Living in exile

One is asking for a small bump in the final grade, another is thanking me for the semester, and finally one is implicitly asking for quite a big bump in the final grade. For context, the double-degree is structured insanely. Students work on their main major during the weekdays and then work off their second major during the weekends. No wonder most students are brain-dead by the time we see them in the weekends. There are exceptions of course. Despite this, I feel bad for the arrangement but then I could not just pass all of them out of sympathy. In these cases, I really have to be neutral but not dispassionate.

The email thanking me for the semester is always a treat to receive, especially because the student is very conscientious. We also had talks about pursuing graduate degrees, staying or leaving China, and whether or not it is a good idea to reduce the extracurricular (yet still academic) load. Every year, I get one or two of these emails and it feels good to get them (knowing that it is not bullshit).

The email implicitly asking me for a big bump was one of the longer emails I have written and I thought that my answer could be a blog entry as well. A reader of the blog commented that my entries sounded cynical. I laughed when I heard this comment and by chance, today I have a more hopeful entry. In a nutshell, the student was asking for help to be able to continue pursuing the dream of getting an economics degree, even if this help could be construed as unfair. At least, this was my interpretation of the parallel Chinese and English texts I have received and my “reading between the lines”. Below is my response in English of course:

—BEGIN— What I can do to help is to offer suggestions about how to proceed next. You do not have to apologize to me as the outcome of the course rests with you. As teachers, all we could do is lay out the course material in the way we think is most useful and then just be there for students when they need help.

When students say they mastered something, it is really unclear what they mean by this. Mastery is not the same as familiarity. Taking time to process the material and to work out what you have already seen and seems familiar are really important steps in studying. Even people like us teachers sometimes have failed to master some of the material we are supposed to know. It really does take time to find out someone's real misunderstandings about a subject. It is only through working out materials that one really gets an honest view of what they know and do not know.

There are other ways to pursue your dreams. A first step is to improve your English language skills seriously and focus your efforts of communicating well in writing and speaking. The second step is to compete on a more international stage. Why not pursue studies abroad where you can really find out if this dream of yours is really what you want? Many programs abroad do not require an undergraduate economics degree to get into a master program in economics or finance.

You should also ask yourself whether you are able to balance your main major and your other major really well. If you cannot, it does not mean you have to give up on your dream. You can postpone reaching out for your dream to a time where you are more prepared, more mindful, and more receptive to the pressures and the challenges. Why not do very well in your main major and find what could be interesting about it? Are there creative ways of solving problems in your main major that could be used in some other problems? These kind of questions could lead to innovations and could let you pursue other dreams.

Finally, dreams might never be attained, which makes way for other pursuits. I personally prefer not to think of dreams as just one solid thing that has to be pursued at all costs. Most people, not just you, have had dreams crushed and have had plans fail. That is ok because it is a reality. I have had my share of failure and there is nothing embarrassing about it. I hope you can get something positive from the experience (rather than be bitter about it) and really find out whether this dream of yours is really the dream that you want to pursue. —END—

If asked to write it in Chinese, I probably would not have been as eloquent because, in recent times, my Chinese vocabulary was built from stuff posted at the bulletin board (公示栏). Maybe I can try the first paragraph:

我目前只能给一些建议。 你不必说”抱歉”或者”对不起”，因为这门课的过程跟成果是在你手上。 作为老师，我们只能尽量挑选最有用处的内容好好安排课程。 如果学生们需要帮助，我们也只能，像父母家长一样，等待他们开口跟我们说一声。

My God, the translation was more difficult than the email I had to write. In fact, I had to add things to make the translation more complete. I wonder if this is a concrete way in which bilingualism creates bridges. Surely, bilingualism adds idiosyncratic noise to expression but I wonder if it as useful as the bootstrap.