Welcome back!
I hope everybody had a great Spring break, a wonderful Easter, and may you all be blessed forever! I was hoping to get the reflection and the new video out earlier, but traveling takes its toll on the body, the Wi-Fi download/upload speed in my new dorm is really slow, and there has been a lot of revelations and developments while writing this reflection.
This reflection was supposed to come out on 03/30/2026, and I started writing this reflection on 03/25/2026, but halted because I was not in the right head-space, there is a lot of self-hate, sulking, and pity in my writing, and I was ashamed of displaying this much vulnerability to anyone who reads this, but on 03/26/2026 something happened, and you will have to read to find out. Here is the 2025-2026 UCSD (Junior Year 1) in its entirety.
Winter quarter grades have come out, and it is not in my best interest to talk about them. I am very disappointed with myself to the point where I am disgusted to even look at myself in the mirror when I am brushing my teeth in the morning. It’s hard not to think of my first year of anything else, but a failure. I feel I wasted 22 weeks, two quarters worth of tuition, let myself, and others down, but those are my automatic negative thoughts and self talking. There are positives to take away from this year and I need to acknowledge them as well. For starters, you know the fundamentals, I learned how to live and take care of myself on my own, such as cook, clean, do laundry, time management, etc. I met some really smart and great people, and learned how to reach out for help. There are probably more positives, but those are just the ones that come to mind. Although I despise Kendrick Lamar, my first year was an experience, and I have to "accept the experience, appreciate the experience, and learn how to move on from things that don't serve you well."
I am working on the last part of the quote. Coming into UCSD, there was and still a lot of baggage that I have and been carrying around that I should and need to get rid of. Letting go is easier said than done, and finding forgiveness within your own self takes time, but it must be done. I do not know why, but I always felt and feel the need to constantly prove myself and had the bad habit of comparing myself to others. If anybody said the things I said about myself to a friend of mine, I would knock them out, but when it is my conscious talking, I just let it happen. This might sound strange and nonsensical, but subconsciously I always felt alone. There is a stark difference in being alone and feeling alone. It is not that there is nobody around you, it is that nobody has you. What I mean by "nobody has you" is that no one is holding the other end of the rope for you. You are just out there performing, competing, and proving your worth every single day, but if you slipped, you just hit the floor. It is the feeling that you are the only one responsible for your own survival.
I do acknowledge that it is a bit of an exaggeration and to a nth degree I am being melodramatic in my writing because I did and do have a few people reaching out to me. But when you are in that head-space with those thoughts, you do not let people "have" you because you do not trust that they can handle the weight of the baggage you are carrying, and they have baggage of their own too. So, you keep everything all internal. You become a project to yourself instead of a person. In layman's terms, I am an engineer trying to fix a broken system from the inside, but I am also the system that is breaking.
You can call upon and talk to God, but He wants you to stay strong and go through your meaningful suffering to find purpose on the other side. Also like Jelly Roll said, "I only talk to God, when I need a favor And I only pray, when I ain't got a prayer So, who the hell am I? Who the hell am I, to expect a savior?"
Our relationship with God or with anyone cannot be convenient and transactional. As I am talking about God right now, I always loved this verse in the Bible, and tried applying it to my life, but there have been more failures than successes in doing so.
Ecclesiastes 4:11 "Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone?"
For context, Ecclesiastes is a raw, intellectual look at the meaning of life from someone who had everything and still felt empty. The obvious interpretation of the verse is that in the ancient world, travelers in the desert or mountains faced nights where temperatures dropped below freezing. They did not have high-tech gear or insulated sleeping bags, sharing a blanket and body heat was a mechanical necessity. If you were alone, you risked hypothermia. I interpret the verse as a metaphor for the fact that humans are not designed to be self-sustaining. We need a 'tether' or a witness to help us maintain our internal fire when the world starts to feel cold or indifferent. I always loved this quote stemming from Harlow James: "Everyone wants to be someone’s sun, to light up someone’s life, but why not the moon, to shine on someone's darkest hour."
In no way I am a moon, but I feel like the man on the moon. That is probably the worst attempted banger for a play on words, but it is whatever. Man on the Moon is my favorite song by Kid Cudi, and probably my favorite song ever. The whole album is so endearing and personal, I just feel it whenever I listen to it. Soundtrack 2 My Life another banger too. I put the YouTube links down below for you all to give it a listen, I don’t feel comfortable doing a lyric breakdown and how and why I relate to the songs because if you read this far, you probably already know what I have been through my life personally.
Man On The Moon:
Soundtrack 2 My Life:
Listening to Cudi definitely kept me grounded whenever things got bad. I loved “Reborn” and message of just keep moving forward because you can never truly move on, you just learn to live with it and not let it consume you. I wish I had half the amount of confidence he had during his 08-12’ run because after the last two quarters, any ounce of self-confidence and belief has been shattered. Maybe I will pickup his book after I read Goggins, and see how to piece together the puzzle of self-love. Cudi is everything I am not. I do not know who I am right now and I will be spending the next 6-months in Kyoto discovering and forgiving myself for what I’ve done. Time to look the man in the mirror and learn to love him.
