Tag: Education

My Junior Spring Harvard Classes ≧◡≦

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Selina Xu Harvard Class Schedule (Junior Spring)

MY FAVORITE SEMESTER INTELLECTUALLY! ❤️ Before I gush, a few things:

  1. I’m back to four classes (and also auditing a fifth).
  2. This has been the best schedule I’ve had so far, with no classes on Thursdays AND Fridays.
  3. But in terms of sheer reading, I have to average three books per week (not including some of the theory/academic journals I have to read for CompLit & English, as well as my own independent research for my junior tutorial).
  4. I’ve taken classes with three of the professors in previous semesters (Homi Bhabha, David Carrasco, and David Wang).

Here’s a snapshot of my desk with stacks of books organized according to each class, from left to right, HDS 2052, ENG 191C, and COMPLIT 277:

Selina Xu Books Harvard Classes

HDS 2052: Religion Around Toni Morrison and Gabriel García Márquez: Their Writings and Lives — Davíd Carrasco

Profé Carrasco was my Hum 10 seminar professor in my Freshman fall. Here’s a snippet of the blog post I wrote way back in September 2017, Things I Love:

The room is warm. My pulse is throbbing at an almost manic pace. In a hitched breath’s moment of unconscious cerebration, it occurs to me that I am surrounded by knowledge coming to life — in eager minds, raw stories, bustling thoughts, and this palpable sense of convivencia and of shared humanity that emerges from within all of us when we discuss vanished worlds in ancient texts (Odyssey, Oedipus Rex, Poetics, Symposium…). Unbelievable, but somehow it is happening, in this time and place, in this infinite now. (I am really loving my Humanities seminar under Professor David Carrasco! Every time I walk out of class, some ineffable change washes over me; I’m not sure what it is, but I feel just a bit more comfortable with uncertainty and a little bit more certain about what gives me meaning.)

No surprise that I’m taking a class again with Profé!

This class is my first venture into the Harvard Divinity School, looking at literature through the lens of religion. In particular, we focus on two Nobel Prize-winning writers, Toni Morrison and Gabriel García Márquez, and the religion AROUND their writings and lives. ‘Religion’ is meant in the broadest sense of the word — think of homeland and quests, sacred places and borders, memory and myths, terror and magical flight, ghosts and demons, goodness and evil, slavery and freedom, women and machismo, colonial violence and political and spiritual forms of resistance.

I’ve always been intrigued by the connection between holy and profane texts: Confucian ethics and Daoist cosmology have shaped China’s Four Literary Classics, the Greek pantheon of gods have sustained myth and tragedy, Christian symbolism and morality are intertwined with much of European literature; the same can be said for the Indic, the Islamic, and the Buddhist traditions…

The sacred and the secular are always interrelated. Great literature touches something divine.

ENGLISH 191C: Constellations — Homi K. Bhabha

My freshman spring seminar with Professor Bhabha was one of the most formative classes I’ve taken at Harvard. Even several semesters apart, I would often find myself referring to a fragment of conversation from that seminar — a certain way of looking at literature that is interdisciplinary, broadly humanist. I once wrote a short post on ‘Why Literature‘, which was inspired by that seminar.

When I tell people about this class, many are perplexed about the word ‘constellations.’ I picture it as a tapestry made from disparate intellectual threads: clusters of ideas, polyphonic conversations, and what Walter Benjamin calls “the constellation in which his own epoch comes into contact with that of an earlier one” (On the Concept of History). I can’t reduce this class to a single topic — it’s very much about identity, movement, communities, and collective speculation through literature.

The wide arc of historical experience is a genealogy of histories of inequality and injustice, and life-worlds of individuals who seek to make a claim to human dignity from a variety of contexts. How can we conceive of colonization and segregation in dialogue with migration and the predicament of refugees? What does citizenship mean in an age of international cosmopolitanism and national sovereignty?

