would grant you the time of day to explain and expand on yourself. You become cemented as a caricature, and they lowk def don’t care enough about you to let you intervene that impression from hardening — at some point, being memorable just doesn’t justify the sheer bullshit about yourself that you end up catching wind of. 

3 ORIENTATION, PERHAPS

Perhaps the greatest missed opportunity whilst helming residence in Wallingford (other than ripping a team sport with my boys) is that I nestled myself into cliques instead of venturing into social circles beyond what was comfortable (or convenient, rather). This may have been the case for good reason, in that Choate would’ve managed it to work if it was meant to be, but I wouldn’t know that for sure unless I bantered that banter. And banter, I didn’t. 

Perhaps it was too much to ask of myself in the senior year to diversify my social portfolio, but it certainly felt within the realm of reason at the onset of college. I loved so much what Orientation could be that I hated it since I struggled so much to thrive in it. I felt I was leaving a mild shark tank pitch, or a bateman-esque business card bound to be tossed in the way I introduced myself. Never necessarily false, but too sparse in flair to garner interest from either party to keep the convo going. 

Perhaps it was an issue of not knowing where to start, a sort of choice overload. I came to cope, my cope taking the form of a dismissal of Orientation. — how many of these people would I have ended up hanging out with a few weeks from now anyway? There’s some truth to that, but then again, people (including myself) like security and would rather stick with their tried and true (or at least passable) friends, rather than feeling compelled to seek something else. 

Perhaps it was demoralizing to scrape at so many surfaces but fail to dig deep on any of them. I graduated thinking I’d learned to be comfortable (perchance too comfortable) being alone, but it might be comfortable only when I know for certain it was solitude by choice. When you meet so many people, they blend together, and I felt myself blending into the background for so many people. For a while, there was no “at least I have…” companion — by a certain point, I did find comfort in solitude once more. This time, lesser so a “fuck all this noise” conviction (like mine at Choate), and more so a “suppose it’s just fucked for now” concession. I should feel lonelier, but a part of me’s learned that I can thug this out on my own and a part of me’s learned to let go of expecting more from others, and that scares me. I’m scared that I’ve stopped making enough of an effort to put myself out there, because I’ll somehow find my people, eventually — even if that were the case, I feel it may be a disservice to myself that I’m not making that effort to venture into social niches not immediately comfortable to me. And I’m scared because I know how much friendship once meant to me, and this might be THE “we’ve lost the plot” moment that just so happens to be unraveling before my eyes. 

4 MICHAEL PORTER JUNIOR

I simultaneously think I’m far too complex for someone to grasp all at once and far too shallow to be worth getting to know (yet). In the same way I bailed on the triathlon because I didn’t feel prepared enough to swim with my swimmer friends, I didn’t feel confident in what I had to boast about myself in first impressions. At this point in my life, so much of what I pursue (e.g., the pusha t discography deep dives or the messy letterboxd decimal-ed excel sheet or this stupid chungus chopinions blog) is in my best interest (and mine alone), so how do I get that across to someone who neither shares my interest nor my fascination for that which I pour my soul into? That’s the shallowness I suppose I feel — that I just don’t have enough tangibles for anyone to present me with the coveted “yeah, he’s tuff” moniker. 

But it’s not like I can stop socializing until I’m “better prepared,” partly because you can’t expect to get better at ts if you’re not talking to people, and partly because this isn’t something you can necessarily prepare for. Impressions are a “there are no right answers, but there certainly are wrong answers” affair. 

I thought the wrong answer was making a bad first impression — it’s been a privilege that some of my closest friendships today were birthed from second chances that let me re-audition myself, but it’s been exhausting as fuck having to remedy something that could’ve just started off on the right footing. It’s ironic that tiptoeing around this supposed wrong answer led me to make the wrongest answer of them all — to make no impression at all. 

I think all I wanted was to skim through the preamble, to cut to the chase to ask if you could be my number one option, and if I could be yours. I sought a formula that would be a one-all-be-all cheat code for the small talk. It’s in the neurotic reviewing of game film that I forgot altogether how to hold a normal conversation. I’d call friends before important interviews to get back into the groove of being socially normal. I was a muted version of myself — far too cautious, and certainly far too scrutinous. 

After all, scrutiny is the son of reflection. As reflection’s number one proponent, I’ve never been more skeptical of it as I am in this moment. I’ve always thought reflection was a favor I was doing for myself, since you need to understand the situation to find it a suitable solution — it seems reflection will neither get you to the solution nor execute and enact the solution even if it is chanced upon. 

Maybe the only thing more uncomfortable than providing yourself with the bitter truth is the discomfort of not understanding yourself. 

The reflection I granted myself, in its most self-deprecative form, might not have been honest. Even in the way that I describe how Orientation went, I’m sure it’s imbued with a narratorial bias that makes it seem far worse than it actually was. I put myself through this penance because at least I’d be able to put into words a “why” when I feel so down. I sought reflection as a means to rationalize who I was, but somewhere along the line, I’d begun to heed these disparaging (and dishonest) “reflections” as my identity in hopes I’d rationalize my inherently inexplicable (as everyone else’s) human soul. 

I’d go so far as to say that reflection-based change never really sticks. What changes us are our surroundings, not our self-indulgent soliloquys. Though it wasn’t on my command, I’ve changed as per my changed circumstances at Cornell — it wouldn’t make sense to return to factory settings of chucking up bad impression shots, because that’s not me anymore. I’m lost because what once was crass is now condescending, what once was provocative is now pretentious, what once was vanity is… still vanity — what if that just doesn’t mesh well with being myself? 

I think that’s where the intangibles I carry with me as an alum of Choate come into play — I know what’s red, so I might just need to go on a Michael Porter Jr. imitation where I fuck off on the field goal percentage and just chuck whatever shit I think is green. Maybe I just need to be prideful enough to believe I deserve to make that bullshit shot because I’m me. It’s not like everyone can or will be your friend anyway — and if every shot’s going in, then I’m just not shooting enough. 

It was unlucky that I came here with no friends from Choate. It was unlucky that I was put in the fifth-floor corner of Clara Dickson. It was unlucky that I’m in Engineering. I suppose it doesn’t make a difference if I chuck it MPJ style, cause the luck gon’ find me one way or another.