Back to the University

This post is migrated here from my 2011 blog

WARNING: this post is written while being very sleepy, my linguistic abilities deteriorate during this state, so excuse anything that doesn’t make sense hehe

Today, no sleep, and 7 hours of work, then I went to University to check whether my engineering BSc certificate is … made.. yet I guess, and it wasn’t, they postponed me to 1st of October (3 days from now, not bad).

And since there aren’t many of my friends left, most graduated and the few left are in lectures or going to lectures, I should normally feel old and leave the vicinity asap but this time I didn’t. I just kinda kept walking around and thinking, looking at new trees that grew, old trees that are no longer there, new features and signs of age that I didn’t notice before, almost like visiting an old dream, there were many new faces I’ve never seen before, and some old ones.. most look sad and gloomy like an extinguished candle, but the new ones are still happy and full of energy, lit. I couldn’t help but reflect on my own education chronicles, and then I realized something…

Our higher education system is so flawed it feels like military service, in what sense you might ask? well simply, it doesn’t seem to have any tangible rewards! you work your ass off for years to no end without even seeing anything of what you study in reality (academia sigh..), you suffer and fight and pass one challenge after another, and no one and nothing shows you any kind of reward waiting at the end in exchange for all this hard work, not only that but everyone seems to put pressure on you, the professors, the parents, and even society.. eventually you just give up fighting against it and lose all your energy after a year or two, perhaps three if you got a strong heart.. and kinda go into this zombie-like existence, eat-sleep-study-suffer and sometimes you can’t even find time to sleep!

Based on that model, most students I met during my aimless wandering immediately go into describing how much they suffer once I ask how is his/her study going?

..

But here is the realization, today I discovered there is a reward! for the first time in my life I feel like I actually was rewarded a little for all these years of effort. How? well, though still intangible, the reward is that you did it! you outsmarted the flawed academic system! \o/

I can now look at any mean professor from the old days and evil-laugh while pointing: “MUAHAHAHA point you tried your best but you couldn’t stop me!.. I survived!”.

Great, what a realization… only possible if you’re high on sleep deprivation