Task 6 : Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

Whether the mistakes were severe or not, I always considered them a shame and kept them in mind for a long time before entering university. When I made mistakes I would scream in my head: Gosh! People who witness this will definitely view me as an idiot! How can I do this? Why can’ I be smart? After the mistake happened, I didn’t dare to look at others bravely and I really hoped that I could have vanished then. I spent too much time caring about how others looked at me when I did something wrong or different from others. However, these ridiculous ideas were turning over during the whole year in a magical journey: Chinese course of our department. Teacher taught us to be brave and speak up for our own opinions. Don’t be afraid of what others think. I did try and found it’s really exciting when expressing myself in the class. Even if I had a wrong answer, no one remembered after the class dismissed. The discovery makes me know that mistakes can mean an opportunity for me to modify and improve, not a big shame in my life.

People could make mistakes in every aspect, from little events such as calculate, spelling, speaking, thinking, to bigger ones like riding, cooking, and even giving a judgment. My previous definition of mistakes is something wrong and improper or different from the majority. But now I define mistakes as new lessons for people to learn more. A calculate mistake makes people find the carelessness of themselves; a thinking mistake helps people know the truth in this world; a mistake of judgment reminds people to learn to consider over and over again. Here Professor Pausch uses the word “setback.” I think the combination of “set” and “back” is meaningful that it tells us to go back to the origin and restart, but we don’t have to be frustrated because we have priceless experiences which stop us from doing the same mistakes again and it’s a powerful strength for us to stand up from where we fall down.

The beautiful and profound quote is really touching for me: “Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.” This line makes a mistake seem to be a treasure which is precious that people cannot acquire easily because there are still many considering mistakes to be miserable events that once they fail, they cannot resume. Professor Pausch strengthens my point of view towards mistakes and helps me go ahead more courageously. I like many examples he raises in the speech like “We send our children to play soccer and learn swimming, but what we actually hope them to receive is something hiding behind the lesson” which he calls “indirect learning” or “head fake learning.” And the failure to working in Disneyland is so surprising for Professor Pausch receives such a high degree but he was still refused by the world-famous amusement park. But he says, “The brick walls are there for a reason: the brick wall is not there to keep us out, the brick wall is there to give us a chance to prove how badly we want something, because the brick wall is there to stop the other people who don’t desire for it so badly.” I will bear this in mind and face the mistakes which are a valuable chapter in my life with optimistic view.

Learn to Treasure

People in this world experience birth, ageing, sickness and death. When I was little, I could not know how these influence people and understand the feelings of people who encounter that. With the growing of my age, I gradually met some of these processes which happened to others’ lives. Like last year, one of my friends got pneumonia and was hospitalized for about one week. He was painful which showed clearly on his face and he kept coughing when he tried to speak. I could not do anything, but just provided him accompanies. And that was all that I could do. I felt angry that I could not feel the pain for him.
It’s really depressed when people who I care much about getting in trouble but I cannot do anything for them. And it also makes me bad when other sorrowful events happened around, even if I don’t know the victims. However, there are many pieces of bad news on TV recently. Most of these incidents are about people getting sick or injuries and people passing away. One of them is the severe flood this summer.
August the eighth in every year is a holiday for our fathers. The day of this year was originally supposed to be the same as usual, but there was a typhoon destroyed this beautiful holiday and separated many families. During the whole August, journalists on TV kept reporting the scenes and the condition of the disaster to inform all people in Taiwan how miserable they were. Every time I saw that I couldn’t help but cry for the victims as well as those who came to rescue them but died or got hurt.
The typhoon influenced Taitung County so much where I went to teach children this summer; hence I worried a lot for our kids. Fortunately, they were safe and they lived in a distance from the flood. Although it was indeed the best new, I still felt grief for children in other areas. Those naïve children should not have showed such worried expressions on their faces, but they did because they had no houses to live anymore. In addition, the schools were also broken down by the typhoon which led to the difficulty of studying for kids. The adults were on the list of victims that they would have no work to do for a period and this resulted in the financial problems to their families. These two I think are the most critical issues for the government to deal with carefully.
Actually, that’s not the worst thing for those families. There were some people who were not rescued out dead at their home, or some of them even have not been found now. The dreams of reunion for the rest families alive in the world are impossible to become real, which the pain is pretty much difficult to bear and that’s what we who are safe from the calamity cannot imagine.
Ever since I had memory, my mom has been keeping telling me that we should cherish everything we have, including our lives. I learn this lesson a lot this year and it brings me to be grateful every time I think of it.

