Et tu, Brute? – CS3219 Part 6

19/12/22

This is genuinely my Julius Caesar moment.

How time flies. And though it be past midnight, but “tomorrow” is the big reveal.

And what was CS3219 for, if not insanely Sisyphean, and low-key masochistic. I think i have said this so many times. I am a hedonist, and not of the masochist breed. I don’t like pain. I don’t like torture. I identify more with the S in the SM in BDSM than the M. (Unfortunately, Denji might have a bit of incel energy, and he is a traditionalist in the patriarchal context. Which means he is also an S, not an M. This is something else we have to unpack. And also, i guess “Denji” is his name now, the person who was mentioned nameless which i had intended to name, had he stayed. Its one and a half years, but now he finally has a name.)

CS3219 makes me out to be a masochist for a few reasons. I completed 39 out of 35 required points for the OTOT task. Why? I don’t know. Maybe its misdirected hyperfocus. And peer pressure. Team meetings / “stand-ups” were torture. This group was a shitshow for my mental health. On the one hand we have someone who is gonna be making millions a year if he actually tried, a guy that actually knows what he’s doing and has tons of experience in backend and is an excellent problem solver, and hearsay he has written out the entire solution before assigning the group members tasks, as a backup plan, but has no urge to make this work recognised because he is so assured in himself that he does not need recognition. A total CS Chad, and he has proven his worth as a human, so lets call him Chad. Then we have Denji, oh Denji, the nihilist who actually has a ton of experience in frontend development but unfortunately hates backend so much it seems like he is allergic about it and he makes a big deal about how much he hates backend. Then we have our smart foreign student who actually does math and codes in C and maybe even knows Go, maybe lets call her Pham (i cba rlly) who doesn’t really talk and talks extremely softly when she does, and does not have so much SWE experience but learns really fast. And then we have me. Sashimi the loser.

So how group meetings usually go is we have Chad and Denji talking. Chad is scrum master / team lead. Oh have i mentioned how both Chad and Denji are like shinkansen when they are talking about our project? And about how Chad does it out of excitement and passion and familiarity, whereas Denji does it out of stress and frustration. Anyways Denji, Pham and Sashimi all have not earned their right to be treated as humans. Because honestly Chad could solo the entire thing and it might have been even better. And i was terribly late for the first few meetings because i somehow forgot that i had a meeting. Sidenote i don’t know why lateness and forgetting meetings is a criteria in most peer evaluations, because its literally discriminatory against people with ADHD. And while Denji and Chad are discussing the project Sashimi and Pham are silent, sometimes we even have our mics muted. But Pham answers when there’s something relevant to her. But Sashimi is at a loss for words, because honestly i have no idea what’s going on in the project. And towards the second half of the project i could feel them completely judging me for having done nothing the entire week. Ok maybe that’s my fault. But yo y’all are literally shinkansen not everyone is as smart or as experienced as you are ok. Especially Pham. I can feel her judging me behind her silent microphone. And Chad knows he has the upper hand. And Denji is just Disappointed lol.

Oh and about how Denji seems to think that all AFAB people look the same and have the same “pitch” (he really means volume). We were assigning roles for the final presentation. And Denji was hesitant to allow me to take a speaking role because…? Because “Sashimi and Pham have a lower pitched voice when they speak, and the transition between different parts of the presentation will be quite jarring”. Dude I would theatre the fuck out of it if i wanted to, but if you’re gonna judge me like this…my larynx says sayonara. And hell maybe this was the start of my gender dysphoria? But i think it really was triggered by Denji saying that i look like my sisters. No i didn’t get a mullet and shop in the dudes section and wear geek glasses just to look exactly like my sisters. Back to the presentation. Denji I’m literally doing honours classes for my arts degree now. Presentations are NBD. I don’t mind narrating the entire shit if only i don’t got to make the slides. Also…i don’t know. Yea i guess it was kinda cute when Denji volunteered to make the slides and Sashimi said that he would probably do a better job than myself, because he has better design sense. And Denji was like, flattered. I don’t know. Literally, look at how i dress. Do you seriously think i would be good at making pretty slides just because i was AFAB. Back then i was fairly convinced that it was the ADHD that was making me just all over the place and having no spatial awareness and being bad at organisation and style. But what if its because i am not a woman? Women are stereotypically more organised and good at aesthetics. If i suck at it is it because i am not a woman?

Anyway this module was full of betrayal. I was supposed to do it back in Y3S1. Unfortunately i was kinda indecisive and ended up missing the opportunity to do it then. It is a prereq for CS4218. But fret not, some two people that i might have taken it with said that they were planning to do CS4218 in Y4S2, so i still have time to do it in Y4S1. And we said that we would do CS4218 together in Y4S2. That’s probably the reason i chose to do CS3219 in Y4S1. And now they have decided to do it with someone else instead. And it would be terrible to do CS4218 alone. So now i cant take CS4218. So it was hella pointless for me to have done CS3219, because i don’t even need those credits for my degree. Fml. This feels like a betrayal and it probably is one.

And through CS3219 Chad, Pham, and the rest of Denji’s friends hate me now. And today i kinda forced Denji to reveal to me that they do not, in fact, want me to be there if they were going on a grad trip. Oh wells. There he goes, giving excuses about how some people ain’t replying so he wants to free up Sashimi’s schedule or something. Dude. I have no friends. Then when i said that its ok that they aren’t replying because they’re probably just busy. He finally says that the group would rather only have their inner circle on the trip. So no “Denji’s gf”. Ah. I’m sad. I had wanted to go on a trip at least once in my uni career lol. And (even if just vicariously and from the side lines) i wanna experience what its like to travel with a kinda big group of young people lol. So yeah they vehemently do not want me there. So i cant go. Oh wells. I was kinda excited thinking of what to wear for the trip. Because it is apparently easy for AFAB to pass as male in Japan because of their lack of LGBT knowledge. And, I’m guessing, generally effeminate emo / otaku dudes. And this is so that the public transport is safer. Because females are targets for outrage of modesty, which is very common in Japan.

But anyways…does Denji even like them??? He speaks as if it is torture and he is being forced every time they hang out or meet for meals. But he wants to travel for 10 days with them??? Be amongst a group of people that he kinda hates? I mean, he hates the two females in the group! Like, they aren’t even friends because he decided to “ruin their friendship” and now Denji sees them as “colleagues”, not “friends”. Dude what…well…it must be nice to have a friend group lol.

So there’s that. Two “betrayals” related to CS3219. Really just disappointments tho. Ugh.

And then Denji goes and talks about how he has already agreed to go with them so he can’t back out now. Lol do you not realise that unless you are in chains or in jail you are free to choose. Besides it isn’t even confirmed because there’s still someone who hasn’t replied. Lol. Hey, Denji, i realised i haven’t talked to you about free will before. Do i need to give you a quick crash course on it? (because he has said the same to me about other topics before.) i mean, i don’t usually keep the knowledge at my fingertips because my brain is crowded as it is. But i can assure you, i am not as dumb as i look, despite being AFAB. And though i pretend to be stupid sometimes. I…have more random general knowledge than you. Haha.

But CS3219 might just be the reason we Sashimi and Denji are still together. But taking CS3219 was a bad decision. What to make of that?

And the alternative to Denji’s saying that he does not have a choice to back out is…that he has actually forgiven them, or his hatred for them has quelled and he now sees them as friends that he would like to travel with. And he is just pretending that he kinda does not have the choie to back out so that he minimizes his position of privilege in an attempt to make me feel less left out and sad. Which is…kinda sweet i guess.