Welp, a blog post about 2022 reflections at last! Pardon me, but December 2022 was an exceptionally hectic month when I wore four different hats: as a student, a research assistant, a teaching assistant — all for my uni SAIS Hopkins — and a research consultant for my alma-mater IDS Sussex. Then stress couldn’t get over me, that my holiday travel plans to go to Canada were stressful! The plan was to fly to Montreal on the morning of Dec 24, to spend a Christmas night and finally have my dream of White Christmas come true. Yet, due to snow storms my flight was cancelled and rescheduled to Dec 25. It was later rescheduled again to Dec 26.
I informed my priest Fr Gurnee about this flight change and told him that I’d join him at our beloved church St Joseph’s on Capitol Hill for the midnight Christmas Mass. And he responded: “Oh gosh, Devi. Well Montreal’s loss is our gain.”
His words warmed my heart. I also took that as a reminder that Jesus is the reason for the season. Since my dad passed Dec 23, 2019, Christmas time has triggered some mixed emotions for me that involves grief and joy at the same time.
Over the holidays, what the priest said reverberated through my mind. It actually sums up the highlights of my 2022 below: each thing I lose is a new thing to gain. Part of embracing growth & moving forward in life is about “catch and release” — knowing what to keep, and what to release.
Don’t be afraid to let go and relearn.
Relearning is uneasy. Sometimes it is to throw out the old schools of thoughts in the name of progress and reform. Sometimes it is to say “I was wrong”. Sometimes it is to choose quality > quantity. I’ve got to be discerning: pick what my life has time and room for, decide what is to hold, and let the rest go.
There was one time I was so hung up on the idea of my final paper for Economic Development course that made us get our hands dirty with raw datasets. I wanted to analyze: does birth order matter for child stunting in Indonesia? My dependent variable is therefore stunting rate. Previous studies in India have used Demographic Health Survey (DHS) data for this topic. After gaining access to DHS data in Indonesia, I could find birth order data among children. And yet, there is no any child anthropometric data collected for Indonesia! Unlike DHS in other countries, no stunting rate recorded for DHS Indonesia data, which means my idea for that 4000-word paper could not be realized and as what I told my friend: “I’m screwed!”.
I had to learn to be open minded after taking the time to grieve the loss of one idea (I am a nerd, I know) as I only had 2 weeks left to submit the paper. Yes I’m a nerd. Such a loss paves the way for another thing. I then did more research and found another topic for my paper: does structural transformation help improve child nutrition globally? My dependent variable is still stunting rate among children but globally not only in Indonesia. The main independent variable is the agriculture share in GDP as a proxy for structural transformation. I used publicly available data from FAO Stats and I worked with my friend Qiao for this final paper. We survived those cold December nights in the library or the basement of our school. What a sweet Christmas present to receive a full grade for this paper we worked hard for: 40 out of 40!
In 2022, I lost some connections but I strengthened existing ones while also eventually building a couple of new ones. Washington DC is well known for its transitory nature. People come and go, and that’s ok. Some people are there for a season, some for a reason, some for a lifetime. I have come to terms that not every soul I encounter has to be a life-timer. Making real friends in your 30s is relatively harder than in your 20s. When meeting new people in my 20s, I was like “I hope they’ll like me” but now I am 33 and I’m like “I hope I’ll like them.” In your 30s, you have gotten to know yourself better, which shit you’re willing to deal with, which shit you can’t tolerate, and to what extent you’d establish boundaries with others. So if you’re like me you’d rather enjoy solitude than be with people who don’t really offer you a sense of company. My energy, time, and attention span are limited. Yet, I too recognize the importance of taking things slow. No time to waste, but we need to take the time to invest and to test.
When you gain friends, gain them through testing, and do not be quick to trust them. For there are friends when it suits them, but they will not be around in time of trouble.
Sirach 6:7-8
Expressing my needs and feelings (in the right way at the right time) is not selfish.
I learned how to communicate what I want and what I need, and did not let my fear of rejection / failure conceal such vulnerability and honesty. This applies to both professional and personal relationships: from advocating for PhD stipend rise that had been stagnant for 6 years in my capacity as PhD co-representative with my friend Keel in front of PhD Committee and Dean of Finance as we presented our findings of the survey we conducted among PhD students (we got a 40% raise August 2022 onwards that we now live above Washington DC poverty line, wohoo!), negotiating my hourly wage and daily rate as a Teaching Assistant and Research Consultant respectively, to telling a guy I was dating that I needed to feel connected with him through consistent communication even just a good-night text per day as the bare minimum.
I suppose too often we are afraid to tell others what we want and what we need, because that reveals our vulnerability. The moment we let them know, the moment we can possibly get a NO as the answer. But if we never ask, the answer will always be NO. That’s also the good thing: the worst answer is a NO anyway, and you’ll still live.
Rejection is overrated. Perhaps it is because we’ve been conditioned to worship our pride and ego. I think people can have inordinate preoccupation of what others think of them, aka vanity. This could lead to two different extremes: an attention seeker or a very shy person who doesn’t want to get noticed at all. Both types inordinately rely on other people’s opinions or approvals. My personal solution? Humility! According to CS Lewis, humility is not to think less of myself, but it is to think about myself less. When I focus that the only one audience that matters is God, I feel liberated.
