Post-Graduation Stress Disorder

Umm…my underage freshman year

I don’t remember this but look how young y’all look (and Hank shaved for the occasion)

This is the more typical Hank look

When ya’ll lived at Duren, and it snowed that year. 500 car accidents the next day.

Typical Waterford shenanigans

Football season – of course never Hank or Shakshi

Yep, we outlasted y’all…

…rising seniors (the new Plastics) who learned from this group to not take things too seriously and simply enjoy being students at THE greatest university on earth \m/

Danny Zeng | May 22, 2013

I spent the last week or so with some of my closest friends in college. Many have graduated over the weekend. Yes I’ll admit it. Part of me feels sad, but it is in the selfish sense that I know that they won’t be around next year for me when I need them (and yes, that’s what true friends are for; they are the chosen family, support system, the wolf pack, insert your own descriptive phrases that capture the same sentiment). Another part of me simply feels numbing: perhaps it’s the drag of the school year, pending end-of-the-semester to-do lists, the stress of dysfunctional politics – OK it’s probably just me…, or simply fatigue and lethargy. I have been sleep deprived from playing way too much Nintendo 64 – that one of us purchased from a Craigslist guy (mhmm) – where I played more tennis (umm Mario tennis)  than all the years I’ve been in college.  My sleep schedule has been more off-cycle than usual as result of 1) absentmindedly pushing to maximize my time with my graduating seniors; and 2) obsessively glued to Netflix watching House of Cards (that will be a different post in and of itself). I’ve been undoubtedly gaining weight due to poor diet and little exercise, which probably contributed to my general fatigue. This reminds me the importance of self-care for all my graduating seniors! Please eat healthy, exercise often, and sleep plenty. Your health is your seed capital for success in the enterprise of life.  I think the most apt description of my current state of mind is faithful optimism, simply having faith in the notion that people and things will turn out to be OK.

My friend walks across stage for her graduation in Government

A roaring sea of black gowns and decorated caps, competitive rounds of whoas and ahhhs for graduates walking across stage, chatty professors in their scholastic robes, clacking of high heels (or the swag of boots trotting about ), layers upon layers of makeup –  for the gazillion amateur clicks of professional camera shutters, the pestering yet loving entourage of parents, siblings, extended families and friends, the dormant yet nonetheless tangible mixed emotions of happiness, apprehension, relief, earned success, camaraderie, reciprocity and gratitude have all filled the sultry summer air on commencement night with heavy hearts.

Longhorn families

Think about all the people who ever supported our grads, financially, emotionally, and psychologically. For some, their kids’ graduation from college is the last chapter in what sometimes seems to be a never-ending, very sad, handwritten book (…)  With two decades of hard work behind them in raising these graduates, a million-dollar investment, the parents, no doubt, becomes highly emotional during this thoroughfare. After all, college graduation serves as the closure. In fact, if you’d have the same opportunity of witnessing more than 10,000 people sharing that moment together like I did at the UT Austin commencement, then you’d appreciate the rational ubiquity of emotional outbursts.

Commencement 2013 at the University of Texas at Austin | May 18th, 2013

The minute the fireworks shot up into the Austin sky, my heart skipped a beat, and my eyes grew watery. Can this be it for my friends? It seems only yesterday when I met each and every one of them. Those moments of fateful encounters – some might say chance occurrences, but I never found that proposition convincing – seem so removed from the larger reality of graduation, a milestone, a crown achievement, a relief, a “meh.” “One more year this will be me,” I thought. I wondered what each of them was thinking at the time. In the back of my mind, I was thinking, “graduation can’t all just be the rah-rah cheers, fancy restaurants, loud music, and bottomless shots (well…)”

That moment – that night really – I realized what a true excitement it is for the University to graduate more than 8,000 Longhorns into the world to change it for the better! This is a cause for celebration! Graduates are challenged with the task to do just that: make the world a better place. Or in the case of UT, “to transform lives for the benefit of society.”  I can’t wait to see what each of them will accomplish in the near and distant future. Among my circle of graduating seniors, there will be a lawyer, a doctor, an educator, an engineer, a business analyst, and a community leader. Each has the ability, the heart, and the humor to change the world in his/her own way. How ordinary an occurrence but extraordinary a thought!

