Student days

Nearly a month without posting again. Initially due to too much work, now due to not enough. Yes, least for me there is a hair-thin sweet spot - too little and I start feeling guilty, too much and I get exhausted.

Anyways, last week has been pretty nice.

Student days started with a night singing festival, which I attended with my girlfriend (TK from now, as T. is taken) and which was very enjoyable - partly because I love singing but partly because the person I was with seemed to do the same.

The next day one of my friends called me and asked me to join her at night orienteering competition. It was unexpected but I gladly joined her. The night (which started at 9 and ended at 3) was quite enjoyable, me mostly cycling around to get the further-out points while my two team-mates walked to the ones closer by. TK briefly joined us, but then had to get back home to study and sleep.

On saturday, I had yet another team event planned: student extreme. This involved spraying onlookers with cold water from a hose, being tossed around in a wooden wheel and then climbing inside a 45 degree pipe with people tossing water on us from above. After this hell of an ordeal, the team split up - me having to go through yet another pipe, this time horizontal, but spinning on its axis. Thakfully, this did not require any arm strength and so I made it through and past the finish line - not feeling my arms and being wet from the water thrown in the first pipe. My teammates had both taken an opportunity to swim in the river, though - and oh how I envied them.

A quick change of clothes at home (I forgot to bring a spare to the event) and then I was off to a birthday party of a collaegue. Most of the night was spent talking to R.E. and T.T., who met there face to face first time).

Sunday evening, I had Indrek and K. come over. They brought cake.

Monday, I dragged myself to work, but did not really get much done there. At some point I decided to call it a day and we went for a bike ride with T.K. - nice weather, beautiful nature and towards the end - sun setting. Idyllic. She confessed that at the moment, everything in her life was as she wanted - and I conceded the same for myself.

After sending her off to her place, I cycled back to the office, then home and then off to L. for a barbacue celebrating the beginning of spring. The remnants of the cake found their quick and satisfying end, and the evening ended with playing with fire - literally (but thankfully not getting burnt yet). 

Perfection

It is weird but every now and then I still hear of people who sincerely believe me to be perfect in some sense, i.e. being able to do no wrong, or being good at everything or some such other weirdness.

Depending on my mood, I sometimes try to prove these people wrong by deliberately failing, or vice versa, try to comply with their expectations. However, reality is I am just human, both with my strengths and my weaknesses, and most often I just want people to understand that I am, in fact, just like everyone else, no better, no worse - as I feel quite bad when others think of themselves as less than me.

My main strength is my rational mind, which seems to make academic things (school, university, research) easier for me than for most other people. I was recently blamed for not ever having to learn how to learn, for it has always come easy to me. And it indeed has. In terms of school learning, I have found most things that have been taught to me to be interesting, and have thus only very rarely struggled with motivation when it came to school, and mostly for that reason, school has in fact always come naturally to me. As of yet, I know of very few others around me who has been this lucky.

My main weakness is understanding social situations and other people, and most importantly - myself. Having been raised in a city environment as an only child of a single parent, I have mostly lacked both situations and people to learn good social skills from. It has only been the past few years during which I have found the people and quite deliberately put myself in the situations that I can indeed learn from. Nevertheless, many people around me have expected me to be quite a lot further along in this respect, and I have lost at least one very important person for me for the reason I was not. I have taken long steps in this respect in the past few years, especially in the past year and a half - but unlike school learning, this is not something that has ever come easily or naturally to me. In fact, quite the opposite. Nevertheless, it has been a priority, and I have worked quite hard to get as far as I now am - mostly by constantly pushing my comfort zone in hopes of expanding it and learning about both life and myself - which has, by no means, been easy.

Trouble is - most people cannot understand this struggle, as for them, these things have come naturally, and they expect this is the same for everyone. "You think too much", they often say. In reality, I don't - for it has been this same thinking a lot that has gotten me as far as I am now. This is not to say I do not think of the wrong things often, but confusing it with thinking too much definitely does not help. What has helped me to be where I am is my faith that everyone can learn everything that he wishes to, if he is willing to put in the effort .

As for perfection - there is no such thing - or if there were, we should feel sorry for it, for it has nowhere to develop anymore so it's life must be pretty boring. To err is to be human - and this is something that should never be forgotten.

