Right about the time I started full-time was when I first read this comic strip¹. There was one frame that struck a chord. Teary-eyed, I saw my childhood illustrated with startling accuracy. There were good parts of course, like the lifelong friends I’ve made who accepted me from the very beginning, and the recognition I gained from being a good student. But I also had recurring nightmares of being trapped somewhere I didn’t belong, befriended only because of my differences.
Sometimes those differences became a pretext for bullying and ostracizing. While my first school encouraged me to show off my personality and cultivate my interests, my second and third schools taught me that doing so brought unwanted attention in an environment obsessed with academic performance and competition. Still, I insisted on standing out partly cuz I failed and excelled in very specific areas.
In 2022, I found myself at a trajectory again—a fresh English graduate interning in fintech. This time, the choice of my next destination was entirely in my hands. Yet, I was at a complete loss. The global climate was in shambles, and in my view, the US was linked tightly to it. The lingering threat of another COVID wave, the post-Trump era, the invasion of Ukraine, soaring inflation, the death of the monarchy, X. Institutions felt unreliable, and systems were breaking apart. While the world’s gears were spinning at a record speed, they were also losing control.
I didn’t know whether I was going to be trampled over, or if I could ride the wave and fit in like a tight screw. Little did I know that the launch of ChatGPT later that year would be the moment everything truly accelerated. Even d, a competent software engineer, was terrified of losing his job and spiraling into depression. If nothing else, I knew moving to the States meant constantly thinking ten steps ahead, or drown in debt and fall into poverty before ever getting a chance to prove myself.
So, even though I had always assumed my first job would be there, somewhere I imagined I’d finally belong, I chose to be was taken in here, like a stray and placed in a role to be molded. I was skeptical that they saw my potential, but accepted that this was my only best shot and seized it. Deep down, I knew I was handed this lifeline because of my difference, and a distinct bias that I spoke and thought differently.
Genuinely, I don’t know if I really am that different.
Years later, he’d still remind me that he gave me this job because he pitied my generation for being released into a world moving so inconceivably fast.
Footnotes
- I read the NYT each morning, since the work then demanded very little of me. Like it was made for me but purposeless.