If I ever come back by CJ Q. '23

Cross-posted from my blog, which is where I write these days.

One

If I stay, will you go?
And if I go, will you stay?
I don’t know
If I can keep going down this road

At the beginning of senior year, I began tackling the question on my final final exam: What happens next?

Decision-making is a skill. Like many skills, there’s a body of knowledge, scattered in decision theory textbooks, rationality blog posts, and sappy screeds about choosing where to go to college. Like many skills, there’s a gap between knowing and working, a gap exacerbated by the fear, uncertainty, and doubt surrounding big choices. Unlike many skills, there’s not opportunities to practice, as the life decisions are distant, and the feedback cycles are lengthy. Many scenarios are similar, but none are the same; the contexts are simply too different.

All this to say: for me, choosing what to do after college was easier than choosing where to go for college. But only a little easier.

Let’s simplify this decision. Should I do an MEng or not? Should I spend another year or two in MIT and get another degree, or should I leave Boston and work in industry? Never mind the question of what industry I’ll work in; this decision alone was already plenty difficult.

To theory, then. In software engineering, we have a whole toolkit to make changes with confidence. Regression tests prevent you from repeating past mistakes. Feature gates let you quickly switch between code paths. Database backups help you recover after a bad migration. Confidence comes when you’re certain that your changes are correct, and it comes when you have easy ways to revert issues.

Can I run regression tests? No, the previous contexts are too different to make useful generalizations from. Can I add feature gates? That would mean living two lives in parallel, and only making a decision after seeing the results. Can I make backups? Maybe if I could immerse MIT in stasis, leave, and hope it’s exactly the same when I come back. So much for theory, then.

Stay with MIT, or leave MIT. Choose one, knowing that the action of choosing will change me in an unpredictable way. If I stay, will you go? And if I go, will you stay?

Two

Oh, said I wasn’t ready
Didn’t think it’d be this heavy, let me
Explain myself
I’m the same but help
The pain I held, the shame I felt, I made you tell
I listened but my pessimistic brain don’t help, ooh
If I could put it on a shelf, I would
If I could explain myself, I would

Let me explain myself: I chose MIT because it was what I needed.

It’s a bit transactional to put it that way, but it’s true. I needed a degree, an education, and a ticket to raise my status. I needed a community, or two, or three; I needed places and people I could call home. I needed to learn the feeling of fitting in somewhere long-term; I needed stability. I needed to get my heart broken in new ways. I didn’t know I needed these things, but I got them, and MIT was instrumental in filling these holes.

Let me explain myself: I left MIT because it isn’t what I need.

I don’t think I’ve gotten everything I could out of MIT; that’d take many lifetimes. Rather, I was running into diminishing returns, partly due to learning less, partly due to feeling less. Toward the end of my undergrad, I often felt unmoored from my activities. Sure, I’d already decided that I wasn’t doing an MEng, but I think I would’ve felt the same no matter what. I needed a change, and staying with MIT, even staying in Boston, wouldn’t give me enough of it, even accounting for how MIT will change.

Then again: did I leave MIT because it will be better for me? Am I ignoring why I chose MIT long ago? No. The lesson from that choice was to think about what matters to me, and to trust my own assessment for what matters, even if it doesn’t line up with what others think. The decisions never lay with others, they lay with me.

What matters to me, then? I was stuck on this years ago, but I have a better idea now. While I haven’t had this exact decision before, I can test my thoughts against similar experiences, so I can avoid repeating past mistakes. From doing a UROP, I learned how important internal motivation was. From doing an internship, I learned how important becoming a better programmer was.

Now a pessimistic brain might be thinking: Of course these things are important. That’s like saying you value excellence, or respect, or community. And that’d be right. Without explanation, a value is contentless. No, the value of a value lies in its trade-offs. The value of a value lies in how it guides decision-making.

Valuing internal motivation means saying no to projects I’m not excited about, even if I have other good reasons to work on them. It means that if I run out of internal motivation, I need to spend time finding it, else, I quit. Valuing becoming better means saying yes to projects at the edge of my skills, even if it opens the possibility of failing. It means keeping a project I’m struggling with if I’m learning, even if it means missing a deadline or sacrificing quality.

