The Journey of A Happy Boy

It was a sunny day in Toronto. The last shreds of the winter have melted away beneath the sun, revealing a lush world of bright colors.

 Away from the cacophony of noises issuing from a nearby road, a young man was walking with a bag of books. Despite the cold wind blowing incessantly, he looked happy and refreshed.

I. The Halcyon Days

Ever since kindergarten, I have gone back and forth between China and Canada, due to my mother’s work requirements. For the most part, I enjoyed both experiences, since at that time homework was generally not heavy and the school systems offered a “fun” learning process. The Chinese system was more serious, but since I only spent Grade one there, there was seldom any stress. In a word, these were “the carefree days of happiness.”

Elementary school in Canada was a profoundly different experience from anything I had experienced before. In addition to the preexisting curriculum, there is an extensive variety of extracurricular activities such as robotics, reading contests, and other athletic programs. In addition, the teachers were also very supportive and kind to help me adapt to an unfamiliar environment. Although I had some problems adapting at first, I quickly formed a great relationship with my teachers.

Overall, Canadian primary school was a very beneficial experience and helped to shape many of the more positive aspects of my personality.

After completing the fourth grade in Canada, I went back to Beijing to continue my education in a local elementary school. In the final two years of primary school, I experienced some of the primary differences between the Chinese and Canadian systems.

II. A Welcome Challenge

Primary school in China was a challenge, but a welcome one, as it taught me some important life skills. In those two years, I learned to adapt to a more demanding environment.

The first thing I noticed was the drastically increased prevalence of homework and how most teachers placed an emphasis on memorization. Fortunately, I was already fluent in both oral and written English, thanks to my time in Canada, leaving me to help my classmates learn English in a more flexible way.

Even though the amount of homework was not overwhelming, the process of completing it took up a significant portion of my after-school hours. However, I did not find my life stressful or monotonous, owing to a plethora of extracurricular activities: violin, reading and performing in the occasional concert. In these two years, I learned an important lesson: that pressure, the anathema of Canadian students, can very well serve a good purpose when applied in the right amounts.

Another skill I learned in Chinese elementary school was to handle stress well. By handling moderate amounts of stress, I learned to be calm in important situations, such as when taking the SSAT.

This skill would prove invaluable later in life, as it helped me get through the pressure of Chinese middle school. This is when I finally understood what “pressure” truly meant.

III. Two years in boarding school

My middle school was a boarding school and it is one of the top five middle schools in Beijing in terms of academic achievements. In particular, it is famous for its strict, almost military style of management within the school. In addition to a drastically increased workload, we—the students—also had to contend with a host of other challenges, such as the infamous “tofu cube”. This is when students have to fold their thick blankets into pristine “cubes” at 6:30 in the morning and any student’s “cube” with wrinkles would be harshly punished by copying down pages worth of lines. Its purpose? To make students compliant to orders.

Naturally, I was not the best at “tofu cubes” and was penalized often for such a minor thing that seemingly served no purpose other than to destroy our individuality. I initially put up a resistance, writing a petition that brought my home form teacher to tears, but then I realized that not only the students are egregiously pressured in this system, the teachers are every bit as stressed for fear of salary deductions, which can happen for even the most minor infraction.

Homework also began mounting, like a vine that slowly, but steadily grows to strangle a tree–the tree of our stress tolerance. My classmates often had to stay up into the night to finish their homework, while I frequently wrote until my hand was sore.

Worst of all was the “军训”, or, in English, military training, an obligatory two week program at the beginning of each school year that was supposed to teach students how to march in formation and put on a parade for the school board officials, but really all it did was make me lose my voice because we had to loudly yell out patriotic slogans to satisfy the school board officials’ egos. A pointless exercise, in my opinion. As a result, even to this day, I have significant trouble singing high notes.

Under all the stress, I began to crack. My grades slumped at the end of the seventh grade and I became more reserved and jaded. At one point, I became resentful of the school system because of its various efforts to stamp out the individuality of its students and the bureaucratic hypocrisy of the school board.

Even though the stress, it was clear to me that I had to catch up, so I worked hard and progressed in all of the subjects, but I was still miserable because of the pressure. The school work was both tough and as numerous as bees in a hive. Some of it was merely a waste of time, as they only constituted copying things down repeatedly. I tried my best to do well. I was progressing, but our efforts never seemed to be enough, while more work kept piling up for me and my classmates.

To make it all worse, we were told that grade nine would be even more stressful than grade eight already was, and the school staff did their best to keep the students stressed for an endless barrage of tests and evaluations. The final nail in the coffin was that I would be staying in China until grade ten because that’s when Chinese high school begins.

Through the pressure and hardship, though, I still plowed on amidst the homework. My mother also saw my stress and decided to take me back to Canada one year ahead of the initial plan.

I had burst into tears at the moment I realized that I was going back to Canada—I was finally out of the Matrix.

Even though middle school was most definitely not a pleasant experience, I still learned a lot from it. In those two years, I became more mature and learned to (somewhat) take care of myself. I also learned a lot of more advanced mathematics, which helped greatly in setting up a solid foundation for things like trigonometry and calculus. Most importantly, it taught me to persevere in difficult situations and find a solution instead of dwelling on small matters, and to cherish our individuality, for it is the one thing that distinguishes a free thinker from an “ant”, a mindless drone that slaves away at its assigned task without ever questioning why.

I’m back in Canada now. It is a completely different realm in terms of workload and curriculum, and the students are also different. Namely, the lack of tolerance towards any pressure is surprising, since there is hardly any stress in the curriculum. I adapted quickly to this environment.

This is not to say that Canadian school is without its challenges. Rather, it is very demanding in a sector not covered in Chinese school: self-management.

In Canada, the teachers don’t have to constantly remind students when homework is due and when there will be an exam. It is up to the student to check their calendar regularly. Students are given laissez-faire in their homework and projects until its due date. For someone who is used to teachers constantly reminding them of projects, it is very easy to lose track of homework because of a lack of reminders. After a few mishaps in grade nine, I have improved greatly in this region.

Whether my experiences were for good or bad, they have enriched my life by a great deal, and I have accepted and learned from them. Although a new set of challenges face me here, I will still face them with optimism, because there are certainly worse experiences than walking under a windswept Toronto sky.