Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

It has been a little over two months since I officially switched over to a new job . The position involves daily communication with various students dreaming of going to top schools around the world, as well as their often anxious parents, with the ultimate aim of selling consulting services that improve every aspect of their university applications. The first weeks on the job have been about learning the different services on offer, what would be enticing and persuasive from the perspective of potential clients, and how to verbalize the benefits our services ultimately provide.

Good education is a human right and a public good...so many youngsters are taught to believe. For the youth, it seems to make sense: they go through mostly free compulsory education in which everyone undertakes studies using the same curriculums mandated by local or national governments, often with visual requirements to behave and dress the same way (even if there are some unsavory side effects) on top of learning the same things. For them, education is, more or less, a practice in equalization, providing a largely egalitarian hue on the biggest time-spender of their young lives.

This blog has had a persistent issue with how Asian men are portrayed in American mainstream media. To this day, the post about the perceived lack of "manliness" among Asian men is the most viewed of the blog's history spanning more than a decade. In subsequent years, this blog followed the rise of K-pop as a phenomenon that gradually changed how Asian masculinity is defined in both Asian and non-Asian culture, sparking a boom of clean, often non-muscular Asian men being perceived as a more down-to-Earth alternative of the domineering, violence-prone attitude of the Western "alpha male" trope.

What do you think of when someone asks what your "dream" is? For me, it is something that is entirely detached from reality. I dream of becoming the president of the US, never mind that I am not allowed to because I was born outside the country. Maybe going to space? Never mind that I have neither the physical nor intellectual attributes to start that journey. The point of a dream, for me, is not anything related to its objective likelihood. It represents the heart's ultimate desire, without bothering with the rationality behind how to achieve it.