Writing: A Journey of Mind

In all my blogs this semester, I tried to dive deeper into some concepts that came across my mind. I wrote about concepts that I find interesting, and I tried to think about them and offer some thoughts perhaps beyond the surface level. 

For example, for parallel parking, I argued that individuals should invest their time on useful skills that might not leave immediate gratification; for gambler’s fallacy, I went into expected values, variance, and mental heuristics; for “why rules”, I theorized the strategic benefits and human tendencies to establish and follow rules; and for Fermi’s Paradox, I explored human-alien interactions from a game theory perspective. 

All those blogs were essentially about me exploring a concept and showing the reader what I’ve learned. It is not just about me sharing my knowledge because, to be frank, I did not fully comprehend some of the concepts I wrote about – especially the nitty-gritty details on things like the Dark Forest Hypothesis – and writing about them forced me to do some wikipedia geeking, which helped me learn a lot more about these concepts. 

So, let’s answer the questions. 

What blog did you enjoy writing the most and why?

My favorite was my latest blog, titled “The Fermi Paradox and the Dark Forest,” which was on a theory about human-alien interactions. The last time I read the book The Three Body Problem was a year ago, and I read it mainly for fun and did not fully remember its theories in detail. While writing that blog, I had to do some independent research, and the Dark Forest Hypothesis fascinated me. 

I originally planned to list a couple of alien theories, but I quickly ran out of space due to the amount of words required to explain the Dark Forest Hypothesis even on a basic level. I enjoyed not only the details of the theory but also the thought process of deriving and questioning it: what basic principles are involved? Why do certain statements have to hold true? Are there any exceptions? Any conditions that the Dark Forest Hypothesis might fail to consider? 

In fact, after I submitted that blog, I continued to think about it, and I discovered some conditions that the hypothesis did not take into account, like the possibility of a weaker civilization using the very fact that the Dark Forest exists to destroy a stronger civilization that they discovered by exposing the stronger civilization’s location to the rest of the universe. 

There are a ton of thought experiments and puzzles involved with this one, that’s why I liked it the most. 

How did you change or evolve as a writer over the course of this semester?

The biggest thing I’ve learned about writing from this semester is this: be genuine, don’t filter. I used to write in a very bookish language, contemplating over every word, and fixing up every sentence before going to the next one, resulting in a messed-up paragraph or essay that sounds pretty nice. 

This semester, through writing blogs and (of course) college essays, I learned to write down my thoughts as they appear, as raw as they were (or at least leave them all on paper before making edits), and not worrying about perfecting the details. I’ve learned that perfection is a distraction.  And I believe I tend to write the best when I write freely, because I lay all my thoughts on paper without having to worry about forgetting a key point or losing the focus of an essay. 

What have you learned about writing by reading other students’ blogs?

I’ve learned that the best writing focuses on the expression of ideas rather than the use of language. 

For example, I really liked Kai’s blogs because every blog offers his unique personal insight. Through reading his blog, I learn a lot about his philosophy, such as talking to strangers, intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation, conscious labels, and identity. Reading his posts was an intellectual experience, and I enjoyed it very much.

Through reading these blogs, I’ve learned that the quality of thoughts is vital to the quality of writing, and in order to write well in my future blogs/essays, I need to first think clearly and deeply. 

What lessons are you taking away from this semester that you will carry with you next semester?

1. 1. About writing: Give yourself time. The best writing takes time, so writing a college essay a couple days before its due is probably not a good idea. If you don’t give yourself enough time, you might think that you wrote something good right after you finished because your mind is still bugging from all the writings and proofreadings. However, if you give it a week and come back to it, you will see the flaws that you could not see earlier and realize that your original piece is, in fact, trash. So, start as early as possible.
   2. About writing: Let your thoughts flow. Don’t stumble upon word choice or sentence structure. Put the thoughts down first while they are in your mind because chances are, later, you won’t be inspired anymore and generating ideas will be a pain. Remember the 80/20 rule: you do 80% of the meaningful work during 20% of the total time you work, so make sure you utilize that 20% completely.
   3. About life: life is long. Don’t get so result-oriented (that means, worrying if you get into an Ivy League) because life is a marathon, and the determining factor of your success is not whether you win a competition or get into a good college, but whether you have a good set of characters – diligence, righteousness, wisdom, bravery, kindness, and humility. Make sure you spend a lot of time building your character, and don’t worry about the good things that are destined to come to you.

      

   4. About life: 撑死胆大的，饿死胆小的(The brave overspills, and the timid starves.) Do not spend your days worrying about the risk involved in doing something that you believe should be done. Do it. You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. Failing is better than regretting that you never tried.