COMPLIT 277: Literature, Diaspora, and Global Trauma — Karen Thornber

Diaspora (noun)

  • The voluntary or involuntary migrations of peoples
  • A national, ethnic, or religious community living far from its native land
  • Ethnic minority groups of migrant origins residing and acting in host countries but maintaining strong sentimental and material links with their countries of origin (Stéphane Dufoix)

‘Diaspora’ has no fixed, singular definition. I like to think of it as dispersions and movements, with globalized communities and networks forming in their wake.

This being my first CompLit class, the comparative aspect really does stand out. Comparisons are never neutral: How do we think beyond our own frame of reference? How can ‘equal’ comparisons be undertaken in an unequal world? Can we start from our own position and not assume it as the center of the universe? Can we make comparisons that don’t reflect the structures of domination of the world?

The syllabus traverses many corners of the globe (every week we move to somewhere new!): African; East, South, Southeast, and West Asian (Chinese, Indian, Iranian, Korean, Vietnamese); and Middle Eastern (Jewish, Lebanese); as well as Latin American and Caribbean. Can we juxtapose traumas of one diaspora beside another?

More broadly speaking, I’m interested in trauma that’s not only event-based, but also prolonged, meandering, constant; not only centered on the poignant, persecuted figure of the refugee, but also the often invisible, assimilating, hybrid migrant.

HISTLIT 98: Junior Tutorial — Catherine Nguyen

I work with my tutor, Dr. Nguyen, towards a 6000-word (roughly 24 pages) essay on any possible topic that is remotely historical/literary, which is to say anything at all. I’m still brainstorming, but I have narrowed it down to the Anthropocene (the geological age of humans) novel, or climate fiction (cli-fi). For a long time, I was exploring my usual interests: diaspora, globalization, capitalism, postcolonialism. They all revolved around big ideas that undergirded my academic study: What does literary self-representation reveal about a subject? What is the relationship between writing and the self?

But, this semester, I’m quite obsessed with a different question: What new challenges does climate change or the Anthropocene pose to the work of the novel?

Our collective (in)ability to imagine climate change or to even imagine a future without us that is immediate, realistic, and urgent is ripe for critical dissection.

I’m totally new to the realm of climate fiction and eco-criticism. If you have recommendations for ANYTHING that could possibly be interesting, please send them my way. I need collisions! Constellations! Violent, rupturing, crazy inspirations!

CHNSLIT 245R: Literature & The State of Emergency — David Der-wei Wang

I’m auditing this class! The state of emergency — in the vein of Carl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin, and Giorgio Agamben — denotes the suspension of regular law and the intervention of the national sovereign. Yet, when the ‘state of emergency’ becomes normalized, regularized, and naturalized, the supposed state of exception becomes the rule.

Through case studies across the Chinese diaspora such as Hong Kong, Beijing, Taipei, Kuala Lumpur, and Lhasa, the class explores sovereignty, bare life, biopower, necropolitics, cyber-politics, contagion, disaster, slow violence, apocalypse, etc.

***

The semesters have really flown by. Gosh. Read previous renditions of my semester’s worth of classes below:

Happy to chat about any of these topics!!! 🐣✨🌲

Lots of love,

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My Junior Fall Harvard Classes!

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Vietnam Ha Long Bay Cruise

Hello folks, we’re entering week 4 of Junior Fall?! Summer feels like yesterday — banana shirt days in flip-flops, lounging in the shade reading novels, and smearing the ring of condensation on my fingers when sipping iced tea/milk green tea with golden bubbles/pineapple smoothies (happy sigh).

My life has never been this routine and packed — classes, readings, dining hall meals, exercise. I’ve picked up running again. Weaving between Georgian buildings in the darkness, feet pounding on empty pavements, a flash of headlights, the smell of wet grass, a sliver of the night chilly between my slick fingers, my figure solitary between marble sky and solid earth.

For the first time ever, I’m taking 6 courses in a semester (one of them being an Independent Study) but still, my schedule looks deceptively doable — continuing my streak of no classes on Fridays! But, quite honestly, I’ve been feeling like I’m on a knife-edge. One misstep or a brief surrender to procrastination, and the wheel throws me off. Keeping my balance precipitously on the tightrope of discipline. It’s hard to finish all the readings but I really do want to.

