Once you leave home, everything turns out to be different, and you can no longer be so self-centered.
----- From my diary
Many young overseas students might think the same as I do when they first left parents to live alone.
I can still remember the topic for the TEM-8 composition two years ago was “Do you think the young generation today is self-centered, why and why not”. I wrote in my essay that people of my age today are truly self-centered. I seemed to have convinced the examiner, since I got a high mark, and now my understanding of this issue is far more deepened.
Generally speaking, the one-child policy has produced so many spoiled children in China, including me. I can also remember that when I first complained in QQ that I could hardly manage even a trivial thing in my part-time job, one of my best net-pals explained for me that this was exactly the outcome of indulgence.
Before I started my journey to Sydney, I read many websites about overseas life and study. What struck me most was a little boy’s recalling of his overseas part-time job. He pointed out that many overseas students were so self-centered that they simply took the blame of the boss as an insult (though it might be truly the faults of their own), and then quit the job directly, even with an air of pride. They think they do the right thing to defend their self-esteem, but the real self-esteem is by no means based on such a superficial level.
I also take part-time job in a fast-eating restaurant. I often talk with my present classmates about our work. We find in common that the boss is often able to point out one bad point or two of you no matter how hard and carefully you are working. Sometimes, he say it out of instinct, for it’s his own business, he just can’t help urging you to do better for him; other times he is correct as you are indeed not good enough. Whatsoever, what we should do is to listen to the boss quietly to find out which category it belongs to. If what he is saying is true, we should accept it and try to improve, otherwise simply ignore it. Like the saying of Chairman Mao, “correct the mistakes if you have made any and guard against them if you have not.”
There is no point to get angry and then argue, or even threat to resign at once. Your resignation really makes no difference for the boss, since there’re so many people awaiting the vacancy. However, on the part of you, it’s a pity to give it up even without any reasonable consideration. It’s proven to be getting difficult to get part-time job now. Basically, I take this kind of behavior as self-centerness, because they even fail to make any attempt to endure such a minor criticism.
Another sign of self-centerness, as I suppose, is always trying to explain in the hope not to take the responsibility. It’s exactly what I’ve always been doing. The boss doesn’t like it, he is actually fed up with it. He told me once he got somebody else working here. That girl was so self-centered that every time she just argued with him loudly. He had to give her a sack, as he was the boss, “the one that should make the noises”. He told me sometimes he simply wanted to remind me of doing something better next time, but I always took it as criticism, and then trying hard to explain why I had made the mistake, like it’s totally out of my control or I didn’t make it deliberately. In his opinion, it’s nothing serious to make a mistake as long as I beer it in mind and try to avoid it in the future.
He also said he could hardly figure out why I often turned a deaf ear to his commands, rather, just stick to my previous way of doing things, as if I was living in my own world without anybody else. I took it as true. For one thing, I may occasionally fail to catch his words, especially when I’m busy dealing with so many customers. At these moments, all that I want is to focus on things at hand rather than listen to his "interruptions". For the other thing, I may consciously or unconsciously resist to his commands, such as leaving what you are doing now, but do some thing else first, because I’ve got so used to my own steps, and it was said to be illogic later. In fact, it has been an obsession for me in the past a few days, as I began to think about his blame seriously and really want to do things in a more logic way.
To be continued…
