homes

i spent the last few weeks teaching at a math camp that i’d previously attended when i was in high school. it was pretty fun, but throughout the program i couldn’t stop thinking about how none of the kids had started college yet while i’d just finished. there was so much they had yet to experience and they were missing so much context for the questions i spend my time thinking about that eventually i gave up on trying to explain anything about myself and instead just talked to the kids about math and computers and food

(by the way, i did end up running the “explain computers in <1 hour” activity i mentioned in my previous post. it went reasonably well, and you can find my slides here)

a few days ago the summer camp ended and i went home, meaning my parents’ house, where i’ll be staying for the next few weeks. i considered asking people in the area if they wanted to hang out, only to realize that i had no idea who those people might be - i tried listing people i was friends with in high school and basically came up empty-handed. i know i must have had friends because i remember at some point i was really sad about leaving them behind, but now for some reason i can’t for the life of me recall who those people were

people often tell me i have good memory but clearly this isn’t actually the case. i think the more accurate description is that i’m good at focusing on things i care about, and when i’m focused on something i remember a lot about it. but leave something out of focus for long enough and my memory is about as bad as the average person’s

there’s a line that’s been lingering in my head lately - “I would reflect on all of my crushes, and all of my roommates, and the closeness and the growing pains of our coming of age”. it comes from a commencement speech given by alum reflecting on their time in college 23 years later. it’s a beautiful sentence, but i can’t help thinking that i’ll be lucky if in 23 years i even remember most of the people i spent time with

i’m moving to sf in a few weeks and to be honest i’m really not looking forward to it. i know i should be, that there are lots of cool people and interesting ideas i have yet to encounter, but it feels different from all my previous homes in a way that makes me apprehensive (i haven’t pinpointed why yet, but i think it has to do with feeling less safe, both physically and emotionally)

i recognize now that homes are a place but also a time, that you can be in the right place at the wrong time and everything will feel awkward and alien. that’s how i felt at my math camp for most of the past month, it’s how i feel at my parents’ house right now, and it’s how i expect to feel whenever i next return to mit. i know that it is impossible to return home, that the only way out of all this is forwards, that i must keep creating new homes for myself, and it’s exciting but it’s also isolating, exhausting, impossible