ascetic: A person who renounces material comforts and leads a life of austere self-discipline, especially as an act of religious devotion.
angst: A feeling of anxiety or apprehension often accompanied by depression.
I started my undergraduate years self-assured
but after the first quarter freshman year, I got dreadfully insecure.
I was no longer the big dog I was in High School, and that got to me.
Others were far superior to me in many vectors, and that inspired desperation in me.
But the positive side of that coin was that it drove me to such an extreme self-expansion.
My uber-competitiveness forced me to swallow every possible opportunity to one-up my peers
I struggle to be more moral than I was, more charismatic, more accurate in my speech, more thoughtful, etc..
note the word "struggle"
the places where I did suceed and shine through was in consuming an eclectic diet of intellectualism taking courses in many departments and getting good grades in them.
plus I heavily explored many personal philosophies, such as "pursuit of passion"
like "nihilism" like "do whatever you want" like "do the right thing" like "pursue *.*"
a lot of experimentation, a lot of rules broken (hardly any laws, won't talk about those here).
I also quit school, I explored my other talents further, discovered I like painting and writing, and "found myself" as the cliche goes.
so ultimately, the asceticism from my Stanford tour was education
educational.
by creating a large cavity in me, the game turned into finding innovative ways to fill myself up.