I am allowed to not like everyone but I am still called to love everyone.
One non-academic book I read during holidays in Canada — The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson— speaks to me loudly that rejection makes your life better. We need to be able to give and to receive rejections because apparently we too are defined by what we choose to reject. “Human beings need to be free to say “No”, if our “Yes” is going to mean anything” Fr Mike Schmitz. We need to reject something or we stand up for nothing. If I value X then I must protect X and reject non-X. If I value honesty, modesty, compassion, and faithfulness, then I get to reject dishonesty, self-righteousness, self-centeredness, and fickleness. It can be a great way to weed out the wrong people in my life.
Of course nobody is perfect and we are all broken people. We need to give and receive forgiveness. Yet, forgiveness is not the same with reconciliation. Trust is the most important ingredient in any genuine relationship. When trust is broken, we must be wise to decide when to reconcile and when to say goodbye.
While I am called to love everyone, I am allowed to not like everyone. “Love is to will the good of the other“ St Thomas Aquinas. This means I can still love the people I don’t necessarily like by simply viewing them in God’s image and likeness and not wishing them bad things. In the words of CS Lewis’ The Four Loves book, this kind of non-discriminatory love is termed Affection (Storge). One of the priceless blessings in life is therefore to have genuine connections with those life-timers who not only I love, but I actually really like!
Adversity builds character.
The point is not to get away from the shit. It is to find the shit I enjoy dealing with. 2022 served a steep learning curve for me in terms of my quantitative method skills, data visualization skill using R, and teaching skill. There was a specific period in 2022 when I cried because I was completely clueless and frustrated at troubleshooting with the R codes to visualize data for my RA job while at the same time deadline was approaching. I needed the grace of wisdom and humility to reach out to others to ask for help and to acknowledge my weakness and communicate my needs with my manager. When I could finally solve the errors, I literally threw a punch in the air! Happiness comes from solving problems.
I am thankful that in 2022, my mom and siblings with their families were all healthy. We have grieved so deeply since my dad passed in late 2019 and my first sibling passed in mid-2021. Grief comes in waves. Despite the pain from bereavement that in my view hurts most, when we could mourn so profoundly, that means we too have loved and been loved so profoundly.
The lowest moment in 2022 for me was probably the two damned weeks between a breakup and a PhD Comprehensive Exam. I wrote a blog about this experience. Mind you, writing is my therapy. That one particular experience of suffering had taught me many more meaningful lessons about myself and my ability to fight than all of my happy experiences in 2022 combined. Who would have guessed that such a low point in my life led to a glorious outcome? I just needed to pass that seven-hour closed-book in-person exam. For the first time in my SAIS life, I received a grade of distinction, yes I passed with honors! Nobody cares about grades anymore at a PhD level education but for me personally it’s a testament of how hard I worked and gave my absolutely best shot (irrespective of the outcome). And that’s nobody can take away from me.
In 2022, I fundamentally learned a lot about the concept that God can speak to me through open and closed doors. Not each open door is God-ordained, so I must test it. Does it contradict with what God loves and teaches? Does it make me a better person? Does it lead me closer to God?
But test everything; hold fast what is good.
1 Thessalonians 5:21
But when God closes a door, He actually protects me and redirects me to another door that is open. The challenge is to keep walking and trusting God, even when I couldn’t see the next open door.
My scholarship only covers me for four-year period while in average people finish in our program in 5 or 5.5 years’ time. At this point in my sixth semester, I don’t know how to fund my fifth year (both tuition fees and living cost). Will I find another scholarship, fellowship or employment? I hope God will show me the ways and take care of that while at the moment I will do what is in front of me.
After surviving the first five semesters of completing mandatory courses and passing three PhD Comprehensive Exams, I will be working on my prospectus so I need to think hard about my research design. I truly hope I can defend and pass it so as to start my PhD dissertation this year. I need to change my status from a PhD student to a PhD candidate this year or what folks here say ABD “All But Dissertation”.
This year I will try cultivating a “beginner’s mind” — fostering curiosity, taking courage to relearn, and allocating my time and attention correctly. I will choose my struggles carefully. I will read more, and scroll less as I think I start to outgrow social media particularly Twitter since Elon Musk owned it. The one word I choose to be my 2023 theme is EXCELLENCE. If you know me well, you know I quote too often from Fr Mike Schmitz but in one episode of Bible in a Year podcast (Day 5 episode) and in his Sunday homily video, he would equate excellence with diligence, not perfection! To strive for excellence is basically to do one thing at a time wholeheartedly, to be where my feet are, to do the minimum differently — for God’s glory and not for one’s own ruthless ambition for power, fame, and influence.
I now believe the Lord puts that desire for excellence in our hearts and He wants us to cultivate it for His glory. The story of Babel Tower shows that God favours us to strive for excellence which is to be great at whatever we do. God however condemns people like Nimrod who wanted to build a magnificent tower to make a name for themselves. “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves.” Genesis 5:4.
That is the difference between EXCELLENCE vs AMBITION. A clear teaching from God is that excellence is to be sought after. This pertinent to St. Maximilian Kolbe when he stated that his #1 goal was to be a saint, and a GREAT saint.
DWD
Devi & Development 