I got my USTC diploma in late July after finally passing the remaining exams. I am officially a C9 graduate now! It took me 5 years and constant struggles from being admitted to USTC school of gifted young to finishing my undergrad degree. I was still in a state of burnout. By the end of July I am in Fayetteville, Arkansas. I've been here for 2 months, and I like my PI so far.

"Thinking Problems"

A "thinking problem" is when you try to use logic to solve an emotional problem, such as loneliness, boredom, or shame. Nobody had the human condition figured out. I have been wasting a lot of times on "thinking problems" lately. Instead of focusing on these questions, try to ask "What should I realistically do today?"

• "Where to derive my self worth from? What do other people think of me? How am I better than other people?"
• "When should I marry? How long, if ever, can I get in a relationship, and what's the possibility? What would happen next month?"
• "What is my true identity? Chinese? American? ABC? First-gen Immigrant? Confucian? Taoist?"

Paper Journals

I won't delete the previous entries on my huge "Random Writings", but I have decided to keep a paper journal these days.

Previous Anxieties

The first anxiety is that I will fall into the model minority trap. And I tried to tell myself whether to be "introverted", "extroverted", "religious", "polite", or "blunt" to avoid it. Turned out the Gaokao-mindset or success isn't about any of it, it is exactly the thing of my high school. Even when I was in the Gaokao track, I could not be like that - you cannot choose yourself into it. I should stop worrying or trying to change my personality.

The second anxiety is about confusing "deficit" and "status". Deficit: You need like 10 actual offline friends, 2-3 weekly groups, and 1 relationship for the primal need to be solved essentially. This is not about status: broad follower count on social media, likes count, learning more languages, broad sexual appeal, or a busy social schedule.

I began to listen to a lot of Russian rock again. I liked listening to Bi-2 since 3 years ago. The massive culture shock and problems only pushed me deeper back to Russian.

• Лучшие Песни Группы Би-2
• Группа КИНО - ЛУЧШИЕ ПЕСНИ @ХитЗаХитом
• Треки от фильма" Брат 2" (movie about a man called Danila Bagrov in Chicago and New York)
• Любэ - лучшие песни

Seriously, if this place doesn't work out for me, I will probably continue to grow my Russian and Ukrainian poem TikTok channel, add some vlogs and stuff, and then learn Spanish. Whenever I was stuck in isolation, I turned to languages, waiting my time out of a place.

Lab Stuff

Honestly, the workload isn't too much. Everyone works like 9 to 5 in the lab. I spent more time in a post-burnout hangover state than being productive. But the lab is very comfortable, with a shower room in the hallway, and you can stay there 7 days a week all day long till midnight.

I don't know any Chinese students here, maybe just one or two by face. I don't speak much Chinese right now except with my PI. I was mostly the one doing the talking in the CSSA group chat. My primary language had been English for many years already. I don't know any Russians or CIS people here, except one instructor and some second-gens who barely speak Russian. But you can hear Spanish everywhere among hotel staffs, cleaning and cafeteria workers.

My salary is 2300 a month with parent subsidies. I searched all the VOO, Sp 500, Treasury, and decided to put money there for now. I don't have a car yet and plan to get one later. If I can't stay in the US for some reason, I would go to other developed, English-speaking countries like Canada, Australia, or the Netherlands - I don't want to go back to orthodox China.

Culture Shock

People here live very differently. A lot of people live in Greek Houses, and their lives probably revolve around drinking, partying and hookups. Like I first thought "Greek life" means a group of people learning Greek and discussing ancient philosophy. Literally, whatever they are, it seeems very confusing and tacky. I don't even drink. It's like, a lot of positives are coded as negatives, and a lot of shallow tackiness or red flags are seen as cool. A lot of people are from Texas. Anyway, people would be polite to your face and hold a door for you. A girl can send strong signals to you one day, and flake completely tomorrow. People still use SMS here for private communications instead of like Telegram.

