From 20 to 30

I’m turning 34 this year, so I’m well into my 30s by now. At the same time, I’m also finishing up a second degree in computer science, and am surrounded by fresh faces in their 20s excited and slightly confused about finishing up school. There are some first timers, 22–23, and some grad students, in their mid-20s somewhere. They are great people to be around and I’m grateful to have them as my friends, or more accurately that they accepted me as their friend. To be fair, they all thought I was younger. *Blush*

At the heart of it, I was very excited to be back in school. I know many people at my age would gripe about going back. It’s the last thing they would want. But to me it was the first. School was the only place where I felt like I belonged. That wasn’t just because I was good at school, but because it was a place with this energy and this sense of connectedness that the rest of the world lacked in my opinion. It was a little village where I met up with friends, went to club meets, hung out with friends, and met some cute girls. Not that the rest of the world doesn’t have this, but even in the core of downtown things are more spread out in time and space. It’s harder to find people you get along with or meet people outside of your work. University has this youthful energy there filled with optimism and openness that doesn’t quite compare.

I’ve noticed some stark differences though during my second time around and being over a decade older than most classmates. There is this paradoxical mix of perspectives. Some students are keen to move on and dive head first into the world with their somewhat inflated big ideas. Others simply try to make it to the next assignment, the next semester, the next year. Others still are smart and engaged, yet are unable to take advantage of all the opportunities that are available to help them make the next steps, maybe because they aren’t sure which direction to take. I was guilty of falling into a bit of all three of these categories during my first degree in psychology and philosophy. It was interesting and I liked being there, but there was no end goal except for completion.

This time around I have a clearer goal to try as many different avenues as possible to really help delineate which is the best path for me. Every action I take is fairly directed and every event is a chance to learn something about myself. I already knew that I had to start a career, so the first summer I taught myself more code to boost my skills, and after second year when my coding skills were no longer terrible I started applying to summer positions. I was fortunate enough to find a great position with a great boss (who is about the same age with a PhD…) and dove right into the work. It was no longer a filler job, something to make money, something to pad the resume, but another chance to learn.

I started to realize through my work and my classes that my priorities tended to be different than other peers. I cared about the work and set a higher bar when it mattered, and I was able to brush off the little things when I knew that grades made little difference. It is a small and subtle, yet substantially significant, shift from doing things because it was expected of me to doing things because it helped build something for everyone involved. I’m finding it hard to pin down in words exactly, but the feeling is that it wasn’t about me so much as it was to build relationships with others through the work.

Seems like such a simple and obvious thing now, yet throughout my 20s it never really sank in. Before I always felt like the world was against me. I had my ideas, my skills, my degree, and it felt like nobody would give me a chance. I couldn’t get anywhere past the replaceable retail and service jobs. And in some sense I was scared of middle-class occupations since they were so foreign to how I grew up. Like I wasn’t worthy. It turns out this mindset was the problem all along. It’s not about whether I’m smart and capable. I didn’t seem to really care much about the person on the other side, and show them why I could help them if they helped me.

There is a broader perspective that my 30s brought on that encompasses this new mindset as a whole: everyone is just a person with the same concerns, struggles, and needs. Again, it might just seem like I was completely ignorant as in my 20s, which is partially true, but I see this in many of the students in my classes. I started speaking up in class, asking the questions everyone wanted answers to but wouldn’t voice, emailing out feedback to professors, trying to speak for the class. At the same time, I also helped TAs and professors in my small way by clarifying confusions from the student body. I was trying to bridge the divide that is often so wide. I see everyone as just a person, not a kid, not an authority, not some anonymous administrator, or a boss. Sure, everyone plays the role that is expected of them, but when you treat them as an equal it changes the dynamic completely. Everyone is progressing in their own way, in their own stage of life, and all anyone wants is to feel good about what they are doing and to know they aren’t doing the wrong thing. Everyone feels pressured in one way or another to finish that thing they started, to struggle to fit in, or to live up to expectations placed on them. By recognizing the feelings that a person has as equal to my own and to others, I simply try to lend a helping hand whenever possible even if it means I fail sometimes or get embarrassed when I make a mistake (like when I emailed the class a homework tip when I was doing it wrong…).

I’m a huge movie auteur (aka. nerd) and admire many talented directors and actors for what they do, but more so for what kind of person they are. Many years ago, I learned about how Ryan Gosling finally felt like he knew what he was doing when it hit 30. There’s also this series by Variety called Actors on Actors where two famous actors just chat for 30–40 mins candidly. One video had two of my favourites, Kate Winslet (40s) and Saoirse Ronan (20s), and it was fascinating. Kate has a habit of never watching herself on screen. She says she couldn’t bear it. When the conversation went towards the lessons learned through age, Kate unabashedly said when she became 40 she no longer gave a fuck. I loved that. It might seem like famous and rich award-winning actors could do whatever they wanted much earlier than most people, but this simply told me that everyone has those same concerns of living up to expectations and feeling trapped by them. Another one with yet another two all-time favourites, Amy Adams and Nicole Kidman, revealed that they both have had, maybe still have, severe anxiety about their careers and had to actively learn not to constantly seek approval for every take, for every movie they did.

The meme on the internet is that everyone is just winging it, that all the adults have no clue what they are doing, and there is definitely some truth to that. The world from my 20s tells me that there is a certain set of rules, a set of roles, that everyone is supposed to fit neatly into. The world of my 30s tells me that none of those are set in place, that things are constantly shifting and you have to be able to find your centre in the tides. What that entails is treating others like you would yourself, building relationships that last, knowing and remembering the things you care about and not faltering too much, yet be flexible not to let it consume you. It is this sense of internal balance of yourself within the world you live in, and having the skills and motivation to weather through the rough patches when that balance is disrupted.

I used to be very much a dreamer. I read books by smart people, watched TED talks by smart people, and I wanted to be one of those smart people who came up with world changing ideas and developments. Yet I never understood the work and the dedication that went on behind the scenes. Some adults like to tell kids that there’s no use being a dreamer, that it was all a lie, or it’s simply way too hard to get there. Certainly I agree that it is harder than I, and probably millions of other young people, thought. There’s no doubt there. But I also think that there is power in dreaming realistically. I’ve been seriously considering to try for graduate school, likely to the PhD level if all goes well, and I know it will be hard and that it isn’t just a straight path there. At the same time, I also dream of being on stage at conferences, talking to all the smart people I read about, and to give that TED talk (if it’s still around by then!). I also know that things might change, I may get an amazing job somewhere, I may meet someone, start a family, I may not even like grad school. That would suck for sure. Yet I am more willing now than ever to go down that road and at least try it for myself, to be confident that I do have something special to offer, and to make connections with more great people and be a part of their stories as much as they are a part of mine.

It may seem like a disadvantage for me to be much older, to be in school again, to be single again, and not have my career in place already, but to me I’ve never felt quite as sure of who I am and excited for what’s to come than I have pretty much all of my life prior to this point. It finally feels like I’ve learned to read and capture the winds, to ride the waves as they come, and to know that I’m headed somewhere for once. It’s funny because I have no idea how to drive a boat. Oh well, maybe someday I will. And that someday is the best part.