I have nothing but the best wishes and my most deep-felt prayers for each of them as they enter the real world. It will be an adventure of a lifetime, literally. Like I alluded before, I don’t believe in chance encounters. I fundamentally believe there is a reason that God has put them in my life. I believe God has a purpose for each one of them. And I believe that God will care for and guide them through life’s many trials. Not only do I believe so, I know so. My faith gives me both optimism and relief: I know they are in good hands. These people are my chosen family in college. They will remain my chosen family in life and for life. I am sincerely excited and extremely optimistic for this group of passive-aggressive jokesters, high achievers, and leaders. The first generation of Waterford crowd had graduated. I shall leave them all with the following passage from one of my favorite Dr. Seuss books, Oh the Places You’ll Go!,  that my fifth grade teacher had once read to us 🙂 –  you’d never go wrong re-reading Dr. Seuss.

Rockstars

On and on you will hike
and I know you’ll hike far
and face up to your problems
whatever they are.

You’ll get mixed up, of course,
as you already know.
You’ll get mixed up
with many strange birds as you go.
So be sure when you step.
Step with care and great tact
and remember that Life’s
a Great Balancing Act.
Just never forget to be dexterous and deft.
And never mix up your right foot with your left.

And will you succeed?
Yes! You will, indeed!
(98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed.)

To answer my own question, of course, this is not it for my friends. They have a long way to go. There will be lots of excitements, triumphs, disappointments, and yes failures; but the joy of friendship will live on. And just for the record: I don’t really suffer from post-graduation stress disorder (this is not real). I’m simply trying to treasure and preserve the memories that I’ve made with these peeps over the last few years. For these grads – Hank, Shakshi, Wesley, Nayana, Katie, and Simon – who are already changing the world and will continue to do so, I am faithfully optimistic.

Love,

Danny

What’s Enough?

I just finished John C. Bogle‘s book Enough: True Mesures of Money, Business, and Life, a wonderful novella (very readable) reminding us about what’s important in life. Fortune magazine had once named Mr. Bogle as one of the four “Investment Giants” of 20th century. Time had named Mr. Bogle as one of the Top 100 most powerful and influential people in the world. In his latest book, yet, Mr. Bogle writes with much humility and humanity.

Having made a fortune (though not in the billionaire club due to his own styles and the model of his business) from pioneering the first index fund with Vanguard, the company he founded in 1974. Mr. Bogle, an octogenarian, reflects on his life and career and offers many profound yet simple pointers for students of finance such as myself. Broadly speaking, Jack Bogle has a vision to return the finance industry back to one of stewardship, away from the salesmanship that prevails in today’s financial world. What resonated with me so much is his vision for regular people to be true investors – thus owners, not mere speculators, in low-cost, low-turnout index funds, that generate lasting wealth, rather than proactively managed funds that are costly and are questionable in serving shareholders’ interests. Ultimately, he wants to return values and character to the business world and society at large, in particular, professional ethics to all professions, to a degree in which success will no longer be measured by things – or merely wealth, fame, and power – but rather who we are as human beings and what value we create for our society.

As a Finance student, fumbling and tripping over myself in ardent pursuit of a viable post-grad financial career, the next step, I garnered much needed advice and encouragement from this book, especially from someone in my field who had done exceedingly well by all standards. Mr. Bogle’s call for us to not chase the false rabbits of success,a ringing caveat:

“For while our best and brightest are exquisitely trained to pursue the false rabbits of success, on the whole they are being poorly trained in the intangible qualities that become the virtues that bring real success”

Competition is good and has shown to be good, but what are we competing for? THAT is a profund question.

Last advice that I earmarked from this book: Be Bold, Commit, then Providence will follow

“Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute; What you can do, or dream you can do, begin it; Boldness has genius, power and magic in it”

(Bogle cites 19th-century German philosopher Goethe)

Lastly, I’ll leave you with Bogle’s brilliant epiphany captured by T.S. Eliot regarding what counts in life in this Era of Information that we live in, when we are inundated with data and facts; all the while we lack judgment and perhaps critical thinking:

Where is the Life we have lost in living?

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?

Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries

Bring us farther from God and nearer to the Dust

Let this be clarion call for some serious soul-searching and reflection for us all.

