go bold

I think the world should be a meritocracy.

There, I went and said it. Come and get me, I’m ready.

First, my definition of merit: the quality of a person’s contribution to a given environment for the role they have been commissioned to fill. This means hiring someone or rewarding someone based on what they can do, rather than what they represent. This means pressing every member of the team to step up and distinguish themselves in some way, rather than hiding in the back trying to blend into the background.

What about rewarding “hard workers”? People should be held accountable for the work they took on, and measured on the quality of the work they produce. In my environment – in a software development environment – if I’m lacking in a ‘knack for things,’ then I should go make up for it in any way I can find: reading books and blogs about my craft and industry, keeping on top of new and relevant changes, finding some way to fill some niche in my environment that has not yet been filled. A meritocracy is no place for complacency (and is apparently not very friendly for work-life balance, either) – everyone should be pushed to be better.

And what about encouraging destructive competition within a team? I think people are big enough to recognize that working together allows everyone to achieve more (I sound like an inspirational poster in a second-grade classroom). Helping others does not detract from the quality of your own contribution, and can often improve skills in other aspects of your life – ones that may become valuable in surprising ways.

More to come next week. Possibly not on the same subject. Can you stand the anticipation?

Note: I’ve formed a blogging support group (pair?) of sorts with a friend. So we’ll now find a way to meet up and/or blog together once a week, as we both recognize the value in: 1) writing down our thoughts in some structured way, 2) exposing our thoughts in a public forum, and 3) company while miserable. Or, at least, company while doing things that all too easily get pushed to next week’s to-do list. Hopefully practice will make perfect – and the quality of these posts will improve.

I need a brain recorder. Not a notepad, or a voice-recognizing to-do list, or an iPhone app I can access anywhere, but a straight-up biodevice that hooks up to my brain and, when I realize I’m thinking a semi-coherent and somewhat interesting thought that needs a little more munching on, jots it down somewhere for me.

This summer, I’ve been exposed to more down time than I’ve ever been used to – part of it has been due to the necessary delays that come along with the joys of public transportation, some of it is from the copious amounts of walking I’ve been doing (to the grocery store, to and from work, to BART), and some of it is late at night after I get home. (Digression: that down time I’m not OK with – email me to hang out if you’re free!) And in this down time (actually, often when I should be focusing on other things), little thought bubbles pop up around my head:

I wonder what the weather is like in Boston, and (when it’s cold and windy here in SF) how much I actually appreciate seasons on the East Coast,

I wonder why there are so many people scattering so many elementary grammar and spelling mistakes in their emails (“Lot’s”? Come on.),

I wonder about companies and focus and HR people and women (more blog posts along the way),

I wonder about relationships and priorities and what other people are doing this summer.

So somehow, in my mind and for this blog, I’ve been queuing up quite the list of things to think about and blog about. I haven’t, however, found the impetus or time (because I’m thinking up too many other thoughts? :)) to actually do so. So here’s a promise – there are interesting things to come.

No more than two months ago, I was still a die-hard Twitter skeptic. I thought it was entertaining but trivial, and I thought I’d have no use for it. I also thought – privacy maniac as I am sometimes – that it was too public for random musings. A lot of my blogs and journals in the past have been kept private, or tightly controlled – and it was strange to me to think about anyone being able to follow me, to keep themselves updated on Christine’s whereabouts and doings.

Bit by bit, though, I started to notice more of my real-life friends online. Other MIT students, other people I felt shared my level of significance, started tweeting funny things about things they read, conversations they overheard, and somewhere along those two months, I started giving in. I’m tweeting more, @replying more, and slowly starting to see how communities of people get sucked in entirely.

What I’ve been thinking about recently as a result is the effect of audience – how who reads what you write (or your perception of that set) so drastically affects what and how you write. This blog, for example, isn’t publicized but is obviously linked to my identity. Somewhere, a Google search for “Christine Yen” returns my resume. I also don’t post very often – because I feel like I have to have thought something through to post here. There’s a (slight) fear of being judged harshly by what I write here.

On the completely opposite side is my Tumblr – it’s entirely secret, hopefully not at all identifiable as mine – used to store random funny images, videos, quotes, and every once in awhile, private and/or painful conversation snippets I want to remember. Its informality is in fact designed to be the alternative to blogging, where as little thought as possible is required to go into each post.

And finally, I’ve begun to fit Twitter into my life someplace in the middle. Tweeting out into the wide unknown isn’t interesting to me – I’ve got my blog or my Tumblr for that. If I was going to tell people about the gorgeous weather or wandering geese in Boston, I want people reading it to actually find it relevant, rather than finding it inconsequential and writing me off as a result. But there’s also the safety net of generally low expectations for tweets – so if I’m having a down day, I’ve got an excuse, and plenty more updates to redeem myself. There’s also a feeling of camaraderie on Twitter – knowing that I’ve got a set of people I care about to please, to entertain, makes me want to rise to the challenge of cramming a witty thought into 140 characters.

In any case – I kind of like how the lines are blurring. And while I’m used to being able to tightly control my audience, I can’t say I mind this freedom too much, either.

It’s almost more comforting believing that there aren’t. It’s kind of shocking to find out that someone actually followed up on the cards I handed out at SXSW… but why did I do it, if I wasn’t expecting that people would?

Life at MIT is, as usual, overwhelming and slightly smothering — but also dynamic, exciting, and inspiring. I get to write papers on the culture around text messaging for my Comparative Media Studies class with Henry Jenkins, and to spend hours upon hours with three guys just putting together the module dependency diagram for my software lab’s final project. Sometimes I think all it’d take for everyone to be immediately more cheerful is some sun and warmth to the air outside. Soon enough — spring had better be the hell on its way.

As heartbreaking as it is to push down the “pre-SxSW” entry, I may as well do it some time… and I’ll have a SxSW entry up soon enough!

So I finally updated and filled in most of the portfolio section — there are still a few projects I haven’t fully screenshot to their full glory, or provided enough of a description for, but for now this’ll suffice. Enjoy, poke around, and feedback (oh, right — adding to my list of TODO’s… I’ll add a feedback form somewhere soon enough) is always appreciated.

Cheers! Here’s to the second week of classes, may they be slightly more exciting than the first.