Nostalgia

These past few days I have had a strong surge of nostalgia, remembering different times and places from the past.

There have been surface reasons for it - an old classmate (from middle school) dying, a visit to that same school building (and seeing some of my old teachers).

However, I think there is a deeper reason that is more important. Life is changing around me at a pace that feels too fast for me, so I am looking for things in the past to hold on to... and not finding much. Sure, there are old and good friends, but even with them the relationship is different (although probably better) from what it used to be. And I am still living in the same place I have been for the past 6 years, but with my neighbor now moving, it has also become somewhat different.

The biggest change in my life has been entering a relationship - one that might actually last, since it is based neither on desperation nor illusions of perfection. If I had one word to describe the experience, it would be "scary" - mostly because of all the thing it had dredged up from inside me. Thankfully, she has been very understanding and will hopefully continue to be so in the future.

There is also some uncertainty about the future in terms of my career, as I still have no clear plan of what direction I want to take my life, but it seems that the decision time is approaching rapidly.

In many ways, I feel quite similar to the time roughly a year ago. Like another chapter of my life is drawing to a close and another one is starting. If this is true, it is the time to reminisce and reflect before marching on.

I haven't written anything for nearly a month now. Reason, of course, being a very busy start of semester at work. I'm teaching the Graphs course alone this year, and there has also been quite a bit of hassle with getting the Bachelors thesis seminars off to a good start. Also, two Fridays spent touring schools with Kristjan talking about the beauty of mathematics and the charm of computer science.

What is perhaps a bit noteworthy is the fact I actually have vacation next week, in the form of Estonian Winter School in Computer Science. The really amazing thing being that I can actually rest for the most of it, as I do not have any pressing deadlines for the next week.

Well. Almost.

Oh, yes, and I have a girlfriend again, after nearly a year's pause.

Moving on.

Yesterday I was scheduled to talk at Scientific Cabaret - about "Public and secret mathematics", alongside Leo Võhandu, who incidentally was the supervisor for my high school research project. Despite not having seen him for nearly half a year (and then nearly two years before that), we got a pretty good vibe going, and the end result was pretty interesting, both to us and to the listeners.

When going there, I managed to leave my bass guitar onto the Tartu-Tallinn bus. Thankfully I managed to get in touch with the bus company today and they found it still on the bus - so I will have it back.

T. came to listen to the cabaret along with her boyfriend. I hadn't heared from her in quite some time and it was really nice seeing her. We talked for quite a bit of time afterwards, and it turned out that in one sense she was having pretty similar troubles to me, and talking to her helped me quite a few steps forward with respect to them.

On the way from the center of Tallinn to Õismäe where my mother lives, a very hippie-looking young man stood next to me, played air guitar and made funny faces towards two girls sitting opposite him, who quite seemed to enjoy the attention. After making a comment about the girls being an "easy catch", we started talking and had quite an interesting discussion until I had to step off the bus. Random encounters and oh how I like having them every now and then.

Homeless for a day

Well, almost.

After getting back from Pärnu, I realized I had misplaced my keys. After searching all my pockets thrice, I first called the place I stayed at to see whether I had left the keys there. As this did not seem to be the case.. I got a bit anxious, but calmed myself quickly by finding another plausible hypothesis: that I had left keys home, and that my roommate had locked me out with his.

Next call was to my friend who should have had my spare key. She did not, however, having had forgotten it in a box in an attic in a place where she formerly lived. Nevertheless, she invited me over to a mutual friend who she was currently staying at.

And when I got there, she hit me with a laptop. Within 10 minutes of me getting there. I completely deserved it, though, being pretty tired and thus quite inconsiderate of other people.

When i got there, the battery to my phone also ran empty - so I was away from my home, and without my phone. So I had no alarm clock. This was not a problem, as the friend I was staying with had just woken up and planned to be working through the night.

Insomnia. Despite being quite tired, I only got to sleep at around 1... only to be woken up by the friend jumping on my bed at 8.15.