Taming the Beast: Stress

Stress is inevitable. That is something that either we experience or innately know already, yet it sounds strange as an idea. I was stressed out last week with two mid-term exams, and the weekend was nothing short of a blessing. MSNBC reports back in 2008 that as many as 1 in 5 undergraduates are stressed in college, and four in ten say they endure stress often. As college students, we constantly think of ways to de-stress, but stress creeps up on us beyond our conscious control. Focusing more on our diet, working out more frequently, sleeping more are all valid ways to help us physically de-stress, but the underlying psychological stressors are still at play.

College students have to juggle multiple things in any given day. If we are lucky, we can keep count of what we are juggling; if not, additional things encroach upon the exercise forcing us to juggle even more things at once. How many times do we find ourselves adding on to our to-do list throughout the day? How scary is the thought of a quiz-in-ten-minutes that you really thought was not taking place for a good two more days? Stress is constant because change is constant. The key is to get into the habit of managing stress.

From my readings on this topic, I’ve compiled these five steps we can do to manage stress:

1. Lower your expectations to reduce cognitive dissonance. Often we get stressed over things that didn’t turn out the way we wanted them. Often, too, we were wrong with our expectations for these things from the get-go. In effect, we manufacture stress as result of our unrealistic expectations.  
2. Focus on “good” stress. Stress can be good to boost our performance. Research shows that moderate stress can help us achieve maximum performance. We simply don’t want to have too little stress, leading to mediocrity and complacency; nor do we want too much stress, resulting in poor short-term memories, pimples, increased body odor, and lowered immune system among many things. Think of a bell curve.
3. Focus on what’s within your control. It makes no sense to worry about things that you have no control over. You can better use your energy elsewhere.
4. Hang out with positive people. When you surround yourself with positive people, stress won’t have as much effect on your well being. Invest in your emotional piggy bank by forming and maintaining good relationships. 
5. Take a deep breath! We take this simple, cliched advice for granted. Try it for instant result. 

One thing that is important and has helped me personally deal with stress is comparing my life occurrences to real life-changing events experienced by others, such as death or terminal disease in a family member, losing one’s house to the foreclosure crisis, divorce, fleeing one’s country due to political or religious persecution, natural disasters, or even losing financial aid and won’t be able to continue with one’s schooling. When you peg your day-to-day “stress” to these incidences, you’d realize we freak out about the most miniscule things in the world, often unnecessarily. That is not the way to live. Do not let stressors hold back and prevent you from reaching your fullest potentials.

The good news is that stress can be managed. All it takes is some mental preparation and the will to combat something that you partially created out of your own psych and expectations. For Longhorns, it should be comforting knowing that we are not among the Top 15 stressful colleges ranking. Good thing Playboy still ranked us #4 on this year’s Top 10 Party Schools. There are definitely outlets for Longhorns to de-stress. We need to be more resourceful in our planning, framing, and approaches in managing stress. 

[Video] Learn to manage stress is important because no one wants to become this guy.

References:

How Stress Can Improve Your Performance 

Turning Stress Into Asset

The Best Strategy for Reducing Stress

Take a Deep Breath

Most of the things we have we bought because we didn’t understand them…A real work of art you never entirely understand, and anyway, if I had waited until I thought I understood I’d never have bought anything

Herbert Vogel, 1977

Herbert and Dorothy Vogel have been collecting art all their life. The couple has lived in the same one-bedroom apartment in Upper East Side of Manhattan since 1963. They were not well off by any standard. Dorothy was a librarian. Herb was a postal man. The couple did not have any children, just cats and reptiles. They lived off of Dorothy’s salary, while using Herb’s earnings to purchase and collect art. Over the past several decades, the couple went on their Saturday excursions hunting for worthy artworks that were both “affordable” and can “fit into the apartment.” Over their lifetime, the Vogels collected over 4,750 works of art, an estimated worth of several million dollars.

In 2009, they stopped collecting art. Instead, they partnered up with the National Gallery of Art and proceeded to donate 2,500 of their lifelong collection to 50 art museums across the country, choosing one from each state. The Blanton Museum here at the University of Texas at Austin was chosen as the one of the recipients of Vogels’ collection under the Fifty Works for Fifty States initiative.

The Vogels’ love and passion for art were inspring and mesmerizing when I visited the Blanton the other day with a couple of friends to see the exhibit, “The Human Touch.”  For me, the Vogels are the archetypal art collectors we are not necessarily rich, in the material sense, but I have no doubt that the couple has lived a much happier life being closer to beauty and humanity, and simply pursuing what they love together.