Bohemia Bunny

Dear Students

June 17th, 2008 by lynnylchan under My Life and School Life

Dear students,

This is the story of how I came to work at this place, teaching you. It’s a long and winding story, but persevere and you’ll see the point.

Guess what I wanted to be, when I was 12. A doctor. How very pedestrian, that’s what all kids say growing up. But I stuck to it for a while. Until 16, actually. Then biotech became the next big thing and I wanted to be a genetic engineer.

(Un)Fortunately for me, biology in JC at A-Level sucked all the aspiring geneticist out of me. That was when I realised something about myself. Being a doctor had been about helping people (gag, cliché), and it was also fueled by a fascination with the human body. Now that the human body wasn’t holding my interest, I turned to the human mind. When human bodies go wrong, they see a doctor. Where do human minds go when they need help?

The answer was psychology. What I had realised, was my inherent desire to help people. The method didn’t matter, as long as I could solve their problems or alleviate their pain. The study of the human mind - essentially  psychology - was my other road towards fulfilling this desire.

And that is how I, a triple-science student, switched to Arts and Social Sciences in university.

Close to graduation, when the job-hunting begins, you always start to consider what other options you might have. If I weren’t teaching you right now, I’d probably be unemployed, an insurance agent, or maybe even working with Knight Frank, the property management company. So how did I come to work here?

Truth is, I didn’t really consider teaching. It’s a common saying among Arts students that if you can’t find a job, you can always teach. But I don’t have a passion for teaching, not the way MOE wants us to teach. I can’t stand children, and facing 30 or 40 of them just seems like a nightmare. But I came for a job interview here anyway.

They convinced me that this company is really different, not just from the MOE style, but even from other tuition centres. How many tuition centres will send you for a motivational course that’s in line with their in-house philosophy? And of course tuition is a more relaxed way of teaching than working in a school. Tuition centres are naturally more easygoing than classrooms. You can wear whatever you want, and we’ll let you eat in class. But what we do here is something more than even tuition.

Your ordinary tuition centre doesn’t really care about giving you life skills, career guidance, or being your friend. They just want you to get great results to put in their advertisements. That’s not how I roll. If I worked in a place like that, I’d just feel it was a job. But what I do here, in a very roundabout way, is what I set out to do when I applied for a place in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. I’m not just a teacher, I’m also a counsellor. I help you with your grades, but I also want to set you on the right path for life. I want to help you to be a better person - to be the person you want to be.

Because that’s what this job is letting me do - it lets me be the person I want to be, by helping others.

That’s why I work here, and that’s why I’m talking to you today.