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IGA 211/GOV 1796: Central Challenges of American National Security, Strategy, and the Press — Graham Allison, David Sanger, Derek Reveron

Piqued by a summer immersed in international news at CNN, I decided to take my first Government class at Harvard (eons ago in high school, I once took Geopolitics at NUS).  It’s held at the Harvard Kennedy School, with a small class that features a mix of Kennedy school students, National Security Fellows, cross-registered students, and undergrads.

The class is memo-style with national security cases on likely real-world scenarios ranging from North Korea’s ICBM tests to Chinese intervention in Hong Kong to Homeland Security and immigration to cybersecurity. The three professors offer different views/approaches to each of these security challenges. One fascinating dimension is the press: How does domestic press coverage inform/intrude national security decision making? How does social media (Twitter, for example) transform national security strategies? (Think: Trump.)

Fun fact: PM Lee Hsien Loong was a former student in this course (yes, it has been running for a long, long while).

HIST 14V: Walter Benjamin — Peter Gordon

My first History department course. 😳 (This is quite the semester of experimentation.) I still feel slightly out of my element due to the European focus of the class. Sorel on the myth of the general strike? Scholem on Jewish mysticism? Postlapsarian wha—?

But, I’m persisting. We are about to read Benjamin’s Origin of the German Trauerspiel this coming week and it’s apparently one of his most difficult pieces of writing. Let’s see how that goes.

Why am I taking this class? I’ve previously encountered Walter Benjamin only in snippets, sporadically in different courses across departments – for instance, “The Task of the Translator” in my freshman seminar on the creative work of translating, and his writings on the flâneur in Global Fictions. My academic interests lie in cosmopolitanism and the diasporic individual in the age of globalization/postcolonialism as well as at the intersections of phenomenology and literary subjectivity. Time to trace the roots of these ideas to one of the fathers of cosmopolitan thought.

If you’d like to give Benjamin a shot, here’s a short essay, “On Language as Such and on the Language of Man.”

ENGLISH CAFR: Advanced Fiction Workshop: Writing this Present Life — Claire Messud

My 4th creative writing workshop at Harvard. So excited! The first workshop I’ve ever been to in my life was Intro to Fiction with Claire, in the fall of 2017. I still remember when I was first rejected for the class and then miraculously got off the waitlist (Embracing Rejection At Harvard (also unexpected surprises)) — life works in mercurial, magical ways. Somehow, I’m just glad that I’m still writing, frantically, confessionally, unabatingly. 

That Freshman Fall workshop ended up completely altering my college trajectory (and aspirations). While before I had jotted down snippets in notebooks or started too many novel drafts left unfinished, I wrote my first full-fledged short story (posted as a Valentine’s Day short story on the blog: April, I Arrive on The Shores of Your Love) in that course. It only sank in then that ‘writer’ had contours that I could touch and maybe eventually fill.

This semester, I’m working a projected longer work. It’s a speculative fiction piece about celebrity worship, mass culture, and the future of media in 2035. If you have thoughts on this or some wild ideas, or if you just want to orate about a futuristic world, GRAB A MEAL WITH ME AND TALK TO YOUR HEART’S CONTENT.

HIST-LIT 98: History & Literature Junior Tutorial — Catherine Nguyen

There’s just three of us and our tutor. We create our own syllabus collectively — each of us decides the readings/topics for around 3 weeks. I like the autonomy but the fluidity of structure is quite unprecedented. For my weeks, I’m thinking of these topics:

  • Language and Exile (Nabokov? Pnin? Imaginary Homelands?)
  • Migration and Intimacies (Wong Kar-wai? Eileen Chang?)
  • Refugees, Displacement, and Transnational Futures (Exit West? Viet Thanh Nguyen?)

What would you study, if given the opportunity to craft your own syllabus?

PHIL 97: Philosophy Sophomore Tutorial — Rachael Goodyer

We are studying the concept of dignity through its historical foundations (four influential traditions include: the Stoic, the Catholic, the Kantian and the 19th century German), dignity’s relationship to human rights, and dignity’s discussion in medical ethics. Dignity is embedded in political and legal discourse, so the readings cover many genres (legal cases, philosophical texts, literature, political declarations/treatises).

