plz plz help revise. my thought is now stuck,
i heard that Uchicago loves intellectual essays and i think this supp of mine is not intellectual at all!! and this one is very long. i need some honest advice and criticisms. Thank you in advance!
------------------------------------------Where's Waldo, really?---------------------------------
There are reasons why my mother and I "fight" very often.
My mother is an ordinary person. She wakes up at 5 every morning, goes to the nearest market to select the freshest veggie, cooks crumble eggs and porridge, dresses up but doesn't do make up, searches my bag to check whether there's a love letter and hurries to catch up the early bus. In the afternoon, she comes back home, sweeps the floor, edits her lecture scripts which she will use to earn extra money, checks her luck next day, eats dinner on bed while watching news and soap operas, furiously demands me to go to bed, and finally can't resist tiresome and falls asleep with television on.
I, for a long time, disliked my mother's attitude towards life. What's fun about living a life without leaving footprints behind? For many times I complained:"Can't you change something? Maybe become a professor and educate more students? You can earn more that way, too." I knew that she could do this, since everybody who had listened to her classes praised her teaching and she was even once offered a position in a continuing-education university; she just didn't want to bother getting acknowledged. "I like the way I am now," for many times my mother answered, "and you should try to focus on your own business."
So easily satisfied with the world within an office and a household. I thought. Whatever. Determined not to live as my mother, I strived to grab any opportunities I have to make my life meaningful. I learnt Japanese because I wanted to one day bring an objective evaluation of Japan to Chinese; I experimented with start-ups, endeavoring knowledge in business; I opted to spend my weekends volunteering, knowing it would be more meaningful than merely having fun. I thought my mother must feel depressed living a routine life, since its opposite, my life, was so rich and cheering.
It was half a year since I left China. One day, when talking on Skype, I asked my mother what's new, expecting no surprise.
"Oh I just finished my community lecture on new social policies. I earned an extra 200 RMB. Great, isn't it?" Yeah, great...
"My class is extremely popular. Even people from other neighborhood came to my class. They said that I had been a wonderful teacher and my class was not at all boring or clichĂŠ. And guess what, I was invited to be the lecturer in the new community project! I must start to get ready now."
"I have been watching open courses to learn from other teachers. I've collected a notebook of inspiring sentences that will probably enhance the impact my lectures. Also, I've been revising essays of my students; we will publish an essay collection this year. Do you want to see it?"
Perusing the half-finished collection, I was amazed that there's not a single paragraph without her corrections, notes, or advice. There were even such detailed reflections after every essay that they could be directly used as editor's review. I could imagine how she spent days and nights proofreading these essays, frowned when she found a ridiculous typo, and beamed when she revised the essays until they were to her utmost satisfaction.
Never before had I seriously considered the work of my mother. Now it turned out that her job was not as simple as I had thought. More importantly, she, on her position, was creating value. The value one creates cannot be evaluated quantitatively. Rather, to determine one's contribution to the society is a qualitative research. Just like photoelectric effect can be observed even if there's only one photon with enough energy hits metal, as long as one has made efforts to create value, his life should be appreciated.
I have to admit that I still dislike the life philosophy of my mother. Rather than concentrating on "one's own business", I prefer to step into a broader world where I can work with people of multi-backgrounds, collaborate with them to bring more changes to the society, and shoulder more responsibilities for all human nature. But I now realized that I couldn't use my own par to judge the ways others live, nor could I neglect or deny the value they're creating. The world has diverse values and their applicability varies with the change of time, space, settings, and perspectives. It is arrogant to regard my set of value as superior.
Why is everybody seeking Waldo? Maybe, Waldo doesn't want much attention. He's happy in the crowd, pursuing perfection in his own job, serving his country in his own position, and living a simple life that he enjoys.
