Chapter 18 about learning

About learning (1) I remember in my home in Shanghai, under the bed in the attic, there was a dilapidated leather suitcase, which was the most precious possession before I went to school when I was a child, and it was full of comic books. The comic books at that time were very different from the current comic books. First, they were very small, suitable for children to read. Second, they had more text and more pictures as a foil. Because I was brought up by my grandma, I didn’t meet the requirement that parents must be dual-employed to be able to go to kindergarten. Therefore, before elementary school, what I envied most were those children of the same age who could go to kindergarten on time every day.Many times, listening to them talk about how to take a nap together on the ground after lunch at noon every day, let me at a young age quickly understand what regret is.

Instead of going to kindergarten, I spend most of my day on these comic strips.Most of the previous comics were adapted from myths and legends, fables, and classics, so they were very small, and I already knew them. Finally one day, I don't remember the reason, I had the opportunity to spend a day in the kindergarten.I still remember that I was a big showman that day, because the teacher asked the children to count from one to one hundred, but everyone stuttered, and finally it was my turn to memorize the number one hundred without any effort Once again, let the teacher look at me, an irregular army who has never been to kindergarten, with admiration.

This kind of thing often happened when I was studying. I still remember that when I was in the second grade of elementary school, the teacher asked everyone to summarize the central idea of ​​a text, which seemed to be about commemorating Premier Zhou Enlai. As a result, my classmates were called out one by one. She got up, but no one could speak up. The head teacher's face became longer and longer. She really didn't expect that her students would be troubled by such a question.In the end she called me, her eyes were full of expectations, and I really didn't let her down because of her trust in me all the time.As a result, I got a big compliment and my classmates didn't have to stay at their desks for not answering a question.

When I was in elementary school, studying was never difficult for me. During the five years of elementary school, my tuition fee was reduced by the school because I always got the first and second place, which saved my father a lot of money. Money also earned him a lot of face.I remember that the one who could compete with me in the grade was a chubby boy.Every semester, the two of us are always competing for the first and second.However, the difference between the two of us is also very obvious. Although there is no difference between us in terms of scores, he is very talented in mathematics and often participates in mathematics competitions, while my specialty is in Chinese, composition The game is indispensable to me.I think this must have something to do with the comic strips I read too much when I was young.

When I entered elementary school, I no longer read comic books. At that time, I started to read a lot of children's books, such as "One Hundred Thousand Whys", "Selected Grimm's Fairy Tales", "Selected Fairy Tales of Andersen", and although most of them couldn't understand, especially It's those poems. In fact, when I was in elementary school, I could see what I really liked from the time I spent reading these books.For me, Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales, even the mermaid story, didn't make me feel like a fairy tale. I didn't really read his stories until I was a child.I like the Grimm's fairy tales, because I believe that the princess and the prince live happily ever after.

When I entered middle school, I spent my lunch break and evening self-study in the library or reading room because I had no other choice.In the six years of middle school, I read all the world famous novels. Of course, I read Dream of the Red Mansions. At this time, I understood a little more things.And in the reading room of the school, I developed the habit of reading gossip magazines. At that time, there were not many gossip magazines. At most, there were some things about movies and similar storytelling. Lots of topics to chat with others. The habit of reading gossip magazines has been retained until now. In addition to reducing stress, it is also a way to quickly keep myself out of touch with the society.Every time I return to Hong Kong on a business trip, I always buy a lot of weekly magazines. The first thing I read must be the entertainment edition, so as to enrich my after-dinner topics and keep myself from being out of touch with the trend.The next step is the big and small reports on the political and economic pages, to let myself know what things I missed when I was not in Hong Kong, and what the ins and outs were like, so as not to be confused and confused when I ran the news.

When I was in middle school, reading was not as effortless as in elementary school, because all my classmates were the same as me in elementary school, and their grades were always among the best.There is no comparison, and I thought I was good, but when I came here, I realized that there are too many amazing people. I am not a person who cares very much about grades, and neither is my father. Maybe he thinks that being able to enter this middle school means that half of his foot has already stepped into college, so he feels relieved from then on.Besides, as long as he said that he was in that middle school, everyone felt that this child was really amazing at studying, and no one cared about how he was studying there.

