The Words Which, Awakened Me

How the words of her college professor had, inspired her own self-learning processes, which she still carries to this very day, translated…

As I’d tested into the German majors, all the freshmen of the university all had to take the common courses of freshman Chinese, freshman English, the subjects unrelated to our own majors.  And due to the “pass-fail” grading systems (if you flunked half of your classes, you get expelled from the university), the German major, in order to keep the freshmen focused on the German courses, it’d, switched the Chinese language requirement courses to the sophomore years.  And yet, the essays in the assignments of my German courses, made me stuck, I’d not known how to write, to express my thoughts.  I’d, given up, thought, “so what if I can’t write in German, the skies won’t fall because I can’t write in German.”

As I entered into my sophomore year in German, my Chinese required courses professor, was very close to all the students of the classes.  One time as we were engaging in casual conversation, my professor mentioned the motto of his learning, “when the professor can teach well, I’d, saved up the energies in learning; when the professors couldn’t teach well, then, I’d, worked harder to learn.”, sitting close, hearing these words, it was, an awakening, “so, I hadn’t, worked, hard enough yet!”

And after that, when I went to my German writing courses, before the classes, I’d, read through the lessons, and focused on the professors’ lectures in class, and, after the classes, I’d, studied through the nights, to look up all the vocabulary words in the dictionary, to do my assignments.  The German-born instructor felt my hard work, and, was pleased, and gave me a hundred for my final grade of the semester.

After I’d left the campus of my university years, I’d, accidentally, gotten into the field of, exporting, and, with the words from my Chinese professor, I’d, worked hard, in learning the ways of trading internationally, and, I’d, gained a lot.  After I married, I went to Norway to live, as I’d taken up the foreign language there, I’d not cared about how hard my classmates were, complaining, just how I’d, worked hard on learning the language, and, eight months after the classes started, I was able to pass the certification for the highest language evaluation exams, and found a formal position in a logistics company immediately.

The words of my Chinese professor from over thirty years ago to me, already, implanted themselves into my mind, and I shall, keep on, putting those words into, practice, to keep the lessons he’d taught going on, even as he’d, passed away.

And so, this showed, how deep the differences someone can make in our lives, and, these are the words from a casual conversation, not a part of your learning the lessons back in the lecture halls of your, university years too.  This showed, how there are things we can pick up to learn, in everything we encounter in our lives, and sometimes, someone’s words will, stay with us, and keep us inspired for life.