A bit ago, a classmate of mine upon graduating (a math/physics double major), went rambling about how Caltech is “exploitative”: the culture which normalizes staying up to the morning hours and grinding away at sets is toxic and preys on young eager academics. This got a very mixed reaction — isn’t it your own fault if you push yourself to that extent? You can simply take less classes. Nonetheless, this statement was quite divisive and stoked a lot of heated discourse.

Logically, I really disagree with the framing of Caltech's environment as "exploitative" — there is no actor who exploits. But that doesn’t mean there’s no substance to it. Why did this statement rake coals versus being skimmed over?

I think those who identify are involved in two unspoken things: escaping a dichotomy and reconceptualizing themselves. It's an encoded statement which pushes against an unstated social norm.

The premise is that Caltech grind culture focuses so much on success through work (you can either handle the workload or you can't) that it leaves anyone not desiring to separate themselves from a grind culture stuck in the singular way it expresses itself.

In other words, the culture leaves only one way to be a “successful student” or “hard worker”. If you’re not taking on what is by outside standards an inhuman workload, you cannot help but view yourself as taking it easy. Now, Caltech work culture isn’t monolithic. This isn't anywhere what Caltech culture is stated to be (though, in some places, not far off). But suppose you can’t seem to get away from this perception of yourself. What is one to do?

The framing of Caltech as "exploitative" preserves the self conception of a student willing to grind. It's useful insomuch as it gives a tool for people who are not served by the environment to actually do something for themselves, when all other existing supports have failed. It’s language that counters the simple dichotomy of “working hard” versus “taking it easy,” when “hard work” is defined solely through academic metrics.

Clarifying that dichotomy, to be a laid-back person is an identity, and should one wish to reject both this and the limited vision of success which academia provides, you’re kind of out of readable options. But it's gotta happen anyway: for some people, taking it easy feels like death (ask me how i know). So by calling Caltech “exploitative”, one who holds that view rejects the traditional demands for success and simultaneously embraces themselves as a source of potential work/force/energy (for something is being “exploited”).

It’s paradoxically a statement about oneself rather than Caltech, an economical way to express that you disagree with the values and metrics by which you should direct your personal intensity to remain recognized as being on board. It’s a shortcut to abruptly shift one’s own perception, to reject the dichotomy.

It’s efficient: by donning the uncomplicated lens of “exploitation”, you can get everything you want: you retain your identity as a hard worker, a grinder, or high performer while rejecting the product you’re forced to produce according to the value system perceived in "Caltech's culture". You empower yourself to regain control over your own direction.

It doesn’t matter if it’s true or logical; what matters is the effect it has on your self-perception and ability to remain close to your own desires in face of conflicting forces. In this way, a nonsensical statement becomes a powerful pithy quip for the speaker and anyone susceptible.

… Sometimes, the words don’t exist.

When the topic of discourse is constrained to Caltech’s culture as a whole, the most expedient way to express a personal rejection of it is to talk about how it’s “exploitative”. For though a conversation may not be about its participants, any conversation must *include* all its participants as such. But it's also a faux pas to change the explicit subject of discussion towards yourself. And so to talk about a culture one is rejecting without unbalancing the conversation, they must call it like so if they aren't to exclude themselves.

In other words, only through standing by something nonsensical are they able to represent themselves within a constrained discourse.

But you see how contrived of a move this is once spelled out. The mental gymnastics become so demanding when you "easily see" it makes no real "sense" to call Caltech “exploitative” in that way (i.e. it doesn't form a logical narrative), hence all that justification for my allegiance towards the utterance…

This pattern is pervasive throughout my own existence. With regards to myself, I so strongly wish for inclusion. And at the same time, the effects of conforming are devastating, so I must hold such a strong revulsion in my heart to shield myself from yielding. But to be included means to be seen: readable, understandable, a neat little package which can be seen clearly as a whole. How can I signal myself as included and yet also apart, while also making sense? This is the conflict which ruins my brain.

For years I’ve been asking the wrong questions, looking within discourse to find myself. I took my paradoxical existence and inability to explain myself as evidence that I did not know myself, when really there is an unspoken conclusion which remains to be taken: I fail to be contained in the discourse.

For I really have known myself the whole time. I’m just also insecure and lonely and want desperately to be included and understood — I’ve felt that way my whole life. And so I could not tolerate the idea of being invisible to society: living as something unknowable, an interface with no instructions. And yet, I’m neither an academic nor not, cis nor transgender. I reject the values I see embodied by the idea of a career (though, to be clear, I am not opposed to the act itself). I like math, but not in the way you think. The majority of myself which I wish to display is unnarratable.

On the most shallow level worth anything, to know who I am is to know how I can be interacted with. But if all I can say is what I’m not, a void still remains around what I am. This is the consequence of failing to be contained in the discourse: to be unspeakable as you are, your values and aesthetics unseen.

And so I eat myself with masks of words which fail to fit my face. In looking to find myself within the discourse, to explain who I am and be seen and move with others, I lose myself more and more. For I am doomed to fail.

… Sometimes, you really can just let it all go.

The only things I feel which anchor my sincere public identity are the pictures I draw and names I respond to. They serve as the faces of accounts which I interact with my classmates, a crafted identity which is constantly reinforced as few peers know my legal name (nor its abbreviation). Figures in my art encapsulate occult personal meanings: my approach to academics, my drive, my focus, my personalities. Faces which I’ve been using for over a decade each.

Abandon those, and maybe my problems would disappear. Discard the corrupted self so I can stop wasting my energy fighting off the infection. Obtain a new body.

And so I did. New account. New face. An essence extracted. And only the friends who might really matter.

It’s amazing how much of the internal toxicity and conflict has faded once I stared at the character which would be my profile pic alongside my new labels. When I think of myself in terms of they/them, instead of feeling nothing at best and ostracized at worst, I feel… a little more whole? Like it’s ok to just be myself, regardless of whether it makes any “sense” or not. Same for the therian note on my ref sheet, for while I don’t think I actually fit in that box, I really don’t identify by my physical appearance. It holds little sanctity for me personally. That note lets me be a little more myself in inconsequential ways.

Without the conflict around being explainable raging in my head, I can finally devote myself to what really matters: creating what I care about, bringing to life the visions I wish existed through art and math. Finding out who around me will let me run uninhibited. Please let me bug you, touch you, scuffle with you, and fuck you (this “you” is phrased generically, reader) … Please let me know you; let me invite you into my world where such boundaries like personal space don’t exist, should you also belong. Please let me ramble on, and I’ll let you do the same too.

I do desire my old identity which has been temporarily jettisoned... I want it to be filled, and eventually it will, sooner or later. Nothing really changed. All I did was recognize that, sometimes, the best way to get things done makes no sense, and that I should indeed trust myself. And so I took a plunge. The new face is just a way for me to enable permissions to enact myself.

I find it mildly interesting that this kind of solution, uprooting my whole identity, was only available due to how it formed in the first place: identifying myself through furry such that my body relegates to pixels on a screen. For me, it was as easy as a new user on my laptop and fresh accounts. Even in old spaces I chose to rejoin, nobody around knows who I am. As close as I wish to a new start — as just another cat on the internet.

But anyway, that’s enough explaining. Frankly it’s easier to just show you who I am, and so I should work on that instead.

in the meanwhile. don't bug me too much.

for Kat is sleeping. finally.