Is dignity a ‘squishy, subjective notion’ as Steve Pinker calls it? Or is it essential to the conception of human rights? Ah, how hard it is to define dignity; how omnipresent it is in our lives.

Independent Study — David Wang

I’m tentatively working on a love story set in future Hong Kong in a time of crisis and collapse, in the vein of ‘Love in A Fallen City’ （倾城之恋）.

After a long, wonderful conversation with Professor Wang about speculative realism, the Hong Kong protests (the city is a crucible of capitalist & socialist forces), post-humanism, and the biopolitics of the state, I’m brimming over with possibilities and the daunting thought that every story — no matter how outrageous — needs to be grounded in the conservative/ordinary/minute human concerns. The political cannot be brushed aside.

***

Read about my classes in previous semesters:

My Sophomore Spring Harvard Classes + Some Little Things

My Sophomore Fall Harvard Classes! (ft. Life)

My Freshman Spring Harvard Classes

Lots of love,

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Ode to My Youth • 母校，生日快乐

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Saw a couple of tiny girls in Hongzi at Bugis today and suddenly remembered. Happy 102nd birthday, Nanyang! ❤

Selina Xu NYGH Graduation

一九一七八月十五，是宝贵的良辰。 在火药气味浓厚中，可爱的母校出现。

I remember those golden, burnt-edged secondary school days of folding notes and passing them with furtive glances in ordered classrooms when the teacher isn’t looking; of six heads huddling over one glowing phone screen playing Boys Over Flowers on blurry, drowsy mornings before the bell rings; of splaying over beds in late-night talks at the boarding school about boys from across the bridge; of group therapy sob sessions over fictional characters and novel endings; of shared Facebook stalking sessions of the latest eye-candy; of traipsing to Starbucks in the humid heat during 1-for-1 promotions paid for by pooling our allowances together; of weird shenanigans in class such as playing “I love you” on Google Translate when we had to discuss Romeo & Juliet and collapsing into laughing fits; of curiously acquainting oneself with the awkwardness of one’s adolescent body in the mirrored walls of the dance studio during Chinese dance classes; of the collective panic before NAPFA 2.4km tests around the red tartan track; of proudly making hilarious iMovies such as “The Hungry Games” (featuring four of us eating gummy worms at midnight), a talk show featuring us acting as To Kill A Mockingbird characters (I was Mayella Ewell), and a student council election video with young, shining, grinning faces; of the girlish excitement at looking older in our yellow blazers, blue flaps and white pencil skirts; of the simple pleasure of fried fish soup, hot milo, Soghurt stamps, school bookstore snacks, an early recess, bright jackets by each club to don over our pure white Hongzi; the novelty of (and subsequent disillusionment with) a sandwich vending machine; and hollering Jay Chou songs onstage.

I remember graduating in a blur of tears, photos, hugs, and that deep tidal wave of immediate nostalgia in the final moments (A Simpler Era furiously waving goodbye on the platform, receding into a speck).

我的青春，谢谢你温柔地来过。

Selina Xu NYGH Council

Lots of love,

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My Sophomore Spring Harvard Classes + Some Little Things

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Belatedly, wishing all of you: Happy Year of the Pig!!! ❤ ❤ ❤

First things first, things that have served as brilliant reminders when life works weirdly:

1. Turn your FOMO into JOMO (Joy of Missing Out) — I would like to interpret it as loving yourself and realizing that doing nothing or doing less are all relative terms that we use to measure ourselves relative to something external. Though we might often doubt ourselves for not doing enough, not spending time on academics or extracurriculars might mean spending it with your body, your mind, or your soul. (Thank you, Marwah. x) That’s as worthwhile and meaningful. We all have different paths and different destinations along the way. So the balance is to walk my own path while still keeping in sight where I want to go and to make sure I’m keeping pace with my internal calling.

