Seems like the further into JC I progress, the less motivated I am to mug. I hate that word. To mug. It's so... factory-like. Like a production process, not a journey of self discovery or learning. As if the greatest our human minds were made for are to absorb and memorize information without really contemplating its true meaning and purpose in our lives and world. My teachers call me a mugger. I beg to differ. They don't know me.
On many other occasions I have sat by the window(yes really) and thought about what I want from my life. And mugging my minutes away seems like such a waste of time. I don't like letting my grades or leadership achievements determine my worth. Surely we're better than that. I don't like to have to care about whether my results are stable or fluctuate, by how many percent they've grown. All I need to know is that I have learnt something about this world I'm living in and that that is slowly helping me to build on my knowledge bank. I don't want to fit my answers into the formats and limits of essay topics. If you had to set a limit then that isn't a true answer, I feel. By limiting, you're suppressing opinions that do not fit into the equation, your equation. And by suppressing opinions, you're not letting others express how they truly feel just because you feel its out of the topic.
A friend once told me why she doesn't read anymore. She said that she loves books and she loves language. But by reading one book, that would pull you magnetically into its world for hours, you'd be wasting time that would be better spent on mugging. Again. That dreaded word. Really? Reading is a waste of time? Just because I do not choose to invest my time into bettering my grades doesn't mean it's a waste. I find more meaning in reading than in memorizing your stupid technical phrases. It would be more pragmatic to do the latter, of course. Those who mug more may see greater visible returns in results, but if isn't what makes you happy, then what's the point?
There's this popular question that Chinese teachers in secondary school used to like to ask. They ask us, "Do you study for yourself, or for your parents?" Hard question to answer. It's like the existentialist theme all over again. Is your duty to yourself, or to society? Which do you focus more on? It has often been suggested in Kafka's 'The Metamosphosis' that one needs to have a balance of both in order to finds happiness and success in life. And now, after years of thinking, I finally have an answer.
First, let us make clear what 'studying' means. And because this isn't an essay, I'm sure I have the liberty to define it as I like. Studying for me encompasses two main components. There is the learning and real accumulation of knowledge, where we truly feel empowered by what we learn and slowly construct our own opinions not for essays or for answers, but out of personal convictions and principles. The second part of studying is pure mugging. Senseless memorizing and practising just to give them what they want. Methodological and systematic.
(Disclaimer: Most of how we mug nowadays is a mix of both components because you cannot have the second without first having at least a bit of the first, I find. But the second form is more prevalent because it is more advantageous results-wise)
Now, to answer the question of who I study for, I learn for myself, and I mug for both my parents and for my future(because if I don't mug now, there would be lesser opportunities in the future for me to accomplish the first form of studying that I mentioned above). I'm not quite sure if you get it, because I have a tendency to spout things that don't quite make sense to others and I have no other way of explaining it in a way that would be more coherent. This is how I can best articulate my thoughts.
Maybe you think that this is just how I console myself for not doing as well as my counterparts in school. I can actually agree. But then again, I do not want my happiness to depend solely on grades. How sad would that be? There so many other things in life worth celebrating but because we never stop to look or listen, we miss out on all these simple pleasures. It's the same way I never quite understood why people like to bring their office-working habits back home. Efficiency is important in the corporate world, that we all know, but is there any real need to enforce it at home as a value? Sometimes you just have to slow down and let things take its course. Don't rush, focus on quality, not speed.
But like so many other times, this is just wishful thinking on my part. I need to stop being so idealistic yet my personal principles disallow me to.
*looks up at the wall of text*
Crap I can't believe I ranted that much. I'm supposed to be doing vectors now ugh.
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