Time is like a train

Ask me how time passed when I was five and I’d say I have infinite time in the world to do everything I wanted. Tell me to do something today and I’ll add it to a mental bin of an eclectic mixture of things I’ve done, things I’ve started, and things that I have yet to do. Maybe I’ll get around to it when I sort through that bin and maybe I won’t.  As I get older, I’m noticing how the days feel longer and the weeks shorter. 

As lower year comes to a close, I believe one the most significant ways in which I’ve grown is letting things go and coming to terms with my rigid “have to do everything perfectly” mentality. Particularly since it feels as if the weeks fly, I’ve realized that some things in my mental bin will stay unaddressed for a while. For example, some nights, I no longer preview the math material for the next day because I have a physics test the following day as well. When I sit in bed at night and think about everything I’ve done and everything that I haven’t, it’s not that I’ve forgotten to preview for math, it’s that I’m taking care of something else and making a slight compromise on another. Time simply keeps going. It’s like a train that you’re either on or you’re not. Since the weeks feel shorter, I’m afraid that too many unfinished projects will remain in that eclectic bin at the end of the year. 

Does time continue to go by faster? When I ponder this question, sometimes that feels impossible, considering the speed at which weeks already go by. I’ve somehow almost done with my second year of high school even though it feels as if I just moved into my dorm. The classes I took in the fall felt not too long ago, and the funny thing is that I still remember a lot of the material I covered in those classes pretty clearly. Adults always talked about how quickly the last three years of high school fly. I couldn’t agree more. 

To be liked and to be respected

For the longest time, I thought lots of people disliked me. My pessimism is in large part driven by my oblivion to the other side of being liked. I’m aware that most people in my grade perceive me to be a try hard and a bit of a workaholic. I’ve written before about how I sit alone at dinner working, or how I find myself in silent often. I admit I work a lot and I struggle to give myself free time, but I couldn’t imagine that being the reason behind my perceived feeling of people’s dislike towards me. After all, I am at a boarding school where just about everyone puts in the effort. 

I blame the way I talk, sometimes the things I say, and the questions that I ask people. There are areas of improvement for me there. I’d like to use the appropriate tone of voice for different occasions. I find myself talking in a straightforward manner 80% of the time, but sometimes people just need another friendly voice cheering them on.  There is room for improvement here. I need to ask the right questions and put myself in other people’s shoes. Empathy is important. 

______

I spelled that all out in the dorm on Tuesday night to some seniors in the common room. I wanted advice and ways to improve my self-image. This conversation spurted from one senior’s question: why didn’t you run for class rep. The reply was easy and ingrained my head. I told her I didn’t think people in my grade liked me. For a while now, I’ve been thinking about how I could improve myself and better the way I interacted with other people at school. I’ve had conversations with my parents about improving the way I talk, what I say, and when I say it. Something I realized on Tuesday night is that sometimes there is no easy way to become more “likable”, as likability is often an innate response to a person’s behavior. In these cases, it’s about how the situation is looked at.  

I got many different responses and advice from the seniors in the study space. The most beautiful response I heard was from a senior whom I don’t usually talk to. She someone in the dorm who I see, but don’t usually interact with.  She told me there are ways that I can be more sensitive about the questions I ask, the tone of voice I use, and the things I say, just as my parents have advised me. Some of it is just about the way I phrase things. However, she mentioned that there’s an aspect that’s out of control for everyone and it’s inherent in how other’s perceive our actions. Some people in this world are well-liked. Others aren’t necessarily as well-liked, but they’re respected for the things they do and the way they behave. This senior told me a personal story about her experience feeling the same way I felt her freshman and lower year. She mentioned having done things that gave her a reputation amongst the grade. For a while, she was on the same boat as me, feeling down about herself because she thought people disliked her. I asked her how she learned to better herself. She made outward changes in the way she talked as I’ve been working at, but she also changed her inwards belief about herself. She told me that while she wasn’t “well-liked” amongst her peers, she’s realized she was respected. I parted the conversation with something she said that I will never forget: it is as valuable to be liked by others as it is to gain respect from people those whom you admire. Thank you for that, AR. 

Leo Ullman: survivor of the Holocaust

Yesterday evening, I went to a once in a lifetime event on campus. The Andover Jewish Society brought an alumn to campus who had survived the Holocaust. Leo Ullman (class of 1957) is one of the few remaining Holocaust survivors left in the world. 

Ullman’s story was absolutely gripping. He tells it from a first-hand case like no other history book. Ullman was just four years old when the Nazi’s attacked Holland. His grandfather owned a diamond cutting business, and his parents were both well-off and well-connected. Ullman believes that his family survived because they had resources and the connections to get themselves into hiding. When the war began, Ullman’s parents sent him into hiding with a police officer. This police officer, a connection of his mother’s, risked his life to take care of Ullman. Meanwhile, Ullman’s parents went into hiding for 2.5 years in an attic. After the war, Ullman’s family reconnected. At the time, Leo was about seven years old, but he had spent the entirety of his life that he could remember with the police officer. Ullman mentions in his talk that he didn’t experience the horrors as most others did, partially because he lived with an officer but also because he was young. 

One day, two gaunt people showed up at the officer’s house, claiming to be Leo’s parents. Hiding in the attic for 2.5 years, they couldn’t even walk properly. At this point in the story, Ullman claims that no writing can ever retell what his parents experienced during the war. He recalls that for 2.5 years, his parents lived listening to every single step outside the house and every knock on the door, knowing that knock or those footsteps could be the end of their lives. Ullman’s reunion with his parents marked the end of the war, and they moved to the United States. Leo Ullman went to PA for high school, later attending Harvard and Columbia. 

Ullman came from a privileged background. His family nevertheless experienced the trauma of WW2 and the Holocaust. At the beginning of the talk, Ullman mentions having had the opportunity to escape. Ullman and his family lived in Holland and at the time, everyone thought it would be safe to stay because Germany had not attacked Holland during WW1. These beliefs proved incorrect when Germany bombed a port, causing the government to flee and set up camp in England as a “government in exile”. 

The most striking part of Ullman’s entire talk to me was this: during the war, there was a 3-4 day gap between the overthrowing of the Holland government and Germany’s takeover. It was during this time that people who had money who take a ship to England; these 3-4 days were an escape period. Ullman and his family had gone to the ports to try to board a ship. They also had the funds to do it, but they didn’t have the patience. The ports were bustling with what seemed like the entire country trying to board a ship. Through the chaos, his parents made the decision to wait and come back another day when it was less crowded. The next time they came back, the Germans had sealed the port and there was no way to escape. 

A seemingly small decision made by his parents in the heat of chaos caused his family to remain in Holland during the Holocaust. I cannot imagine who different Ullman’s life would have been if he had escaped during that period. I appreciate Ullman for coming to our campus to speak. It was an honor being able to listen to him and truly enlightening. Ullman was young during the war and protected by a policeman so he didn’t experience the war as most people did. Nevertheless, for the remaining years of his life, he lived with his parents who really did experience the terror of it in the United States. It was their experience he sought to retell. 

A small step taken right now

"Success is not a big step in the future, success is a small step taken right now." -an old adage 

Sometimes I get super stressed in the moment. I have a huge bucket list of to-do's for the day and at the moment, it seems impossible to do everything. I ask myself to cut things out, but everything feels equally important. The most amazing feeling is when I'm lying in bed at night, realizing that I actually completed everything on that to-do list just by tackling them one-by-one.