 

2. Maintaining a healthy weight is a marathon not a sprint!!!

3. My classes. Let’s say, Q = “Eating more brings weight gain” — at least, there’s one thing in life that works by the same causal logic as proposition Q: reading and thinking more brings a better version of myself. I’ve slacked off quite a bit this long weekend (on Sunday, I curled up in a corner of Cabot Library and just read romance novels for an entire afternoon). No skimping on readings subsequently, Selina!!!

Now, a bit more about what I’m taking this semester:

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AESTHINT 47 Forbidden Romance in Modern China

I was destined to take this class. Forbidden Romance? Check. China? Check. We’ve studied illicit love letters between Lu Xun and his female student, Yu Dafu’s auto-erotic story of narcissism and patriotism, and the secret love affair between the married darling of modern China and Virginia Woolf’s nephew.

Almost astonishingly, I’ve discovered that women back then had much greater latitude in exploring new forms of intimacy, constructing a new feminine subjectivity in romantic liaisons, and breaking from societal traditions. The many types of love (teacher-student, extramarital, eroticism, older woman-younger man) that flourished then amidst the post-May 4th zeitgeist might be considered taboo right now. Perhaps, the literary history of modern romance is a narrative of regression.

Professor David Wang, who teaches this, is so incredibly earnest and empathetic in his lectures. His lecture on the life of Yu Dafu (a writer who began his life with debauchery and ended up in martyrdom) was the first time I teared up in a lecture.

HIST-LIT 97 Sophomore Tutorial — Cultures of U.S. Imperialism

One of my main reasons for declaring History & Literature is to explore imperialism/postcolonialism and narrative historiography (empire and globalization through fiction) in tandem. We will be reading many authors who I have encountered before (which could be a good or a bad thing): E. M. Forster, Joseph Conrad (!!!), J. M. Coetzee, Wole Soyinka, and Jamaica Kincaid. Thus far, we’ve looked at the British empire as much as the U.S. empire. It’s interesting being the only non-American a class as U.S.-centric as this one, and having grown up with a partially Anglophone education in Singapore that bears the indelible vestiges of British colonialism.

PHIL 33 Ethical Issues in Social, Cultural, and Artistic Representation

Telling other people about my classes this semester has been a mouthful because of Phil 33. Everyone’s response is always a lull, followed by, Say again?

I didn’t actually shop this class, but shopped numerous others. Expectedly, on the Friday of Shopping Week, I once again ended up in utter confusion and disarray about my course cart. After my friend told me in the afternoon about this class, I decided to enroll on a whim. I’m interested in the topics we have been discussing in class (it’s just 8 of us) in the abstract, but not that much in the specific. Right now, we have been analyzing arguments on both sides of the Confederate symbol debate. How do we judge the past? What gives a symbol its racist meaning? How can we correct historical injustice?

Subsequent topics might resonate more:

  • Cultural Property and Cultural Appropriation
  • Stereotypes
  • Ethics and Fictional Representations

PHIL 136 Phenomenology of Lived Experience

Taught by Professor Samantha Matherne!!! (She taught my Kant class last semester and was phenomenal.) Absolutely a blast so far. I wasn’t familiar at all with the word ‘Phenomenology’ before taking this class and still am not quite sure. The central question is: what are the general structures that any experience involves?

We started by looking at treatments of the phenomenology of lived experience in general in texts by Brentano and Husserl (now Heidegger). I’m really excited to later work out the phenomenology of specific modes of lived experience in Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks, Emilio Uranga’s “Essay on an Ontology of the Mexican,” and Sara Ahmed’s “Orientations: Towards a Queer Phenomenology.”

I WILL DO MY READINGS THOROUGHLY!

If any of these ideas interest you, come talk to me about my classes anytime.

4. Happy Lantern Festival! 元宵节快乐～We’ve reached the fifteenth (and the last) day of the Lunar New Year celebrations so fast. There have been some dreary days and afternoons of seemingly incurable malaise, but also some mornings when I sit in class and look at the world in wonder, emerging from a vulnerable conversation into a kinder world.

