Communication – transition between childhood and adulthood

Being under the mountain,

Starring in the rain.

I came with unattainable hope,

Hardly could I maintain.

        I have, in the past, not been able to express myself, nor have I known how to communicate with people. At home, back in Hong Kong, I was passive, and the school’s environment, vast in numbers with 1200 students, had disallowed me from talking to most of my classmates and teaches. I seemed solitary, or be adapted to working alone.

        It was the first day that I came to Berkshire, when I came to Berkshire, when I heard a voice. “My name is…is…Catherine,” she said timidly. She was accompanied by her parents.

        I smiled to her but dared not say a word to her.

        This was probably the first time in six years that a girl had spoken to me, at least in a nice way. I had no ideas of how to handle relations with the opposite sex: coming to Berkshire School, this is the issue that I had learned from experience, and from her. The process that I had gone through, however, did teach me a life-long lesson about how to treat and mix with people.

        There was one time during my sophomore year when I was depressed about academics, when I get a C in both English and French. For a person who had devoted much of his life to academics, this seemed to be an “impossible” fact to me. The world appeared gloomy to me. I remembered the way in which I treated people: did not listen to anyone; tried to make as much as trouble as possible; and tried to make other people angry. People commented on it but I did not care at that point of time. One night, I received a phone call. It was Catherine, with her lovely voice, who revived me.

        “Hi, Eddie, how are you doing?” She said.

        “What the hell do you want from me,” I replied. “I didn’t want to talk to anyone else.”

        “I am just calling to see how you are doing. Is there something wrong with you?”

        “Of course, everything is not going in the way they are supposed to be. I don’t know what is going on, but things are just unpredictable. Everyone in the world is just trying to make me feel bad.”

        “Do they really? How about me?” She challenged my statement.

        “Well…it’s hard to say.”

        “Give me a definite answer! It is either yes or no!” She changed her tone.

        “I don’t’ know what…what to say,” I said timidly.

        “See, you cannot generalize everything into one subject. I would agree with you that most things are not going well in your life, but things aren’t’ meant to go against you. Remember, I was in the same situation as you, living in the States, alone, for the first time in my life. There’s a support we have to give each other. Everyone feels homesick, especially when you are sent to a different country, where the living style and the culture is totally different,” she continued, “One cannot be so greedy and expect to be dexterous at everything. You have to be satisfied with your present condition, and only aim for improvement. There is no guarantee of excellence with hard work, but as least you have tried. You should be proud of your achievement. Your GPA, 3.78, would not have been easily achieved by others. So, be satisfied with your situation!”

        I received this speech, but I was not mature enough to have understood the underlying concepts; she was teaching me to treat people with benevolence. After all, she was older than I was, and had more experience in the “real world” than I did.

        The influence is not tangible. Inside my heart, however, I appreciate her unimpeachable effort for the two years that I went to school with her. She guided me what is right or wrong, or what I should not do in order not to make people angry. It was her advices that made me possible to mix with Americans and people from other countries, both males and females, and I start to feel comfortable interacting with females. She has taught me the most important lessons of communication, the possibility of evolution; lesion that neither textbooks nor teachers could have taught any students.

        Now that she had graduated, but the “learning” continued.

Leaving the mountain,

Revering in the rain.

Flashing back the dreams,

What else did I gain?