The pen revealeth much
JISHOU, HUNAN — It has been raining pretty steadily since last evening, and the temperature has dropped to the mid-50s (F scale), making a tour of historic FengHuang this weekend less than appealing.
This past week has been pretty busy on the teaching front, none the least because of my diary-keeping assignments to my writing classes. Now that I have 60+ freshmen writers, the task of reading their journals has escalated nearly to a full-time job. But I tell them to practice writing English every day, so it’s my own damn fault that I have to read their efforts.
As a physics teacher, the only student writing I saw with any regularity were lab reports, which don’t lend themselves to creative expression and introspection much. (Though, I have had some gifted writers over the years who played with the form.) I was a little unprepared, therefore, for the remarkable honesty and emotional revelations some of my students put down on paper.
My two smaller senior classes have the same assignment as the freshmen. Their thoughts revolve around the crucial events of their young careers: passing English competency tests, passing subject-specific graduation exams, finding jobs after graduation, writing their 9,000-word exit essays. Layered on to these pretty overwhelming obsessions is the realization that in a few short months they will leave the cocoon of university and the camaraderie of their friends and classmates.
Meanwhile, the freshmen are both yearning for their hometowns and old friends, and greeting the challenges of university life with open arms. They write of missing their boy- and girlfriends in other towns, of discovering their stern mothers and fathers can still shed tears when their child’s train pulls away from the station, of failures and successes at university, of boredom, of academic stress, of loneliness, of new friendships.
The students are surprised when I tell them I enjoy reading their journals, for I do. It gives me insights into my students that one or two class meetings a week cannot.
Behind all the tales of woes and worries is something powerful. It may be a strictly Chinese trait, or maybe that of young people in general; I really have no context to base my assumptions.
First, my students are to a man or woman very self-critical. They always want to do better, to excel in everything they do. Failures are distressing, because they know their parents are working themselves to the bone to send their kids to university. (Many of my students come from farming families, who often have side businesses going to pay the college bills.)
As poignant as these confessions are, my students’ overwhelming, even infectious optimism balances the regrets of failing. They will do better next time. They will learn from their mistakes. These challenges in their lives will enable them to succeed in the future.
So, whenever I feel a little down, because a lesson has not apparently gone well, or because the weather has spoiled a weekend’s travel plans, reading my students’ diaries perks me up. By comparison, my petty problems are nothing to the challenges they face.