This part of the US seems to be a uniquely blind spot to me, with many things being utterly unrelatable. I find it so counterintuitive and harder to understand than the rich US (like California) or Russia. There is just a lot of useless moral posturing. The kids are expected to be independent from their parents and work part-time after 18, so many people probably feel vulnerable, yet they spend their time doing soft majors and partying. The culture says you should be polite, avoid the taboos and treat people as equals, which means you as an outsider have to play by the rules and not cause too much friction, but they don't (like underage drinking). I cannot easily understand what someone else thinks. It provides zero scripts for an outsider - you can frequently sense strong inauthenticity and flakiness from people whenever you try to say what you think, or connect with someone.

As for dating, I don't know as I never had a relationship before.But I know you probably can't expect a normal person here to completely understand you - men or women. I think I frequently come across as too intense or blunt to people - though not the Chinese stem student type. I do not want to be in the Chinese parental matchmaking thing. Honestly I have no idea and this is right back to a thinking problem again! If it doesn't work out here, I will just move to another completely different place, like I did so many times before!

Complicated Things

Public universities are some of the only places in the society, where people of completely different class backgrounds can sometimes sit together. You both live in student apartments, you both go to school (the same lectures, go to libraries, dining halls), and work is something in the future. You pray together in a church, and it is genuine comradeship in those hours, and I am really happy meet many good people. However, after that the illusion shatters, you go on your path and they go on their path and you rarely interact as equals. I thought I was playing by the standard rules, but I am living in a different reality. In the Bay Area for example, there are the Univision Area Del La Bahia and Telemundo 48, which has almost no overlap with the immigrant tech worker communities like "huaren.us" or 1p3a.

If you observe people when socializing, a lot of them are probably feeling like "imposters" or a little anxious, especially outside of the Greek Life. So it's not like everyone is already feeling secure, successful, and looking down at you. A lot of people from small towns in Arkansas or first-gen Hispanics might find even Fayetteville and this university to be a totally new life experience instead of having a PhD father and viewing this as a small rural nature place. And the "Honors College" academic thing might mean a lot to some people outside of Greek Life instead of being an irrelevant detail compared to your other academic achievements. Some church people might need faith for self-assurance instead of viewing it as a curated aesthetic to show off your taste, and projecting an image of being slightly too perfect.

School Clubs and Socializing

School clubs are fun, but they are not the solution to your loneliness. Sometimes it's fun, sometimes it's not.

My favorite clubs so far is the partner dancing club, the Spanish language table, and sometimes going to the gym to play ping pong. The creative writing club is also like ok. They meet like 2 times a week. The ballroom dancing club is quite tight-knit; members have appeared on each other's Instagram feeds for years. You would learn Cha Cha, Foxtrot, Waltz, 2-step, and East Coast Swing, etc. And the club staff would demonstrate to you then "leads find follows" or "follows find leads" and you would then rotate partners. They go to competitions at Purdue, although I just went there for fun. And I broke the touch barrier - in China we don't do partner dancing. The Multicultural Center and Hispanic organizations are mostly first-gen college students, some people are cool, and they don't host events on a fixed schedule. But I am indefinitely delaying learning Spanish because of the burnout right now. Anyway, I learned many people's names and got a lot of Instagrams.

Then there are the Razorbook club, the Bridge Politics club, or the Russian club. These clubs meet quite infrequently and I just don't like the vibe. 10 to 20 people sit in a room, and they go there like as a place to do small talk forever (like their cats, some food, a town in Missouri, or incomprehensible mumbling). If you try to say something, people do not take you seriously, and it gets very weird quickly. The International Culture Team is also very boring as the bureaucrats would talk endlessly. As for Student Media groups, I went there and think it's hard to participate as a grad student beyond being a volunteer distributing flyers or something.

