Now I remember what I actually meant to blog about...
Slow day. Same story. Typhoon warning, no classes. All the teachers in the staff room talking but I don't understand anything unless the nice librarian who comes to sit next to me during staff meetings clues me in on what's going on.
But at least I remember what I actually wanted to write about today.
So by now, you've probably seen/heard/read of this NY Times article about education and whether schools should be focused on building character and what does it mean to have good character. I'm linking it here not because this post will actually be referring to it but that while I was reading I remembered what I meant to write about. And also because you might as well go read it if you haven't already...even though I'm only on pg 5 at the moment, many have called it a worthwhile read. I would finish the article first and affirm or deny that claim, but when I remember what I want to write about, I tend to want to stop everything else that I am doing so I don't forget again.
Sometime over the weekend, I was asked, "Who do you think has it better, Japanese high school students or American high school students?" and "Which system do you think you would have liked better if you were a student?"
I didn't rush my answer because my first instinct thought, "So much of what determines what school you go to depends on exams here in Japan, that's scary!! Of course I would pick America's system, I turned out pretty good so why change it?" But upon thinking about it a little more (more like a half minute more lol) I knew elementary/jhs student me or even high school student me would probably have done just fine in Japan's system. I thrived on exam-taking and figuring out how to choose the right answer or making use of knowledge that I had learned in class to get to the right answers, etc. And I know college me probably would have been fine with that too if I had challenged myself to do it once I got my act together (but that's another story). But I still wanted to choose America's messed up system...why?
Because somewhere in high school life, I knew that there was a difference between being fine/being awesome/etc, and knowing and having a real understanding that you were doing something with your life that feels worthwhile. And if I haven't lost you already, this is where it will probably start to get more confusing. Many of the decisions having to do with what should I do with my life kind of thing, one of the prime worries that I have had is "Will this choice make me feel like I am settling into a type of life that will make me become complacent? Or will I be able to feel that I am exploring or learning if I do this?"
Complacent? Yes that's the word that I used. It just sounds right to me. In this post-grad world of not knowing precisely what I want to be doing for the rest of my life or how I want my life to be and all that jazz, I am extremely grateful to whoever or whatever it was that helped me cultivate the feeling of an uncertain future, but a future that I am active in creating. Even though it is so scary a lot of the time. And even though there is a practical side of me that thinks that I am crazy. "Why can't you just be happy if the ways to make a good easy life are simply at hand?" And there is nothing wrong with that, it's just not the way that I think anymore.
But why do I say that I am grateful, intent even, on preserving this realization? Because believing my future to be uncertain has enabled me to see that there are endless possibilities (corny I know), but more importantly, that I can choose. Sometime this year I was able to conceptualize more clearly what this feeling is (yeah I know, if the explanation is this muddled now, how must it have been before...). It's basically that I have an underlying worry of becoming submissive to the world's practicalities and that I will forget that I value so highly this feeling of being an active director of my own life. So for right now, while I'm still young and doing young things like living in another country, I am intent on feeling like I am directing the choices in my life. Maybe in 10 years or something I might be living out of a box buried under student loans and feel really stupid that I didn't set myself up better for the future. But for some reason, I don't think it will be like that. Hopefully I'll at least feel that I made choices and made sure that I had a really interesting life in the process.
But at least I remember what I actually wanted to write about today.
So by now, you've probably seen/heard/read of this NY Times article about education and whether schools should be focused on building character and what does it mean to have good character. I'm linking it here not because this post will actually be referring to it but that while I was reading I remembered what I meant to write about. And also because you might as well go read it if you haven't already...even though I'm only on pg 5 at the moment, many have called it a worthwhile read. I would finish the article first and affirm or deny that claim, but when I remember what I want to write about, I tend to want to stop everything else that I am doing so I don't forget again.
Sometime over the weekend, I was asked, "Who do you think has it better, Japanese high school students or American high school students?" and "Which system do you think you would have liked better if you were a student?"
I didn't rush my answer because my first instinct thought, "So much of what determines what school you go to depends on exams here in Japan, that's scary!! Of course I would pick America's system, I turned out pretty good so why change it?" But upon thinking about it a little more (more like a half minute more lol) I knew elementary/jhs student me or even high school student me would probably have done just fine in Japan's system. I thrived on exam-taking and figuring out how to choose the right answer or making use of knowledge that I had learned in class to get to the right answers, etc. And I know college me probably would have been fine with that too if I had challenged myself to do it once I got my act together (but that's another story). But I still wanted to choose America's messed up system...why?
Because somewhere in high school life, I knew that there was a difference between being fine/being awesome/etc, and knowing and having a real understanding that you were doing something with your life that feels worthwhile. And if I haven't lost you already, this is where it will probably start to get more confusing. Many of the decisions having to do with what should I do with my life kind of thing, one of the prime worries that I have had is "Will this choice make me feel like I am settling into a type of life that will make me become complacent? Or will I be able to feel that I am exploring or learning if I do this?"
Complacent? Yes that's the word that I used. It just sounds right to me. In this post-grad world of not knowing precisely what I want to be doing for the rest of my life or how I want my life to be and all that jazz, I am extremely grateful to whoever or whatever it was that helped me cultivate the feeling of an uncertain future, but a future that I am active in creating. Even though it is so scary a lot of the time. And even though there is a practical side of me that thinks that I am crazy. "Why can't you just be happy if the ways to make a good easy life are simply at hand?" And there is nothing wrong with that, it's just not the way that I think anymore.
But why do I say that I am grateful, intent even, on preserving this realization? Because believing my future to be uncertain has enabled me to see that there are endless possibilities (corny I know), but more importantly, that I can choose. Sometime this year I was able to conceptualize more clearly what this feeling is (yeah I know, if the explanation is this muddled now, how must it have been before...). It's basically that I have an underlying worry of becoming submissive to the world's practicalities and that I will forget that I value so highly this feeling of being an active director of my own life. So for right now, while I'm still young and doing young things like living in another country, I am intent on feeling like I am directing the choices in my life. Maybe in 10 years or something I might be living out of a box buried under student loans and feel really stupid that I didn't set myself up better for the future. But for some reason, I don't think it will be like that. Hopefully I'll at least feel that I made choices and made sure that I had a really interesting life in the process.
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