WHOO-HOO!

...Officially 21! As of RIGHT NOW!!

Oh no? ...OH YES!

overwhelmed

college is finally proving to be quite overwhelming, even though i really haven't even started doing much work yet. i think i've still spend more time buying and renting books than actually reading. a lot of stuff has really just "hit" me over the past few weeks. i think timing is the biggest motivator and culprit, timing in the sense that for juniors now, the closeness of the "real world" is suddenly creeping up behind us faster than we can run away from it.

but why should this matter now? we're barely 50% into college and now it feels like most other juniors around me have their minds moreso set on next summer's internships and post-college plans than actually focusing on personal growth and things that they're truly passionate about. while this is a huge overstatement and generalization of the harvard student body, i feel like a significant chunk of people (around 33%-50%+) are on this boat.

it seems that more and more people are willing and eager to accept traditional models and meanings of what it means to be successful. this is unfortunate, because while many people might claim to be simply exploiting existing professional systems so that they can rise quickly to a state of power where their true passions and save-the-world ideas can "be heard," the sad reality is that for most people taking this route, they are the ones who end up being exploited. and suppressed/subjugated.

one more idea: what's this huge obsession with leadership and titles? striving for the highest positions within an organization and focusing on the glamour of your "leadership" really only reflects how shallow and selfish your notions of leadership are...being the president of a business club might sound great to people reading your resume, but it more often than not doesn't mean or do diddly squat for the students in college community for two reasons: 1) you're essentially preaching pro-business and pro-profit values and mentalities and 2) these values are then cultivated in students who "don't know what they want to do but know that they want to make a difference," thereby reducing the business club and its leadership to the perfect puppet portal to the greedy and selfish pro-profit business world.

you might be wondering now, then what's true or genuine leadership? i can't really give you a straight up answer, but for starters, i can tell you that genuine leadership causes you to critically think about what leadership really means and is all about. it's about actually doing things and collaborating with others to realize the power of working together towards common goals and positive change. more importantly, it's about taking the initiative and having the courage to not blindly follow and glorify the value systems imprinted upon society by big business.