Even though I haven’t eaten tangyuans (those glutinous balls with black sesame or peanut paste fillings), I had a call with my mom tonight across continents and time zones, which put my life in perspective and filled me with faith. Thank you for always believing in me. You don’t know how much it means to me, 妈咪 ❤ Sending this ball of positive energy to all of you. On cold nights with swirling snow weighing on gaunt treetops, think of this cute picture below.

打印

Lots of love,

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[Story] The Plato Act

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Author’s Note: Hello loves, I’m currently in the midst of my final papers (two down, one more to go!) — here’s the creative, futuristic piece that I submitted as my final paper yesterday for my History & Literature seminar on Speculative Fictions. The central conceit might seem speculative to some of you, might be eerily familiar to others. What do you think? Happy reading! x

Plato Mind

Utopia by Moe Pike Soe

There will be no end to the troubles of states or indeed, my dear Glaucon, of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world.

— Plato, The Republic

Our state takes this quote very seriously. We all do. It undergirds our entire system, the ship of our country runs on its steam. No one likes to think that she is a cog in a juggernaut. But. Nearly two centuries ago, Benedict Anderson called a nation an imagined political community — ours is an imagined community that can still command emotional legitimacy when most others are erratically unraveling and becoming unimagined even as I write. Borders are falling like dominoes imploded by floods of refugees in the Northern hemisphere. History will call it the Fourth Wave, more potent and ceaseless compared to the ones that came before. We are blessed to still have the chance to be cogs in the enduring edifice of our city-state. And maybe, with time, something more.

The very first to come undone was Germany. The Foreign Ministry sent alerts to all our PAs. My mother didn’t even have to cancel our Christmas trip tickets because Boeing Inc. refunded all tickets after terminating all flights to Germany indefinitely. Other than the fact that my mother was disappointed that her highly sought-after event planning skills were not put to the test, no one else in our family was unhappy. It wasn’t too late for my dad to purchase a 1974 FIFA World Cup tournament simulation seat, which was happening at the Next/Now sports stadium five blocks away — Technically speaking, I’ll still be in West Berlin, he said merrily — and I got the newest iBook in the Penguin x Oculus Collection on the morning of December 25th as a substitute reward for my excellent exam performance last season.

The implosion of borders also happened from within. In Germany, Canada, Italy and the others that have disintegrated, a common thread has been native fundamentalist groups, which formed virtual republics with their own passports, parliamentary systems, crypto institutions, and safe spaces for anti-real mobilizations (Birdy 08/02/2178 12:33PM: Hacking of government data, embezzling funds from financial behemoths, assassinations of Triples… Honestly, the list goes on.). What seeded all these disillusionment was how real-world governments in these democracies have acted, or more specifically chosen to not act, seven years ago when the genetic modification needed for longevity was unlocked. This discovery would triple lifespans — a real breakthrough since former research had only allowed for improved health with an average lifespan of 122 years. Three scientists in China filed the patent; biotech corporations around the globe gobbled it up; luxurious specialized clinics had their grand openings in all the strategic cities. The trend unfurled too fast for legal protocols to match. Most governments couldn’t and didn’t do anything in response. I know how I’m phrasing it right now makes it seem as though it spread like wildfire. News of it certainly did. But, the procedure cost upwards of ten digits, which though not out-of-the-world, made it only accessible to the top 1% or so. Which is still quite a lot of people, arithmetically speaking. But, statistics-wise, to the masses, it was infuriating. To call it anger would be a euphemism.

Consider it carefully. The chance to live for an additional two centuries was not just more years, but also an investment — at the accelerating rate of technological progress, who knew what new discoveries future generations would bring to the table? Being able to undergo the modification might mean being able to live till the moment when immortality is made possible. With such ample time, what achievement wouldn’t be possible? The advantages you could accrue, the lengths to which you could cultivate your mind, nothing will be out of reach. What the sharpest commentators quickly realized and duly propagated on all the massive social networks was the radical inequity that our world was on the cusp of. Mankind has come face to face with an impending bifurcation of its species, with irreversible repercussions (Birdy 13/07/2179 5:19PM: Until the day that time travel is invented, I guess). With time on their side, the Triples will have the chance to evolve into a more intelligent species. The rest of humanity, the have-nots, the 122s, will be standing at the opposite shore, staring at the ever-widening chasm and the ever-receding far bank. An abyss with a single bridge across. The bridge of genes that needs wealth’s keys.