There is no pressure from the family, and whether the school teachers like a student or not doesn't just look at the test scores.So in the six years of middle school, I learned a lot of things other than textbooks. Calculator was just popular, I signed up for the interest class, and programmed my healthy recipes with great interest.Thinking about it now, I have been a very realistic person since I was a child, and I actually have to program programs with my own life.I still remember that I entered the calories and other nutritional standards that people need to consume in a day, and then began to enter the nutritional content of each food. My goal is to be able to let the computer compile a daily nutritional menu.During those days, I would take advantage of lunch time every day to go to the computer room to dominate the computer.It was like this for a whole month, and suddenly one day, I looked in the mirror in the dormitory and found a large piece of white hair on the top of my head.Fortunately, this piece of white hair disappeared unknowingly after I stopped my enthusiasm for computer programming.Up to now, I still have the habit, if I want to do something, I will try my best to do it, but suddenly one day, I will feel that this matter is not important to me, so this matter will be in my Disappeared in life.

About learning (2) The enthusiasm for computers lasted for a year. At that time, I also signed up for training courses at the off-campus science and technology station, and I had to take an hour-long bus every week to go to a distant place to attend classes.Although I never deal with computers again in the end, at least I have some basic skills, so after work, no matter what kind of computer program or operation, for me, it just takes some time to learn, and I have never felt very difficult. When I was in middle school, I was the head of the school's propaganda department.Most of the work is to organize a school-wide cultural performance once a semester.Every year, I was one of the members who participated in the performance. One year, we decided to perform tango dance, and those dance clothes were borrowed by me at the Palace of Culture from uncles and aunts I didn’t know, free of charge.I believe it is almost impossible to find free performance costumes these days.

Gradually, our school's art performance became more and more smooth, so we decided to go to other middle schools of the same level as ours to engage in series, and then hold a joint performance for middle school students.At that time, communication was very inconvenient, so we would use the evening self-study time to go to other schools to discuss with the cadres of the student union. It took one school to go down from school to school, and our joint performance I made it, and I also met a lot of my peers from other schools Because I like to write, when I was in middle school, I joined the school's literary club.But I am ashamed to say that although I think the things I write are pretty good, compared with the talented men and women in the literary club, I will soon stop writing and take on the role of editor.At that time, it was not as convenient as it is now. We used steel plates and pens to copy word by word for our social magazine, and then printed it out with ink.Up to now, I can still clearly recall the aroma of that ink.