task 2

When we were little kids, the elders like our mothers or teachers often tended to say “It’s for your own good!” But children who are not mature enough cannot understand their real motives at all. On the contrary, we would just consider them nagging and annoying. These kinds of thoughts drive adults mad and sometimes break the relationship between them and kids.
As far as I’m concerned, the one who makes me profoundly realize the idea of “’I am doing this for YOU!’ but I couldn’t really feel that when I was involved in it” is my senior high school teacher. She was my advice teacher who taught Chinese in my class through the second and the third year. When I recall her now, I can bet that she is DEFINITELY one of the best teachers in this world. But I didn’t know this when I was in her class and I believe that all of my classmates would agree with me at that time.
My advice teacher in senior high is a romantic person but with firm rules. This description explains everything. She can be your friend who is willing to give you a lot of useful suggestions. However, when we played students in her class, the suggestions all became bothering words. For example, she might tell us how to read a lot which could benefit us definitely. It’s true. But we refused to accept the advice for students in senior high school have already had a variety of subjects to study. There were just few would listen to her and read more at that time. Besides, in order to improve students’ writing ability, she liked to ask everyone to write a beautiful sentence which was derived from any books we have read on the blackboard by turns every day and other classmates had to write it down on their own notebooks. Some might do it diligently, but most of us were lazy, thinking it redundant and annoying.
She would also like to tell us some moral lessons like how to be a good person or how to deal with something. I remember she once said that girls had better not have a boyfriend too soon after going to university because there is some more duty for us students and also we should know more about guys before having further relationship. People now might think this concept old-fashioned, and that’s what we thought at that time.
After I graduated from senior high school and became a university student, I realized my advice teacher’s good intention gradually. I find my writing ability and creativity are not as good as some classmates, which I think can be improved if I listened to her to read more. Besides, I start to agree with her suggestions about the moral lessons. Now I sometimes even go visit her to ask for some advice or share my university life with her which I couldn’t imagine when I was her student.
I think people all do this kind of inconsiderate things when we are little. It’s good to rethink the whole incident again and get the new and good ideas from it. And I don’t think it stupid to be rude to others’ good intention because that’s part of our lives. Once we know the lesson, we don’t waste the experience. In addition, I learn to treasure the relationships between my family, friends and me because of the good intention is the most touched thing in the world for I know there are people caring about me.

Reflection of what I've got during this summer vacation

During this summer vacation, I joined the volunteering program of the foreign languages department, which is aimed to help the students who live far away from the city receiving resources less than the students living in the urban area do.
Originally I didn’t join this program because I love children there, actually I never met those kids before and I didn’t even know their names. I have talked to the team and teachers there that I joined them to find something back. What I wanted to get back were passion and motivation. I don’t know if it’s hard for others to understand why I was searching for what people may consider normally existing in our mind. But I certainly felt that I didn’t have them in my mind for a period because I encountered many miserable events during my sophomore year. Among those events, the most influential one is that I worked at a cram school and experienced the dark side of peoples’ personalities and of this industry. Because of that, my personality and value are transformed into a more indifferent one. For example, I would consider something as others’ business and would not want to help them actively because people at my workplace were all like that. What’s worse, I took this idea for granted as if I were born to be so mean! This depiction might be a little bit exaggerated, but I still cannot imagine going back to be such a selfish person.
Fortunately, I found my passion and motivation back and also became happier after I joined the team and got along with innocent children. My team members and children always brought me lots of encouragement and confidence, which are all deeply and truly from their hearts and make me warm. With accompanies and supports from them, I am always willing to share my own opinions frankly and work with them with all my efforts.
Since now I have gained more energy to live my life, and have made those good and special friends of the team, I hope I can use the positive power to do more meaningful things and return it to other people.