Contemplating about my Cowardice

A lot of posts speaking about their not-so-great experiences in JC. I’ll just chip in and give my random, unplanned thoughts about my experiences as well. 😀

I don’t have many regrets in life, unless it includes the periods between 2011 to 2012. I regret spending 2 years of my life chasing subjects that I felt societally-pressured into taking instead of chasing subjects that aligned with my interests and passions.

For example, I wished I took more Literature instead of Economics. I wished I spent more time seriously considering the Arts path instead of the Sciences when I was choosing JC’s and academic routes. I love Science; it is incredibly fun and fascinating… when I’m reading about it outside of school. But in JC’s, it’s just: “Yeah, here’s what you need to memorize these scientific facts to get your A’s.”

I suffered doing that because I didn’t want to get into Chemistry or Biology or Physics. I wanted to get into Psych, I wanted to get in Literature, Philosophy, Theology, Anthropology, Political Sciences… Not Economics.

That’s not to say that the teachers were pushing students to abandon the love of learning and just go straight for the cramming. On the contrary, every teacher I know were starving for students who wanted to know more, wanted to go deeper. The teachers I studied under dream of educating a generation of people who appreciate knowledge and love life, virtues and its sanctity.

It’s just that… many of us don’t have time for that. The students know that, the teachers know that, the system knows that. Every student that goes in asking for more inevitably comes out disappointed: having been told that they should focus on the stuff that’s being taught and not delve any deeper until “their foundation” is strong.

I get the logic behind it, but it just doesn’t feel like… learning.

Before I got into Uni, I thought kids in the elite schools were learning something more than the other JC’s, that they were actually being the scholars that their nations were expecting them to be. But the ones who are scholars, the ones who love to learn and learn to love learning, are few and in between.

The irony is that they’re losing that knowledge… I’m losing all that knowledge I have. It’s like all those years in school didn’t even matter.

Well, I learn tone really important thing from all this: Be braver. You don’t succeed by going against the flow. You only survive. Security in Life doesn’t come to you in an iron rice bowl just because you earned a degree in law, medicine, or chemical engineering. It comes when you are so hungry to be involved in those fields because you truly believe that you can express your worth as a human being through what you learn.

So I guess I have my time in JC to thank for making me learn to chase interests instead of chasing money and security.

I just wish I had learned more than that.