Our University, Our Life

Disclaimer: This article is an original work by Little Flyer Bear (小飞熊). All rights reserved. Please do not reprint without permission. The views expressed herein represent only my personal opinions.

Many of my peers around me say they are busy to death every single day, yet I seem to have a lot of free time… I mean, since we are all just students and none of us are running companies, managing major project proposals, or leading scientific research, is it really necessary to bind ourselves so tightly to the word “busy”? ~

Could it be because I am lazier than they are? On one hand, I run my own studio, work on new product projects, occasionally research new concepts, study for classes, and in my spare time, write a bit, mess around with Flash, etc. Yet I don’t feel busier than them; I’m simply being myself. What on earth are those people doing who are constantly MIA, unreachable through any modern communication tool, and seemingly a headache even for the FBI to track down?

I finally got hold of a close friend from middle school who happens to be one of “them.” According to him, these people generally worry about two main things: academics and extracurricular activities. Two very easy words to understand, indeed.

It seems a subset of today’s college students understand the “purpose” of studying better than before. Nowadays, college graduates are a dime a dozen. At job fairs, graduates from ordinary universities blame themselves for not trying harder to get into key universities; key university students curse their schools for not being top national brands. By this logic, graduates from top-tier universities shouldn’t have to worry, right? Yet postgraduates are right there competing with them for the same jobs. Postgraduates are also divided by school rankings, followed by PhDs, postdocs… Unless you climb all the way to the Chinese Academy of Sciences and become a national-level scientist, you aren’t considered “the top” in China. Because of this, the vast population of college students is marching toward master’s and doctoral entrance exams. But do they actually know what research topics they want to pursue, or what great contributions they want to make to the country? In their hearts, they probably have only one goal: get the credentials to compete. It’s like playing an MMORPG—at the very beginning, you’re driven by curiosity, but once that’s slightly satisfied, you only think about one thing: “Level Up.” Most of the people around me are preparing for postgrad entrance exams. Braving all hardships, they toss aside any coursework unrelated to the exam, and it feels as though they’ve regressed to middle school, grinding away at Math, English, and Politics. In my eyes, this is a regression of history, where the latest productive forces cannot be applied, and we regress to the “slash-and-burn” era.

To briefly analyze why it is so hard for college students to find jobs nowadays: the most critical issue is whether you can actually do the job. Many cannot, because the professional knowledge they learned in school cannot be practically applied to the actual workplace. Employers would have to hire them and then spend resources on business training, onboarding education, and so on. If I were the boss of a company, I wouldn’t do it either. We want efficiency and profits, not running a “second phase of university education” on our own dime. Why should I spend my money training them? Sure, if they stay and work hard after being trained, that’s great. But what if I train a highly independent-minded kid who then jumps ship? Wouldn’t I be losing big time?

When I have nothing to do, I often wonder what university has actually taught us, and what modern education has really given us. Has it given us a deep foundation? Has it given us a broad spectrum of knowledge? But what do we actually need when we work? Right now, many vocational school graduates or even skilled workers find jobs much more easily than university graduates, and their salaries are higher. What does this prove? Society wants skills—specialized skills, i.e., practical talent. But what are we doing? We teach students broad scientific knowledge; we are trying to breed generalists. You can see how grand our ambition is, as if in $n$ years the world will be ruled by Chinese people. China certainly won’t need to worry about brain drain then—because by then, there won’t be any specialized talent left! You might not know what calculus is, but you could be an excellent auto mechanic; you might not know what mathematical series are, but you could be an outstanding landscape designer. You can be ignorant of many things, so why must we learn so many things we will never use in our entire lives?

This is the state of today’s university education. Why does everyone go on to study for master’s and doctoral degrees? Because they learn absolutely nothing applicable to real work during their four years of college; they are forced to do it just to secure a livelihood. So what on earth are we doing during those four years? Are we just increasing expenses for our parents, driving up consumer spending for society, or dumping more “garbage” into everyone’s brains?

Then there’s the other group of people busy with activities. Nowadays, university student clubs are clearly aligning with the growth rate of the global population. When I first entered university, I managed to get into the highest tier of student organizations thanks to my technical skills: the University-Level Student Union. I felt incredibly honored to join, finding that same sense of pride I felt back in elementary school when I joined the Young Pioneers. But the good times didn’t last. Over time, problems began to surface. (As a Chinese person, I am proud of the speed at which our nation discovers problems, but the speed at which we solve them is not nearly as glorious.) It turned out that with so many departments and so many members in the student union, the efficiency was incredibly low. Now I fully understand why foreigners say of us: “A single Chinese person is a dragon, but a group of Chinese people is a worm.” Since I couldn’t understand the way the student organization operated, and had zero interest in aiming for a department head position, I parted ways with an apology. Hearing later that other classmates were also leaving various organizations made me feel much less guilty… I won’t over-comment on student organizations or clubs as a whole, because I haven’t seen how they operate in other universities. I’ll just evaluate my own school: first, the advisors managing these clubs fail to fulfill their responsibilities (perhaps they can’t secure enough authority from the school administration); second, the membership of these groups is a chaotic mess, with many people joining in name only just to add a few points to their end-of-term evaluations.

Given these phenomena in university, there is only one way out: be yourself. Since you have your own thoughts, follow them. As long as it doesn’t violate national laws or school regulations, I will weave my own life. I live, therefore I am happy. As for other matters, I have no obligation—and more importantly, no right—to meddle in them! Hahaha~