Today my friend asked me if we are too stressful. I couldn`t quite understand why she suddenly asked me a question like that. But I do feel a little bit depressed, not because that I can not follow the courses but I didn`t manage to do it better when I can. Yes. I caught myself that the reason for me to feel stressful is that I am not working hard enough.
To be honest, I don`t think I am a desperate-to-work-hard type from the first day of school, not until the legendary last year in senior middle school when I prepared for the university entrance exam. As you may know, the university entrance exam is such a big deal for the young people in China that many of us see it as the first turning point in our lives–key university is a guarantee of smart brains, better capability and therefore decent jobs.
My memory of that year is somewhat vague now–it was such an torturous experience that my mind choose to forget it. Get up at 6 am and go to bed at 1 am everyday; all we do in a day is study, study and study; all (nearly all) of the spare time is contributed to memorizing, exercise and tests; our only aim and solitary goal at that year is higher score. I feel like exhausting all my buget of hard working in my whole life in that year.
It is absolutely not a pleasant experience, but strangely, I am now kind of miss the desperate me at that time. I blame myself for not working hard enough sometime. I don`t know if it is because of I am a Chinese, I feel very guilty for not studying hard, especially when I study here, overseas. I am study for nobody but myself. I should have taken more responsibility on my shoulder and done better.
Human beings are prone to live a comfortable life, we spontaneously avoid the pressure in front of us. Shamfully, I often indulge myself of not working hard with an excuse of “no need to push yourself to be excellent”. True. I may feel better with such an excuse when I fail, but sounds more like a loser. So why not work hard and fail honorablely?
Luckily, there are almost ten days for me to think about how to work hard and work smartly in the future. I felt sad to stay here for Christmas a minute ago, but now I am stuffed of plans for study. Sometimes study is one man job, you need to be calm and “lonelyness-proof” to absorb knowledge, like what I did in the last year of senior middle school.
Working hard or not? We all know the answer.