This is a letter to myself:
Tristan,
I know you are hurting and things have been tough. Our whole life we have been living with so many unresolved issues and loose screws. We always question God asking why me for the bad, but not always asking why me for the good. We need to remember that the God we question is the same God we turn to for comfort. I love that we have such high expectations and standards for ourselves, but at the end of day we are human. Being human is not a weakness, Tristan, even "Superman is still just a man sometimes." You are afraid to even admit that you are afraid and do not have the answers because even though you say, "I do not care about others think about me" you do. That is why you hesitate and overthink things because you do not want to be seen as an idiot, which leads to not trusting yourself. Of course, you could not "beat yourself" because you never even gave yourself a chance. Whenever a brick wall came up, you always chose the path of least resistance, looked for shortcuts, or even turned away instead of running through it. You let your output define your worth and lost track of who you are, and for the first time you do not know. How lucky are you to discover yourself? Tristan, I forgive you. It is not easy to live and keep going the way you do, but you are still standing. You need to cut out that "not many, but any" attitude because the reality is yes, anybody can do it, but not every anybody did, and that is why you are someone who is special. You survived a 100% of your hardest days, and you will make it out of this phase too, Tristan. All these issues, thoughts, and feelings we have, make us who we are, and this time in your life will be a story you will one day tell. You owe nothing to the world, Tristan, but you owe God and everybody around you your best genuine authentic self. Keep living the same principles of doing right by the people who do right by you, but also do right by yourself. We are all we got too, you know. Hopefully this makes you feel better, knowing us, it probably would not, but just know there is no one I would rather be than me. I love you, Tristan!
Godspeed, Tristan Lee
What you just read is what I had written on 03/25/2026. Pretty rough, right? I did end on a positive note and made peace within myself through the letter though. Did I mean any of it? Knowing me, probably not. I was probably the most insufferable person in March and that carried its way into Japan. Before I boarded my flight from SFO I got hit with the "Gradescope Final Exam Submission Posted" notification cortisol-spike on my digital circuits class, and saw a 49/100. To pass the class, I needed a 68/100. Using a double entendre here, it was a very long flight. Two days after I flew in, I wake up to another "Final Exam Submission Posted" cortisol-spike on my analog circuits class, the course I already failed. 14.75/36, I need a 16.2 on the final to pass. I do not wish that day I had on my worst enemies, I was so depressed, ashamed, and embarrassed, I had an overwhelming suicidal thought, and just did not want to be in Japan or be me anymore. Luckily thoughts are just thoughts, and I did not do any self-harm, so as a rational person, I emailed the dean and messaged my counselor (therapist). Here are the emails and messages:
I felt like such a fraud and failure. Feeling so undeserving of every privilege and everything I had. There was so much regret and anger, I disrespected everyone who did not get into the school let alone the ECE program. Everyone told me to have grace, stop being so hard on myself, but I never really knew what it meant. I went to bed that night prepared to live with my sorrows and be an even more insufferable person than I was for the next six months and until I get back to La Jolla to do it all over again. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result, but my pride and ego was not going to let me change majors and not take the course again. I wanted to do things my way, but did not even know where to begin or what direction I was heading, I lost all confidence in myself. The next day, when I went to check my portal to make sure my tuition for study abroad was paid and everything was good; I decided to check my grades and see the damage that has been done. I was prepared to see my GPA lower than my previous of 1.43, but it wasn’t. I saw 2.32. My final grades of Winter quarter were B, C+, and C. Obviously I was saved by a gigantic curve, but most importantly I was saved by God’s grace. There was no reason why I should have passed two of my courses, but I did. Why me? God really answered my favor, and I am forever thankful. I had to turn to Romans 8:31 right away.
Romans 8:31 “What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?”
Although the GPA is still abysmal, with God I am playing to win here. I was saved by his grace, and everyone is.
Ephesians 2:8-9 “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast.”
Grace is undeserved kindness, forgiveness, and poise. Life is not at all transactional, and it is not measured in accomplishments, accolades, titles, numbers, and resumes, but moments. Like that famous quote, "Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away,” and I have been fortunate enough to have so many. My eyes are rich to see the beautiful landscapes of the world whenever I travel, live through my darkest moments, and spend time with the great people around me. As I type this under a Sakura tree, I think back to King David in Psalms 8:3-4.
Psalm 8:3-4:
“When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, The moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; “What is man, that thou art mindful of him? And the son of man, that thou visitest him?”
We are meant to be here too. We are loved and we are saved. Tristan or anybody, comeback to this reflection and remember everything is going to be alright, and we got through this difficult time in our life, and with God and the great people around us, we are bounded by nothing. I love you and I love you all who read. Keep putting one foot in front of the other, trust God, and let everything fall into its right place.
That’s a wrap on the year 1 or more so the two quarter reflection. I will be back next week with the Kyoto abroad series, hopefully I can finish filming and editing the video by then too. It’s hard for me to speak and say the things I want to say in my head in general, let alone on camera, but if I went to get better at it, I need to start. Maybe starting YouTube back up again will make me a more articulate person and speaker. There’s a lot I want to do during my time abroad so stay tuned. The big priorities are to get my mind right, get my body to follow, and be conversational in Japanese. The others are to be a better learner, enjoy myself more, and travel. I am thinking of going to Shanghai within the next month or so 😂. I will fill you in on the details in next week’s log, but that’s all for now.
Thank you to everyone who read this in its entirety. I will see you next week!
Godspeed and God bless!