Three

I hope there’s still a next time, next time
My prayer isn’t really doing me good
I promise I’ll be ready for you next time
If I could grow up in a day, I would
Come back tomorrow

Since graduation, I’ve come back to Boston five times, but it was only the latest visit that prompted me to write this post, as it was only in the latest visit that I was possessed by the strangest feeling, when I stepped onto campus from the Kendall/MIT station, an unbearable lightness lifting the hairs of my back, intensifying the more I walked, and it was then when I realized I’ve felt this before:

[…] I came into this whole mess getting ready to be sad. It’s like, you know when you’re going up stairs, and you take a step, expecting there to be more staircase, when there’s nothing but air? And then you kinda have to wobble for a bit before you lower your foot, as if you don’t really believe there’s solid ground that’s going to catch you.

A stairstep that exists in the mind but not in the world: that image made sense. Walking through MIT felt like walking through two worlds at once. The Green Building is in permanent construction, a dorm room in East Campus never gathers dust, the Stud stays drab and dim. Looking at these places, these places splitting at the seams with incongruence, filled me with—something. The postlude to the lightness. It wasn’t sadness. It wasn’t grief, because I know what grief feels like:

[…T]hat’s what I’m feeling now. Grief. Grief for my undergraduate years, back in MIT, and all the rosy parts of it. Grieving because I’ve lost something precious. Not a person or an object or a place or a moment, but their combination.

No, the feeling was quieter than that. Not as pointed, but still uncomfortable. Mildly painful, but a pain I could live with. There’s no longing attached to it, other than the want to stop feeling it.

The other day I started watching Log Log Land, and I was once again overtaken by this feeling; the first five minutes were fine, but then the setting started switching from one dorm room to another, each filled with people, studying or talking or hanging out, and it was then that the feeling became so strong I had to stop watching and collect myself.

And no, the feeling wasn’t negative. There was a small note of vicarious pride. Contentment in seeing others live in places I’ve loved. All that, undercut by diluted envy. The thought wouldn’t it be nice, so weak it was silent:

Wouldn’t it be nice, being a student again?

It would. But that’s not my life to live anymore.

Wouldn’t it be nice, having dozens of friends a few doors down the hall?

It would. But that’s not what I’m going to get.

Wouldn’t it be nice, living in Boston, visiting MIT often?

It would. But that’s not the same. It wouldn’t satisfy me.

And how would I know, if I don’t experience it?

I don’t. I don’t know. It’s not like I can live two lives in parallel,

and only make the decision after seeing the result?

That ball of feelings, tangled up like yarn, that mild pain, that small vicarious pride, that little contentment, that diluted envy; all of these pointed to the passage of time, the cycle of growing up and leaving, the awareness that others will grow up and leave; all of these added up to a sensitivity to ephemerality, to transience, to next time, next time.

Something like mono no aware, perhaps.

That visit, when I ate with friends, I avoided eating on campus. That visit, when I worked, I went to coffee shops, not the libraries. That visit was shorter than my previous four visits, and part of me wished it was even shorter.

It hurt, being in MIT, without being of MIT.

Four

If I stay, will you go? And if I go, will you stay?
I don’t know if I can keep going down this road
If I stay, will you go? And if I go, will you stay?
I don’t know if I can keep going down this road

Who’s singing to whom here?

From MIT’s perspective, I didn’t leave it, it left me. It’s always moving with the merciless speed of institutional change. It would take all my speed to keep up with it, and by then I wouldn’t have enough to go elsewhere.

Movement is always relative. There are no stillnesses: you’re always moving with respect to something. Even if you’re stuck somewhere, you’re moving with that place, and if that place is stuck somewhere, it’s moving with the earth. (Why would you ever want to move faster? Is hurtling around the sun not enough of a miracle for you?)

Long before we learn this principle of relativity, we learn counterfactual thinking, we learn decentration, we learn perspective-taking, we learn a theory of mind, we learn object permanence. These are cognitive capacities about things outside ourselves, because, apparently, growing up is about destroying egocentricity.

