Oct 18, 2007

Facing a mid-uni life crisis

Its fierce. Its tough. Its insane. I know that I am beyond academics. Is study really that important? I am graded, but does it really determine my intelligence, my success chances, my worth? I always hope that in universities, I can get a education. Not one that requires me to calculate numbers or memorise things that I might never come across ever again other than in textbooks. So often I try to remind myself that grades do not reflect whether or not I get what I want to get in the future. It only says given a specific time, I'm able to produce in paper words that someone wants me to write, under well-defined conditions, with my choice of words narrowed down through filtering process that lasted for 4 months. Yet, ever so often, my well-being depends on this letter. I can't help but to feel dumb, to feel that my future is lost, that my right to success is gone because after 3 months, I am not able to produce what a person of authority wants me to produce. I have another 1 month to go.

I have this theory that to achieve greatness, you need to go beyond previous greatness. Studying newton's law of physic helps us to understand the physical world better, but it certainly did not help Einstein achieve his theory of relativity. Learning to draw in realism may make you a great painter, but it certainly would not help Picasso in his drawings. Galileo went against the Church and enable the rest of the world to see the Sun is not the one rotating, but around the non-flat Earth. To be able to listen, execute and produce effectively makes you an indispensable worker, but the ability to create may just make you the boss. I do want to earn $8k a month comfortably (oh, there might be some stress of losing your job), but I want more to be able to achieve more than earning numbers that can be traded for real physical goods.

I question my choice of entering university. I learn useful things, but at the expense of many others.

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