Who, is Setting the Limits for Oneself?

The observations from work, translated…

At the beginning of the semester, there was an undecided freshman who’d come to find me, she’d wanted me to sign a slip so she could be in one of my advanced classes. I’d asked if she’d taken the basic course yet, she’d told me she could take the two courses at the same time, I shook my head, and told her, that without the introductory course, without setting down that firm fundamental, she will surely flunk out.

But, she’d not gotten discouraged one bit, said she would do everything she possibly can, and, I’d used the example of how a former student had flunked out because he’d not taken the fundamental courses before, to try to discourage her fearless ambition, in the end, she’d told me, “I as a student is not even afraid of the hardships before me, why must you, the instructor give up on me first?”

Yeah, that really, woke me up all right, if you don’t try, how would you know if you can? And, this course didn’t have any set prerequisites, why did I need to, put the limits onto her first? And, even IF after a few months, she’d flunked out, then, it’s just, a lesson in life she’d needed to learn, and as an instructor, why’d I need to worry for her so endlessly, fearing that she might fall, like those helicopter parents we discussed?

And, says W-H-O that all children are strawberries? The ones who are afraid of failure, who can’t face the defeats are actually the parents and the school teachers. As the children graduated out of high school, those lines of “Just stay in the southern strips, living at home and going to school, wouldn’t that be more convenient?” “Why do you want to go to Taipei, so far, with no one there, to look out for you!”; and for the recent grads, it’s, “If the job is too tiresome, then, quit and you’ll be able to find another job!”, “It’s fine, it’s not like your old man can’t keep you well!”, didn’t we say these things to our own younger generations regularly too?

This student woke me, a teacher who’d treated her students like imbeciles and incompetent children up completely, and right then and there, I’d, signed her slip. And, before this young woman start in my class, she’d already, taught me, a valuable lesson already.

So, this student made this professor realize how s/he was pampering her/his students, and, it’d, snapped the professor out of the mode of wanting to try to make life easier for her/his students, and, this, is a wise college student, and, before you’d tried, how would you know you would succeed or fail at something? So, stop setting up those bars and limits for yourselves, and just, go for it!