***

Questions? our Logic teacher, Mr. Tan, turns to ask the class, holding his stylus up after scribbling the equation with a flourish.

My hand goes up immediately. Mr. Tan’s eyes crinkle.

Ah, as usual, he says, yes Birdy?

If P1 and P3 must both be on the team, and at most one of G2 and G4 can be on the team, how can the team still include G4?

You’re making a fallacy here, Birdy, he says, eyes glinting, now look here…

Mr. Tan’s PA system records our exchange. My live bar graph for class participation grows, sending a notification to my screen. Though rankings are not disclosed to decrease competition between peers, I am certain that I am in the top bracket for all four Quotients in my class. But, if things go well — at this thought, I murmur a prayer to the incense-cloaked Buddhas my mother so devoutly entreats every time I have an assessment —

I glance at the time. It’s three minutes till 12 noon, which is when they said the results of the national Gifted assessment will be released.

Two minutes later, our form teacher Mdm. Rajaratnam, with hawk-like eyes behind the latest version of Google Glass perching on her button nose, sweeps into the room.

She has only one brown envelope in the crook of her arm. It looks heavy. It has been a while since I’ve seen those — the last time was when I received a constituency award for being in top national percentiles in terms of academic performance. The sight of the envelope sends ripples throughout the class of thirty. Everyone puts down their stylus, looks up from their screens, shifts in their seats. Someone stops in mid-yawn and another person nervously clears his throat.

The two rounds of Gifted Education Program (GEP) assessment held across the nation each year identify the top 1% of students from each cohort with outstanding intelligence scores across all dimensions — analytical, creative, practical, and successful intelligence. The four hundred or so students are placed within special schools, with individualized study options, enrichment programs, top teaching staff, and a stimulating learning environment. But, only one envelope? I feel my hands tremble.

Many things are at stake. 77% of our Members of Parliament come from the GEP — as do 55% of our Ministers. So do 43% of C-suite personnel of local companies that have gone public. By all measures, from the number of admissions to top tertiary organizations (Birdy 22/12/2177 7:04PM: Universities, entrepreneurial fellowships, genius labs, etc.) to income brackets later in life, GEP graduates perform remarkably well. Six months after the emergence of Triples, a new law involving the GEP was passed after a simple majority in Parliament (Birdy 31/05/2181 7:45PM: Ha, unsurprising since our ruling party has had at least a 70% of seats since 1965) and much public discussion — vehement accusations of elitism and tentative support of the bill’s almost audacious prescience in the face of major scientific progress.

The Longevity Meritocracy Act. Also dubbed the Plato Act by many commentators.

Meritocracy is our nation’s main principle of governance and, in a country with a stable three-century-long regime under the same ruling party, meritocracy has had the time to seep into the wet earth, lace the expanse of steel, glass, and granite, weigh on the humidity of the island, and etch itself in the sinews and bones of its people. Here, on our island, opportunities instead of outcomes are equalized. Resource allocation and advancement in society are determined according to individual ability and achievement.

Now, with the Plato Act, the greatest resource of all is made accessible to those with merit, regardless of color, creed, and class. In the tenth and final year of the program, GEP graduates will be tested for their Emotional, Cultural, and Adversity Quotients. From this pool of exceptionally intelligent students, those with top 5% aggregated Quotient scores will be eligible for the genetic modification procedure for longevity under government sponsorship. In exchange, these students will have to serve in politics or public service for six decades after post-tertiary education.

Who wouldn’t? In exchange for six decades, one gets another thirty decades to live. This would ensure that the most deserving individuals by most holistic measures live longer while being contractually obligated to contribute their talents back to society. The best and brightest at the helm. That’s how our country has been run and, now with the new law, will be run for the foreseeable future. This is why our tiny island with few natural resources and limited land space has been able to top the rankings for GDP per capita for centuries. From young, we are told that our nation’s greatest resource is us — the humans populating its waterports, skyscrapers, and resicaves.