Although in the literary club, I found that my talent for literary creation was limited, but soon I discovered a place where I was better at, and that was writing reports.In the third year of junior high school, the "Youth Daily" in Shanghai decided to form a journalist group for middle school students, so I signed up.When I was studying, I was a courageous person, or I should say a very confident person, and I would try anything.If one doesn't work out, I immediately start trying another.At that time, there were too many choices, so I never had time to blame myself or others.As a result, I was hired. I think the big reason is that I came from a famous middle school, and at that time, there were not too many people who applied. Being a reporter was my dream since I was a child, but I never thought that I would realize it in middle school, even though I was only a student reporter.At that time, the student reporters were also very busy. Every week, in addition to our own school, we had to go to different schools to cover things that happened around us, and then every weekend, we went to the old-fashioned bungalow of the Youth Daily , Listen to those official reporters and editors to teach us experience.During the winter and summer vacations, I went to the newspaper office almost every day to watch them select manuscripts, edit manuscripts, and typesetting. Many years later, I opened a piece of "Youth Daily" that others had saved for me for a long time. It was a group photo of our first batch of student reporters.It's not the traditional group photo of standing, but the one where everyone chats while walking and is captured by the photographer.Looking at the people inside, most of them I can't remember their names, but there are also quite a few of them, like me, who left campus and entered the journalism industry. My first public speaking was in middle school and it was in English.It was to participate in the school's English speech contest, and I won the third prize.Because we are in Shanghai, we have been learning English since the first grade of primary school.In middle school, because it is a national key point, we did not use the unified teaching materials of the Ministry of Education from the beginning. From the first day of junior high school, the school began to use new concept English. New concept English, in addition to teaching us English words, the content and dialogue of the text also let us understand many Westerners' way of thinking, cultural background and the way people communicate with each other.What impressed me the most was the first lesson of the second volume. A couple was making love to each other in a movie theater. When they were accused by others, the man said: this is our private conversation.It was this lesson that made me hear the word "privacy" for the first time. Because of the teacher's explanation, I also understood what is called the right to privacy, and this is one of the basic rights of everyone. Speaking of English, there is a very famous English Corner in Shanghai's People's Park. On Sundays, many people gather there spontaneously to talk to each other in English.I only went there once, and I never went there again, because I felt that everyone came and went with the same words, and I thought it was a bit funny for Chinese to speak English with Chinese.Until now, if I am facing a Chinese who can speak Chinese, I am absolutely unwilling to use English to have a conversation. At most, there are some English words in the speech. When I was about to graduate from high school, because I was going to study in the United States, I went to the TOEFL school outside to raid those test questions, and I also prepared for the college entrance examination.In the rest of the time, I started to read a lot of philosophy books.Like "Totem", "The Third Wave", and Rousseau's.Most of them didn't understand, and the more they didn't understand, the more they hoped to understand. This is also a very important reason why I finally applied for the Department of Philosophy. In the four years of college, I didn't read as many books as I did in middle school, and I spent my time listening to various lectures.At that time, when I came to the university to give speeches, I had never been treated like a star, and all I met were the challenging expressions from the audience.There are many kinds of lectures, including art, philosophy, and business management. I will listen to them. I think listening to people who are smarter and more experienced than me is really better than reading a book that I can’t understand at all. Although philosophy was my first choice, when I was in college, I always felt that passing the professional exams was enough, unless it was those I was particularly interested in.As a result, ethics and logic are my best exams, because I like them, and others, such as history of philosophy, political economy, etc., I always just pass. But I am not in a hurry. I think that the purpose of choosing the Department of Philosophy is to exercise my brain and learn how to think for myself, which cannot be learned by relying on exams. About learning (3) In addition to the courses in this department, I often go to listen to the courses of other departments, especially the courses of the two departments of international politics and world economics.Maybe it's because I feel that many courses in these two departments are more practical and new. But until now, I still have a very regretful place, that is, I have not been able to use the time in college to learn a foreign language.I studied Japanese for one year in elementary school, one semester in middle school, and one month in college, but I didn’t learn anything because I couldn’t persevere.I know there is a psychological reason, because I am more resistant to Japanese, but the more important reason is my lack of perseverance.Now, as a reporter, every time I go abroad, I think, if I can speak the local language, it will be much easier for me to interview, instead of relying on translators like now.But if there is a problem with the level of translation, then I must report under such a misguided situation, so the audience will also be misled by me without my knowledge.And this is the last thing I want to see. In fact, university study is not so targeted, especially liberal arts.Most of the time, what you learn is not directly related to your occupation.After work, learning becomes very purposeful.I started my first master's degree in 1997 - mass communication.I chose this major because I started working in a TV station in Hong Kong.I think, after all, I am not studying journalism as an undergraduate, so when I am engaged in this industry, it is necessary to systematically understand the profession I am engaged in theoretically, and at the same time increase my professional knowledge and skills, so that my competitiveness can be improved. can improve. My second master's degree is international relations. I chose this major because after four or five years of front-line interview work, I found that I started to circle around many issues. I couldn't go deeper and couldn't see the deeper layers thing.So I decided to keep reading.But I told the teacher from the first day of class that I am studying this time for a better job. If it is because of work, I will sacrifice the time for class.Because of this, my course has been postponed twice. Many times I would think, forget it, I am too tired, and I don’t know if I can persist to the end.But if you think about it again, if you stick to it, it will be a happy thing to get a degree. The most important thing is that you can force yourself to read more books because you want to study. For a group of people, reading and reading is very important, because a reporter is a profession that is required to understand everything, and this requires long-term accumulation. After work, everyone has a lot of opportunities to learn. My experience is to compare yourself with others, because only with comparison can you make progress. If you always compare yourself with yourself, your ability to judge will be greatly reduced. Around us, our friends, or those who are merely nodding acquaintances, there is no shortage of talented people.Talking to such people a lot, listening to them have their point of view, debating if you can, is a way to learn. People need to learn, because only by continuous learning can they know what the world will develop into, and enable themselves to master those advanced technologies that are constantly updated, so that talents can make progress and maintain their competitiveness. But learning is not something superficial. It seems that it is very popular to go to a famous university abroad for further study. In just two weeks, I always think that for those who have not yet laid a good foundation in English, two weeks is a good time. , what can be learned? Learning is a process, a process in which you can truly gain something. If you ask me now, what is the most regrettable thing in the study period.I will say that I regret that I didn't study more seriously when I was in school. If I read more seriously in school, then after work, I will not have the regrets I have now, and I can save time and improve my work. Efficiency, so as to face more opportunities.