Got to work at 9.15. Very cold outside, but nice, also. Took the key to my office from the guard, grabbed a cup of coffee and then started work. Went to lunch at around one, bought a recharger cable for my phone and got back....

to a student waiting for me - which made me remember I had had two appointments for that day, and that I had already missed one (as my external memory had run out of juice). Thankfully, the other appointment was still around in the building, so I found him and apologized (after having finished with the first).

Oh yes, and my roommate had found my keys from inside my other coat, like I suspected... so everything ended well :)

Unusual

Yesterday, I went to see basketball for the first time in my life. Reason - I had been given the season ticket for my services as one of the new advertisement faces posted at the basketball court. "Thoughtful sport" - with pictures that have scientists staring down basketball players.

The guy I was posted opposed against, Rain Veideman, played most of the match, and was either the biggest or the second biggest scorer. UT won over Tallinn University100-something to 60-something.

After that, it was back to the university library, to the mathematics helpdesk me and Taavi have been organizing. It was an unusually busy evening there. I guess word is catching on.

Once we finished at around 1 a clock, Taavi drove me home. I threw my bag in the door, grabbed my staff and went to the nearby park to practice my juggling. It's improving, but as with every skill, it takes time and patience - both of which I somewhat lack recently.

After getting home, I cooked dinner, then grabbed my book and two pillows, threw them into the (empty) bath tub and climbed in after them in order to read.

The reason for me reading in the bath tub is actually quite prosaic - the lightbulbs of my floor lamp both burned out recently and I had not yet had time to go to the store and replace them - so I had no way of lighting my bedroom enough to read there. Bathroom was the next sensible option.

As has been usual recently, I fell asleep at around 3.

This is me - now

The end of a year is always a time of reflection. Time to think back on the previous year.

For me, it has been a year of very quick personal development. The year of growing up - both culturally (as I graduated with a PhD and now have a "real job"), socially (understanding social interactions much better than before) and emotionally (as it has been a year of great loss and rejection and learning to live with them).

Rather than describe the year (like last time), I choose to describe the person I am now, nearing my 25-th birthday.

I understand the distinction between accepting someone's point of view (i.e. understanding what they see and agreeing that they have a right to do so) and agreeing with it, and realize that the former is considerably more important, especially in close relationships with friends, family and partners.

I understand that friends are the people who accept you as you are, even when they do not like everything that you do. The only way to build that is through shared experience, where you constantly prove your understanding and acceptance via actions, not words.

I believe in giving other people the space to be who they are for doing anything else will drive them away.

I believe in and practice a growth mindset. In brief, this means I believe that:

• mistakes are there to be learnt from, not to be ashamed and swept under the carpet, that it is completely normal to try something and fail - as long as you learn from it;
• that through work one can develop most anything (including musical hearing and social skills);
• that past a certain point, practice plays a far more important role than IQ or "talent";
• that we are all capable of improving and that this should be one of the goals in life.

I believe that compliments should be given only for concrete deeds and effort put into them as otherwise they are just manipulation - you say you approve of the person, but in reality, he should learn to trust his/her own judgements. The proper way to take a compliment is "Thank you".

I believe that constructive criticism is always directed at deeds (which can be done differently next time) and never towards character traits (i.e. "stupid", "slow" and "lazy" which provide no positive program).

The proper way to respond to constructive criticism is to acknowledge it and accept it. Less functional ways include apologies and explanations - which are insulting to the other party.

I believe reality is there to be accepted as we are presented with it, not as how we would like it to be. This includes my own flaws, if they are pointed out to me. Acceptance, without blame or self-pity.

I believe that anxiety and worry are dysfunctional in 99% of situations, as they rarely makethings better in the moment. If they arrives, it is good to acknowledge them, but then give yourself permission to let go of them and concentrate on the situation itself rather than the fear it provokes.

I am decisive in what I do, in the sense of having the courage to make descisions and the sense not to regret them once they are made. I believe I can affect the world around me and also choose how I interpret or react to it - and it is me, who therefore makes myself happy or sad, not the objective outside world. I believe that I alone am responsible for my own happiness and well-being, both physical and emotional.

I do not believe in goals, but my aim in life is development as a person, both in understanding the world around and inside me, and helping others do the same.

I will not embody all these principles in all situations, as I am only human, but I strive to live by all of them as I believe they lead to a healthier life than the alternatives.

This is me. Now.