School Days
Ever since I came back from school three days before, I have been reminiscing about the four-year “journey” I spent in my school, and trying to contemplate what I gained and lost during the period: Was it a worthwhile journey, and what decision had I made during it and without which my life would have vastly differed
from now?
I remember four years ago, on a sunny September afternoon, I came all the way from my hometown to the school, which first struck me with its undisturbed ambiance and thick study atmosphere. It wasn’t the one that I had dreamed of for years
? So at that moment I was thrilled with unknown but intense ambitions.
However, after the temporary thrilling moment was gone, life returned to the way
as it was. Every day was occupied with intense study, which at the begging appealed me but soon after bothered me because of its monotone tempo. I began to feel lost and listless. And I began to ask myself what I really wanted, and what kind I want my life was to be.
But it was beyond my then capacity to answer the questions. So just like my roommates, I turned to Internet, cinemas, for refuge. It was lucky, now I feel, that
I didn’t become indulgent in the Internet, and developed the habit of loafing
away all day long. But anyhow that time, just like it to some of my fellow classmates, was pretty difficult for me.
Thanks to school library, in the second year I began to recover myself and gained my strengths to try to dig out where my interest was by reading. It was not always enjoyable surely, for sometimes after I borrowed the books beyond my understanding then, I was furious about my ignorance and dumbness. But fortunately I managed to go through the period.
For by time I gradually realized that it was impossible for one to master all the knowledge he/she could imagine, and it was okay to let the less important factors go for a while, if not forever. I started to think about what field I could
really get my hands on and may in time achieve something out of it. It was also
surely not easy at all, as it requires trying biding, optimistic- till-almost-blind attitude. But still somehow I got it through.
In fact, now by recalling, I realize that those school days were indeed one of the most important and memorable periods in my whole life, though what accompanied with it were always pain-taking efforts and despondence by setbacks. I used to
hear, before entering the university, that university time was fun time and I counted on it. But after I myself actually being in it, I found out that it was definitely not so, unless you think like a Puritan, treating pain or struggle as
pleasure.
But I should say, though it was pain-taking, if I were give a second change, I would surely be willing to experience it again. The reason is this: Suppose that
I didn’t take the chance to go to university, now I would have been in my hometown, doing things I had no favor for and meanwhile regretting to have lost my time pointlessly; Or suppose that I didn’t choose to study but seek for transient
pleasures such as online wandering, movie indulgence, I would have felt totally
lost now where I should steer my life direction on the sea of life.
So after all these presumptions that I so luckily had excluded myself from, how
can I not be willing to take the journey again? And I believe that as long as I
follow my inner urge, and never stop ceasing to request myself what really I want (which, in other words, is to do self-contemplation regularly), I would be unlikely to get off the track and lose myself in the maze of life.
Caroline
