#13: Leftover
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I recently joined a facebook group called "subtle asian leftovers" (SAL), a spin-off group of the massive 1,000,000+ member group "subtle asian traits", which is essentially a predominantly post-Millennial slice of the Asian diaspora in English-speaking countries, heavily based in Australia and U.S./Canada. A question was posed by a member: what makes someone a leftover? Do they have to be older than 30? Can someone be under 25 and still feel like a leftover?
For context about the term "leftover", SAL moderator Michael wrote recently (in words I could not improve):
The term 'leftovers' came from the Chinese phrase 「剩女」 (shèngnǚ) meaning "leftover women", a derogatory expression originally used to refer to women who remained single or unmarried in their late twenties often attributed to them being either too well-educated or making too much money. Rather ironically, the same term is now being used to empower both men and women with the purpose of removing the stigma of being and/or remaining single past their late twenties.
When I finished undergrad in 2009, almost everyone I knew was single or only semi-serious dating (i.e., at a big decision point of deciding whether or not to be serious). When I started grad school the same year in the fall, a lot of my research group and grad classmates were engaged or married. It was like I did a time skip and everyone else didn't. I pursued a few ladies in grad school but nothing stuck and no one understood me:
Undergrads thought you were too old. The seniors were clearly too busy figuring out their actual career, too late in college life to consider starting a serious relationship, and/or already established in relationships and social networks.
Grad students were the best chance but everyone was overworked/depressed/self-medicating. Add on to that a 3:1 male/female tech school sex ratio and thus, a male grad student was probably out of luck unless he turned to the "outside world".
But "real-world" people didn't "get" why grad students were unhappy, overworked, and also too poor to participate in fun adult nights out. It wasn't just being poor but what I would call poor-anxious: the high-strung anxiety that one struggles to contain when one’s poorness causes the mental stress of high-stakes decision making. (That additional cognitive load has actually been documented to reduce someone's IQ [PBS News Hour].)
Six years later, after watching everyone else get married and my "real-world", non-grad school friends have babies on facebook, I pop out of the ivory tower with a PhD. I decided it was a cool idea to go abroad for a post-doc, which led to landing in a country with a super-stable, tight-knit society (Norway) where many people are already in serious relationships by 23 (setting aside other issues of dating in Norway). Now, I'm 31 and finally have a real permanent job (which is actually kind of a big deal in science) and it's that feeling like you're eating with friends and you're going in to slurp your noodles but when you look up, your friends are all gone already, bills already paid, restaurant's closing down, and they turn off the lights on you and your dinner: leftovers, still warm, but forgotten.
