It was a sweltering Monday morning. I stepped into the classroom, feeling completely at lost. I did not know anyone inside. The teacher greeted me before she pointed to a place for me to sit. Soon, the class began. The teacher started talking passionately about whatever the materials shown on the slides, but I had no clue what she was talking about: I did not learn the language, English, used here.
It was the year 2006, I had just moved from a small town on the Southern Coast of China to Singapore to study in the third grade, and I was completely disoriented. I only knew basic alphabets and, perhaps, the word “apple”. Yet, every single subject in my new school was now taught in English, which meant that I had to learn how to both read and write English to survive.
For a ten-year-old, I felt completely defeated in this scary new world. Despite my proficiency in the mathematics and the sciences, I could not comprehend the problem sets in these subjects to begin with, let alone excelling in them. Needless to say, I had been constantly failing my tests and exams. To make matter worse, most of the students here spoke little of my mother tongue. I could not maintain a conversation with them for the most part - I felt lonely.
However tough the initial experiences were, things soon turned around. Being in an environment where my mother tongue had little use was like learning how to swim in the deep part of the pool – I had no choice but to learn the ropes quickly. And at the same time, I had plenty of opportunities to improve myself in such an immersive space for language acquisition. By listening during lessons and conversations, I expanded vocabularies steadily; making small talks with any person around me improved my ability in speaking the language; being forced to study all my subjects in English drastically built up my understanding of the written form. Most importantly, I kept going.
Half a year later, I found myself happily and completely immersed in this once unnerving environment. I made many good friends and took up extra-curricular activities in school that I enjoyed. The acquisition of a new language opened the gate to a whole new world of culture and experiences I could never have imagined.
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As I carefully moved the silver tip of the scarlet magnet towards a beaker of coffee bean waste, my heart started to pound. It was the fruit of two months spent in the acidic-scented lab; the culmination of past failed attempts; the moment of truth. As my hyper-attentiveness slowed the motion, the shredded bean swam, millimeter by millimeter, toward the magnet. It eventually and wholesomely stuck there. “I did it!” I thought to myself as my excitement blushed my face.
It was the culmination of a yearlong research in high school. I had just developed a method to use magnetic coffee bean waste as an environmentally friendly and efficient way of removing heavy-metal ions from contaminated water bodies. But the whole process was more challenging than I had ever imagined. The knowledge we gained from high school science courses were barely scratching the surface of the world of scientific discoveries. And, we mostly focused on acquiring textbook knowledge while neglecting the scientific experimental practices. I had to learn everything in the lab from the start.
Fortunately, I had an amazing community of supportive peers, lab staff, and mentors in my lab. Whenever I had a question how to carry out a certain procedure, I could just turn around and ask someone beside me. My mentors were there to provide guidance on how to proceed or get around obstacles. In this safe space where I could receive constant guidance and immediate feedback, my growth as a lab researcher was exponential.
At the same time, I was glad I did this early in my high school years, because it led me to the learning of the language of experimental science (or the key to surviving in a research lab) — balancing a centrifuge, using a rotary evaporator, performing high-performance liquid chromatography, and most importantly, handling 5-molar hydrochloric acid without killing myself. I even learned how to do atomic absorption spectroscopy in my free time just by watching other project groups. I could confidently say that I am no longer the clueless newcomer to the lab who was too afraid to touch any expensive equipment.
****
“Control point, this is Juliet 10. Message over.” “Current status: Whiskey Low, Mike Low (Water low, morale low). Request permission to know our coordinates.” After a few moments of silence, an emotionless “negative” from the radio kicked us right back into our reality: a detail of seven trainees left stranded in the middle of a foreign jungle.
It was a 3-day unsupervised navigation exercise as a part of our final test. Our navigator, Jian Qing, who was keen on beating other details, insisted that we take the untrodden path through the bushes to the waypoint. Despite my skepticism, the team was convinced, and soon we found ourselves on a gloomy trek filled with suffocating bushes and dense canopies — we were lost. Frustration and despondency soon grew within us. In exasperation, we seek help from our instructors, but clearly, the attempt was in vain. As we sat down after a few hours of futile effort, I realized that the sky was turning dark. Though I was defeated and wanting to give up, I knew we had to do something before the light disappeared. But little did I know that Jian Qing’s shoulder decided to give in to the load right there and then. The rest of us had to carry all his equipment and evacuate him to the control point. While carrying an extra field pack, I used the machete to cut as many obstacles in our way as possible so that we would not deviate from our direction. Fortunately, the instructors finally decided to assist us for the evacuation and guided us on the correct way out.
The exercise served to test my ability to find my way in the jungle. But it also serves as a key reminder of the uniqueness of the experience I gained from the military.
The amount of discipline and physical toughness that is required of a soldier was too foreign for an ordinary 18-year-old like me. The incessant admonition from our drill instructors for every tiny mistake that we made; the 32-klick march through the night with our full battle order; the rainy nights we spent in our muddy shell scrape refusing to close our eyes for fear of a turnout. Army has been the toughest experience of my life so far, but it is also the reason that I learned valuable lessons. As a trainee in the sergeant school, I learned that one can never ever do enough. No matter how many hours we spent cleaning the bunk, no matter how neatly packed our equipment were, no matter how carbon-free our weapons were, our instructors were never satisfied. It was not because we were incompetent or that we lacked effort, but because we could always do better. As our sergeant major put it, “when you are on the battlefield, you will never think that you have done enough to keep yourself alive.”
All of these lessons were not just applicable to the military life. While the “language” of the army I learnt to survive in this environment was completely different from that of the civilian life, I realized it could, however, easily be translated to the “language” of life. The understanding of what it means to have discipline and empathy could carry me further towards living a fulfilling life.
Reflection:
In this experience, I found that the most significant issue that arose was coming up with the overarching theme that would tie the three narratives together. While all the three stories contain elements related to the acquisition of language and describe how different environmental factors affected the way I acquired the different “languages” in the stories, it was not simple task to link all of them together because they were vastly different experiences and unique in their own ways. It would not feel right and genuine to artificially or forcefully modify the stories just to fit a theme that I cannot personally relate those stories to.
Therefore, it was a great challenge for me to conceptualize a way to present all the stories in unity to convey a personal, heart-felt message. But after a few edits based on comments from my peers, I was finally satisfied with the essay that provides a candid narrative of the significant events in my life.
Wong Kin
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