In USTC I usually go to one or two event an entire semester hosted by the International college or something. And although I am quite extroverted back in China and I like socializing, this extreme scarcity transition is still overwhelming. I am an extrovert compared to the stem department, but more introverted compared to other people. Post-socializing anxiety: I was perfectly fine when I am socializing, but then one day, I suddenly began to spend hours a day processing my emotions, and I started procrastinating, and it started to derail my schedule. Then I began to recover again. I think I need more time to recover, and 2 months might not be enough.

Churches

At first, I went to some events hosted by the BCM. I said I like C. S. Lewis and the Narnia series. and someone tried to proselytize to me; I was like "no" and I left. They tried to invite me to lunch several times. I thought, "I will only go to church if I cannot find other social spaces." Well, now I am back at the Church again. They gave me a Bible for free.

There are a lot of church groups here like the BCM, Young Life, CRU, Bridge International, etc. The LDS also called me repeatedly. They are highly earnest, but I probably won't go there. They meet every Thursday and they wanted me to go to their church on Sunday.

There are dozens of people in the room, and first you are singing some worship songs, then you go to a small group to talk about faith. Faith here seems very superficial, almost like watching a podcast. I don't know if I'll get baptized - I'm generally open to converting and we'll see how it goes.

Where I Lived Before

• I lived with my parents till the end of middle school, we moved across the city to rent a house near my middle school, then we moved again as I began high school
• 2021.9-2022.6: USTC Central Campus Dorm
• 2022.7-2022.12: 太湖路 111 号新鸿意瀚海星座, Hefei
• 2023.1-2023.5: 2212 Martin Luther King Jr Way Berkeley, CA
• 2023.6-2023.12: 2555 Virginia St, Berkeley, CA
• 2024.1-2024.6: 肥西南路 556 号永新大厦, Hefei
• 2024.7-2024.8: HKUST Dorm
• 2024.9-2025.6: 长宁家园 10 号, Hefei
• 2025.9-2026.6: USTC High-Tech Campus Dorm
• 2026.7-Now: 576 W Center St, Fayetteville, AR

I have already changed my address like 11 times.

I don't want to live alone. I lived alone for roughly 3 years except for 2212 MLK with housemates, and when I lived alone in a studio, my sleeping schedule started to mess up and the feeling of isolation creeped up very uncomfortably. It was just terrible. I am living with housemates with my private room for now.

谁怜旅愁荏苒。谩长门夜悄，锦筝弹怨。
想伴侣、犹宿芦花，也曾念春前，去程应转。
暮雨相呼，怕蓦地、玉关重见。
未羞他、双燕归来，画帘半卷。

(解连环·孤雁)

Хай нагада вона мені
Літа ті молодії,
Веселості прекрасні дні
І всі мої надії.

Хай нагада минуле все,
Хай ще хоч раз заплачу,
Бо сліз немає, відколи
Я доленьки не бачу.

Заграй, старий! Як потечуть
Дві сльози по личеньку,
То легше стане на душі
І легше на серденьку.

(Заграй ми, цигане старий)

Thank-You Notes

When I arrived at the XNA airport, I was stranded in the airport overnight. My Chinese Redmi phone was not working, and I can't receive SMS. Uber and Lyft required a mobile number to sign up, and nothing is within walking distance. And an airport cleaner helped me call the local shuttle. I called them, and they came at 8:53, and she went out and pointed me to the car. I am very grateful!

When I went to the Donut shop in Walmart to buy food, I tried to buy a Donut but I only had 100 dollar bills. The worker there swiped her card and paid for me. I was so touched! I went over to have some change and gave her a 5 dollar bill.

Thanks to the Hubbs family for the International students dinner in Springdale.

Thanks to the university International orientation staff for helping me out with SSN. I went without any preparation and they're so nice!

Thanks to PI for taking us to the Crystal Bridge Museum and the Tokyo House in Rogers. I am genuinely grateful for Dr. Wu!

Thanks to the Chinese Grace Church for the food at Mid-autumn Festival.