Advice on being confident when making friends
(01/30/20 5:00pm)
Dear Arden,
Published by the Students of Johns Hopkins since 1896
November 22, 2024
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Dear Arden,
Lately I’ve had to give this explanation to a lot of people in my life, so I figured I might as well write it down. If you’ve spoken to me at all recently, you know that I’ve been caught up in a medical whirlwind for the past few months.
Every time I return from a break in the espresso-stained, red sauce–laden part of New Jersey I call home, I feel uneasy. I just spent a week consuming at least three cloves of garlic a day and beginning all conversations at a 7/10, but as I try to settle back into Baltimore, I wonder if I need to tone it down.
I. For as long as I could remember, Christmas was always spent locked in a Chinese restaurant; tasked with scooping rice into take-out boxes, I dreamt of escaping that small storage room through the glass window, entering the parallel universe of snow outside.
Once upon a time in a flyover town, an only child slept in her wooden castle and was tucked away in her princess-themed tower, which overlooked the splatter-shaped moat with a swirling slide attached. Her blinds were drawn, and under the covers, she read with her flashlight because the anticipation of Christmas morning was overwhelming. The cookies were iced and were waiting downstairs for Santa Claus. Carrots and nuts for the hardworking reindeer occupied an extra dog bowl on the brick front step.
I have never been a very independent person. It’s not simply that I enjoy the company of others, but the idea of doing certain things alone fills me with debilitating dread.
The first article I wrote for this column was called “Investing more in my relationships with others.” In it, I discussed my desire to be a better son, brother and friend by putting my all into my interactions with others.
I’ve never really thought myself as a rebel. Stubborn? Sometimes. Difficult? It depends on the person and the situation. But a rebel? Not really.
I am Laís. I am Latinx, I am Hispanic, I am Brazilian, I am a woman. These are all my “identities,” and I accept these identities now, but that wasn’t always the case. I know in my heart that I’m a part of the Latinx community. But why do I feel like because I have white skin and European heritage that I’m not a valid member, even when it’s the community that I fit into the most?
I just took a DNA test, turns out I’m 100 percent that b—. Well, not quite, but love you Lizzo. I took a DNA test in January, got the results a month later and found out that I’m not 100 percent anything. Don’t worry, it wasn’t some shocking turn of results — I knew my DNA would prove to be a multicolored pie chart.
There is a cemetery in Korea whose name I do not know, far away from Seoul and deep in the mountains, where my maternal ancestors are buried. Apart from my grandfather who passed when I was eight, I do not know their names or faces.
What does it mean to go home? What, and where, is home?
Unlike Macklemore, when I was in the third grade, I didn’t think that I was gay. During my childhood, I was instead a mouthpiece of heteronormativity. While in kindergarten, a friend declared that she would one day marry a woman. I argued to her that this was impossible. Even earlier, when a boy in my preschool class showed me his navy-blue fingernails, I insisted that his hands resembled a girl’s.
It’s been over a year since I first arrived at Hopkins, full of hopes, fears and vague expectations for my college experience. That arrival entailed much fanfare from overenthusiastic FYMs and even more awkward introductions and icebreakers between me and my classmates. I expected that, and I’ll even admit that I loved it in its cringyness.
“Well, you know, you look... different.”
Since moving to Baltimore and being at Hopkins, I’ve realized more and more the ways in which my upbringing in essentially the middle of nowhere influenced me. I spent as much time as possible during my childhood years outside, running through the woods and jumping in the lake with my little brother. The gravel road we lived on had virtually no traffic and we knew our neighbors well, so we had free reign to explore the acres of forest surrounding our log home. This may sound incredibly primitive, but one of the favorite activities of my siblings and I was to patrol the woods for dead trees and knock them down. Yep, it was a blast.
“This old heart of mine been broke a thousand times” plays from the speaker on my desk as I finish up my homework for the night. I fall down a wormhole, and I’m back in the passenger seat of my dad’s Ford F150. The heat is blasting, and the “heater seat,” as we call it, is on level three. It’s the middle of winter in Valdosta, Georgia, so it’s about 45 degrees. We hot-blooded country folk can’t handle it.
Aug. 11, 2016 was the first day I stepped on the Homewood Campus as a student. Like many 18-year-olds, I thought I had a good grasp on who I was and who I wanted to be, and I was so excited for what this new journey would bring me. I was coming to a top university to play football and to study to become a doctor. College was going to be the best years of my life, right?
For most of my life, I thought I was dumb. Or at least, incompetent. It felt like nothing I did was good enough, and the bureaucracy of semi-decent public high schools didn’t help much. Additionally, as I was finishing up high school, I saw how expensive college was, and so I couldn’t take the idea of college seriously. I didn’t understand financial aid, and my non-English-speaking parents certainly did not either. It wasn’t like I felt like I was learning much in high school anyways – how could college be any better? I was always just so tired all the time. What was the point? Was I just doing it all for a piece of paper?
Sometimes the things I say sound like the babbling of a romantic idealist. My motivations for physics are too far removed from reality, my reasons for loving the subject too “soft,” and so I don’t know if I have ever really fit into the straight-back mold of an algorithmic physicist.