Is it fair, then, for me to whine about my pain of being apart from MIT, when MIT could be in as much pain being apart from me? I know, it’s ridiculous, thinking of places as having emotions. But it’s not like MIT is immersed in stasis when I’m not there. It’s not frozen like a photograph. It continues moving, flowing, pulsing, breathing.

Imagine seeing thousands of people come and leave every semester, like leaves that grow and fall every season. Would it not break you? Or would you get used to it?

Five

Don’t think the silence between us
Means that I can’t care less
I’m careless, in fairness
I’m unsure if like you
But I’m sure that I love you, so spare us
This inevitability, can I come back with a higher probability?
I hope you don’t forget I got a hole in my chest
In the shape of your heart, but it just don’t fit yet

My memory of graduation is, I’m certain, false. It’s silent but for the reading of names and the intermittent applause. I remember lining up to get onto the stage, walking down after getting my diploma, and a smash cut between. A subtle act, graduating. Ostensibly, it happens in the moment you’re declared a graduate. But if, after you graduate, you’re no longer an undergrad—then graduation has to be a much, much longer process.

Everything they say about distance and hearts and fondness is trash. The time I’ve spent apart only makes it easier to move on. The want to have fulfilling work, the want to be around good friends, the want to create beautiful things, these are holes MIT used to fill. Now, I have to put in more work to fill these holes, because there’s no longer a single thing that ticks all the boxes.

And I knew, I knew couldn’t keep relying on MIT to fill these holes. Because MIT (the place, and the things, and the people associated) and I are moving in different directions. Because using MIT (the place, the things, and the people) to fill that hole brings some contentment, but also, some pain.

Because, above all, I don’t want to be the person who overstays their welcome. I don’t want to be the person who can’t live in the present. I don’t want to be the person who thinks the best days of their life are behind them. I don’t want to be the person who, years after graduating, holds on to the places, things, and people from their undergraduate years.

Because, after all, I’ve graduated. That means I can’t be an undergrad any more. And it’s easier to throw something away wholesale, than it is to only throw away the parts you don’t want anymore. And the only way I can get rid of this nagging pain and these cloying wants is to leave it all behind.

Right?

No, the answer isn’t to leave everything behind, because starting fresh doesn’t have to mean starting over. I don’t have to be within MIT for MIT to be within me.

No, the answer isn’t to get rid of the pain. Didn’t I say earlier that the feeling isn’t all negative? Ephemerality begets beauty; that’s the reason cherry blossoms are valued. Nostalgia is a positive emotional experience, one of those rare cognitive psychology findings that replicates.

No, the answer isn’t to deny MIT. The answer can’t be to deny MIT. It was a huge part of my life. It’s four whole years! There’s no reason it can’t still be a part. A smaller part, maybe, but a part nonetheless. I can’t leave behind the tens of classes I’ve taken, the hundreds of friends I’ve made, the thousands of lines of code I’ve written, the tens of thousands of hours I’ve spent on campus, the hundreds of thousands of words I’ve written for the admissions blogs, the millions of things I’ve loved and hated again and again, and the innumerable measure I’ve gained besides.

Six

If I ever come back, I hope you’ll still be here
If I ever come back, if I ever come back
If I ever come back, please don’t disappear
If I ever come back, if I ever come back

At last, the song drops the title.

In my last visit, I went to Tech Squares, and it was the first night of that semester’s PE class. Ted, our club caller, instructed the class members on proper handholds. “A gentle touch is enough,” he said. “Don’t leave any DNA when you let go.”

It’s one of the things he says every semester. People laughed. Mostly the newcomers. I laughed with them, for a different reason.

I left Boston the next day. I remember walking from campus to South Station, as I had the time to burn. I walked across the Harvard Bridge. I found myself thinking about what Ted said. I’ve probably left lots of DNA in MIT, through fallen hair or dead skin. I’ve left many other things too. Stuffed toys I’ve given away, signatures I’ve written in yearbooks, knick-knacks I’ve donated to floor lounges. Class projects I’ve created. Student groups I’ve poured hours of my life into. Friends I’ve made, even when I knew our time was bounded.

Many of these things will disappear. But if I ever come back—and I will, I promise—I hope that some of these things will still be here.

If I ever come back, I hope you’ll still be here.