1. My loveliest dream was violently slashed to shreds, and then I had the worst few months of mental and emotional ordeal in my life. I look back and I still shudder at the manner in which I struggled through those months.
2. In the same few months, I wrapped up my last research season and graduated with my Ph.D which was apparently an admirable thing.
1. & 2. proved to me that I have the very useful ability of segregating work from personal issues, not letting one affect the other. This ability, much-loved by supervisors all over, also encourages me to take more hurt before saying 'No'--so it's not such a great ability really.
3. Mom attended my exit seminar which I thought I did a great job on. I have always been happy with my oral presentations, but this exit seminar was quite different. I didn't present my work in the most efficient format, opting instead to sacrifice efficiency for the purpose of showing my friends the values in failed experiments and pitfalls. My mom's attendance, and my own performance, makes Oct 6, 2010 one of the proudest days in my life, and definitely the proudest day in 2010.
My lab space of 4 years. I don't miss it. I miss the people around it.
4. For the first time, I designed and conduct a course on my own, 10 classes in total. The students and I loved it, we had fun and became friends, they learned to think and question, I learned to listen and care, and those were all that matter. Those 10 classes gave me life.
5. An unexpected visitor from Switzerland reminded me that it's a forest out there--try to look beyond one tree.
6. My research assistants taught me to treasure each person for his/her own strengths and weaknesses, personality and all. I was mistaken in jumping to conclusions, only to see my own judgment proven so wrong in a pleasant way.
7. In October, I visited Grand Canyon with mom. One childhood dream came true.
8. I bought two long-sleeve shirts for my job interviews. First time in my life!
In one simple way, 2010 was an ordeal for me. I lost that which mattered most to me, and now I know I have lost more than just that--I have lost a whole dream, a chance to be content and happy, and for a time, I lost self-confidence.
In many simple ways, 2010 gave me lots of joy and pleasant memories. My friends never left me, some even went as far as to open up their hearts so that they can peer into mine and help me. I graduated with many people celebrating this seemingly unimportant event. I made many new friends and rekindled some old friendships. My world is bigger and much more multi-dimensional now. Even that which I have lost has given me other things in return.
Without doubt, the single most important lesson, or change in my life in 2010 is that I have learned to love.
Yes, to love is innate, but so is to love with conditions, to love with considerations for one self. I think that if left to subconscious, we all love selfishly.
To truly love is to love without shame, to love without seeking returns, to love indiscriminately, to love to best of one's ability.
My dream was broken because I didn't know how to love.
I spent months trying to mend the situation, yet it was doomed because my fundamentals were heading the wrong way.
Jay taught me some love, my parents demonstrated it to me, my friends showed me theirs--there are flaws in these people, but I see those flaws and I began to understand how they love me.
Close to Christmas, I pick up a book in a bookstore as I was shopping for Christmas gift: Leo Buscaglia's "Loving, Learning, and Living". Coincidentally (or not, could be kismet), that book summarized the lessons I learned in 2010.
Love yourself, make yourself the best version of what you love, always seek to improve yourself. Give your true self to others, do it without shame, and because you are always seeking to improve yourself, you will always be giving your best to others.
Such is love.
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