Using LIFE, as a, “lecture hall”, learn what we can, in our, experiences through life, translated…
The recent suicides of college students raised an alarm, forcing the school officials who were originally not paying enough attention to students’ mental health and wellbeing to step up to the plates. The current president of N.T.U., Kwan stated that a specialist task force is set up already, to keep the security of the tall floor buildings, setting up the three level alert systems of counseling. Kwan had always been full of force, and, very articulate, on the news, as he’d talked of the matter, you can sense that helplessness he felt.
Guan’s words reminded me of how back in 2010, the workers of Foxconn committing suicide, back then, the company did what the N.T.U. officials had done, enforced the hardware safety, and provided the counseling services. I’d entered into Foxconn to work the following year, and these services are being provided to date. And yet, as an alumni of N.T.U., and a former employee of Foxconn, I’d come to know, that the psychological problems of these younger generations, simply, can’t be, resolved by the schools or the companies, because they wanted to solve the matter, this is, a problem of structural problem of the environment of the society.
The Asian cultures had been ignoring the development of the adolescent years, the sorrows of these young lives, the happiness, the sorrows, are all interpreted as “puberty hormones”. The “gap year” of the western societies, in the Asian communities, is considered a huge waste of time. In the systems of education, and the society here, being youths, we were, rarely, taught how to find ourselves, to dig up the inner selves, rarely encouraged to do something crazy, and taught, that if we’d strayed from the tracks of getting up that ladder in education is discouraged, but, those gap year we were, never allowed to have, may cause this, huge, unbreachable gap in our lives later on. And, as you’d turned to look back, you’d found, that you’d, never, actually, gotten, across, that gap that’s been, there all along.
On the map of life, all of these things, that school never taught us, may be, what’s, most vital to our beings, like the coordinates, helping guide us in life. The schools don’t teach us, and we must, find our own ways: trying to make the mistakes, face up to our own failures, getting to know loneliness, accepting, that some things in the world, no matter how bad we wanted to alter, we simply, can’t, and being able to, give ourselves, that needed pull up when we fall into that huge hole in our lives, finding the roads we wanted to travel, instead of going along with what others think you should do in life. All of these, aren’t inborn, it’s from, collecting all the missing pieces from tripping and falling down, and, getting BACK up again.
Remembering my earlier years as I began in N.T.U., there was, that sense of, unleashing, that I was finally able, to break out of the cycle of sitting in class, studying hard, taking those exams. It took me a ton of time, to do things that are considered “useless” by my adult counterparts, like, getting involved in all the activities that interested me (I’d even learned how to map the charts of someone’s life, and bartended), made an assortments of friends, worked an assortments of part-time gigs (washing dishes, passing out flyers on the streets, odds and ends at the hospital), etc., etc., etc., while my grades, they’d, slid, but I was, having a fulfilled time, like walking in the dark tunnel, using the walls as a guide, and after awhile, finally, a light at the end of that tunnel, and, all the discoveries of life you’d made, won’t be, a waste of time, or for, naught.
And so, this still just goes to show, there are, NO missed roads in life, and you’re only on this, detour, because that’s, where your life’s, leading you, this is, what this woman figured out, and she still, did NOT learn that, sitting in the lecture halls, but on her own, discovery journeys, to find out who she is.