A Student Essay: Lost and Learned

So I haven't posted much, because I’m grading papers... which is actually fun.  The students are quite amazing.  They are good in English and describe lives that are so different from what our kids are subjected to.  Most have been away at boarding school, or grew up with grandparents, so have a complex relationship with their parents.  Most are only children. I'm planning on bringing out themes on issues that they talk about, when I can get out from under the pile of papers that I'm currently grading.

However, to prepare you, I give you the following paper by one of my students, Lily.

The assignment was to write a narrative essay on something "Lost but Learned."  I received all sorts of interesting topics.  Many, many wrote about lost friends.  These are students who had close childhood friends in grammar school and had to leave them behind when they either went to study abroad or at a boarding school.  They write about that loss in terms of friends, or sometimes the loss of parental love.

Lily, however, took a different tact. She described an exercise in which she was required to participate,  It was called "Urban Survival Adventure."   Basically it seems as though she was dropped in a city with a group of friends,and they had to figure out how to survive.  The essay is virtually a game plan for how to be a good capitalist.  Go figure!

Here is the essay in its entirety:

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Lily’s essay:  Lost and learned

I used to be a shy girl, who dared not to speak loudly in the presence of strangers. Though my mom has told me many times to speak louder when I was greeting others, I just couldn’t open myself. There seems to be an invisible wall between me and strangers, and I always linger over in my area, daring not cross the dividing line. However, an activity greatly changed me. I lost my shyness.

During National Day holiday, I joined an activity named Urban Survive Challenge, which requires us to earn money under the circumstance that all of our personal stuff is collected but only left a set of sounding equipment. We have to find out a way to earn money and rely on ourselves to survive within 12 hours.

 After the task was assigned, our group quickly began to think about how to survive. After a hot discussion, we decided to stock with some goods first, and use our first capital to invest more goods.

On the square an elderly woman was selling national flags. We approached her, asking whether she could give us some flags so that we could help her sell them. She looked at us, hesitated and full of suspect in her eyes.

Seeing the unfavorable situation, our captain quickly explained, “We are taking part in a program, all of our personal stuff was collected, and we need to earn money on our own. If you can give us some flags, we can help you sell them, in the meanwhile, you can also get some profit. So, could you…”

“Come, come, where can I find you, why should I trust you…” The old lady interrupted.

“We can pledge our sounding equipment here. We can appoint a certain place to meet…”

“Go and find another person, I won’t give you.” She waved her hand and refused us, “what if you leave carrying all my flags secretly, where I should find you…” She whispered.

“We said that we can…” our captain insisted, hadn’t finished his word, the old lady had gone.

“Let’s go and find another person.” We said in a kind of depressed tone.

We came to a convenience store, and asked the owner of the store, only received the same response. Two continued failure depressed us a lot. When we came in front of the third store, our captain went into it, the rest of us just stood outside the store, waiting for anther refusal and thinking other ways, because two previous attempts had indicated that seldom strangers would trust us.

After three minutes, our captain still didn’t come out, so we went into the store to see what was going on. The owner of the store should accept our plea! This success lighted every member’s hope.

After stocked three boxes of bottled water, we divided into three groups to sell. I together with another two partners were divided into one group. The only boy carried the box of water. Previously, we  depended on our captain, but now we could only rely on ourselves. Walking along the street, though some passers-by watched us strangely, none of us advertised to them, but carried the bottled water and kept walking, hoping to find a noisy place where had a large population and sell bottled water there.

About ten minutes passed, we still didn’t have any development. A girl finally couldn’t stand our behavior anymore. She stopped us and said, “We can’t just walk. We need to take action. We have walked about one kilometer, but we haven’t sold out one bottle of water. We need to speak out to let others know what we are doing. “

“What we are doing now is to find a noisy place where has a large population so that bottled water is more easily to sell.” I argued.

“Why must we find a noisy place? We can sell along the road. Till we find a noisy place, we must have lost much time and potential opportunity. The root reason is that we dare not speak out. We need to put aside our shyness, and approach to passers-by to let them know what we’re doing, but not just keep walking.” She insisted her stance firmly.

After a short period of silence, we agreed. After all, her words made a sense. It was our shyness that hindered us from selling out water. We needed to put aside our shyness and took the first step. 

However, looking at the passers-by who were in a hurry, a fear of losing face instinctively stopped me from opening my mouth and raising my voice in the presence of strangers.” How should I speak to them? Our water is 3 yuan more expensive than the average price in the market, why should they buy our water” I wondered. Therefore, I followed the girl to see how she would speak to strangers.

“Hello, do you need some water? We are taking part in an activity, and we will use our money…” They didn't  wait for the girl finished her sentence, the passer-by had left. However, the girl didn’t get depressed, but went on to another passer-by. The boy carrying the box, also went forward to advertise to strangers.

Everyone is not born to be outgoing; everyone fears to lose face. Since they put aside their shyness and took a great risk of losing face to approach to strangers, there was no reason for me to behave reservedly.

“Excuse me, do you need some water? We are taking part in…”

“No, thank you.” Most of the passers-by answered coldly, usually with a waving gesture.

Some people listened to all my words but also refused. At first, I felt kind of depressed and felt an urge to cry when I received refusals one after another. But seeing my two partners were trying hard, kept being refused but kept trying, I told myself to insist.

Gradually, some people agreed to buy my water, some people even tapped my shoulder and encouraged us. In the wave of refusal, these little encouragement seem extremely precious and powerful.

              Just in one morning, our whole group had sold two boxes of bottled water and earned about 100 yuan. In the afternoon, we stocked some national flags and stickers, stood on the square peddling. Everyone seemed having got rid of his/her shyness, aimed at advertising goods and earn money. Finally, we earned 500 yuan in total, and we used part of it to buy breakfast and water for cleaning workers.

              Through this activity, I lost my shyness, like butterfly lost its cocoon, flying freely and bravely. There’s nothing to be afraid of to speak to strangers. That hinders us is not strangers but our inner side, we should take our first step and open ourselves to the outside world bravely.