I’m staring intently at the brown envelope in Mdm. Rajaratnam’s grip. Our family is comfortably middle-class, but definitely not wealthy enough to afford the longevity genetic modification. Being granted admission to the GEP increases my odds of becoming a Triple exponentially. Along the way, our nation would concentrate the best resources on stimulating my growth and helping me to realize my full intellectual potential.

Only one person in class has received admission into the GEP, Mdm. Rajaratnam says, sounding almost wistful, so I only have one envelope, as you can see.

In a moment that felt like a fizzed-out scene from a faulty Google Glass, I see her lips move but struggle to make out the words. She walks towards me as though through water. Someone pokes me with a stylus. There’s a prick of pain.

She says my name. Three times.

***

Modern-day philosopher king, Eric says.

Who? I ask, knowing the answer, but wanting to hear it from his lips.

Birdy, Birdy, Birdy, he says, in what could almost be a sing-song voice.

I’m trying not to laugh.

He takes a bite of the apple cinnamon scone, chewing thoughtfully.

I’m serious though, he says while pushing the platter full of dainty pastries before me, a look of magnanimity on his face, if Plato could crawl out of his grave and see the world now, he would love your country. The Republic of our times. So would Jefferson.

Thomas Jefferson?

The natural aristocracy, he speaks, plucking a lemon macaron from the platter, filled with virtuous talents like you. Jefferson would praise the heavens.

You don’t think it’s unfair?

No, he says, I have no philosophical qualms about the entire system. You are the epitome of the kind of individual that should lead society. Looking at you, I think they got it right.

His voice is solemn but I hear the sincerity. It almost burns me. A gorge rises in my throat.

I hold his gaze for a moment, and then, suddenly afraid that he can read my eyes, look down. I’ve not told anyone else about my burgeoning doubts. Three years ago, I was one of twenty graduates of my GEP cohort eligible to become a Triple. Two years ago, I came to the United States for university education. Now, I’m sitting across the table from a boy called Eric in a café capsule.

According to plan, I am to return to my country after university. Then, before I begin my sixty-year bond, I will undergo the longevity procedure — all expenses paid. What then awaits me is six decades of public service and a possible entry into politics if the party identifies me as a promising candidate. Thereafter, I have another three centuries when I’m free to pursue my passions.

Two problems arise:

  1. In my first semester at university, I enroll in a creative writing class. It feels like stepping into a second skin, like holding the molten heart of the universe in my hands, dripping rivulets of tears onto the screen, like the only thing that can set me afire apart from the years-old instinct to excel.
  2. This American boy who I’m falling in love with, or maybe already am, is a 122.

When I look up again, his face is silhouetted against the timber light.

The capsule hushes as he speaks, the words like an offering — like the one my mother made between me and the Buddhas, like the one he now makes between me and time.

Birdy, he says slowly but emphatically, you have to show the world how human intelligence at its peak can lead a country to sustained prosperity. No artificial intelligence can ever be a philosopher king. Only someone like you. One picked to be groomed from millions. On an island that can enact a system as philosophically brilliant as this. In America, only the rich have the option. The one you have.

His face blurs. I take a shaky breath.

His voice sounds almost desolate in the quiet, ricocheting off the wall of the capsule. I will be a philosopher, he tells me, and you will be a philosopher king. Plato would be proud.

***

Today, I sit in the room I grew up in, on the fortieth floor, the sunlight glazing the curtains. Heat on the glass, chilly air within.

I’m writing this on the first day after the procedure. Three and a half centuries is a long time. I don’t know if I will still be the same ‘I’ then. Of course, the whole thing is, once you step onto this path, you are never quite the same human, you are some new individual that this world has never encountered before. An immigrant in time. So, too, with the rest of humanity. Once they understand, truly understand that the category boundaries of human have weakened, they will never see the world in the same way again. The units of living, the denominations of experiences, and the meaning of death are changed forever.

But, right now, the year is 2177. It’s too early to tell. I will have enough time to figure it out eventually. I think.

Time