memoryloot

As young as 5 years old, I remembered how embarassed I was to not know a lick of English when I first started going to school. I was so embarassed that I had the great idea of following my friend who was ditching school and running back to his home on the first day of school. Boy did I get it when my dad found out! I have to say that was the last time I ran away from anything.

Growing up Chinese you were never good enough or smart enough to the liking of your parents. Its some kinda of reverse psychology in which they constantly bombard you with criticism and never tell you that you were doing good. They would rather see the proof from your teacher or from your report cards. Even straight A’s didn’t help. “What? You got an A-? What’s wrong with you? Why didn’t you get an A+” Unlike many Chinese parents, my parents never boast about me or even my sister. When they used to talk to their friends about me and my sister, we were never regarded so highly. We’re always a work in progress. It was not until recently where I see a glimmer of how proud my parents really are. “They’re good kids. They do whatever they want.”

Outside of home, I tried very hard to get good grades and be a good student, son, and friend. But many times I am shunned for other weaknesses. Nothing I had control over at the time. I remember growing up in junior high and had people make fun of my shoes. I had Pro-Wings. For those of you who don’t remember, these were the shoes that had plastic soles and was sold in Payless Shoe Source. While all the cool kids wore their Air Jordans 3, I had a pair of shitty shoes. I wanted so badly to have a pair of Air Jordans that I bought a pair about 2 years ago. No it did not redeem the pain and embarassment I had endured for 3 years of my young life, but it is one of those moments where I can say that I conquered something. Maybe this explains why I am so driven to become financially comfortable to the point where owning Air Jordans didn’t really matter. I mean now I can buy as much shoes as I want, but I don’t and I choose not to. I control my destiny and don’t need anybody else telling me how to live my life.

In my first year of college, I was told I needed to take an ESL english course. You can imagine how disappointed I was when I first heard of this. I mean I was a B+ student in high school in which I thought I had a good English background. I mean I spoke to my friends in English, I’ve studied 4 years of English at a very demanding high school. Was I really that stupid that I need to be retrained in the English language? Fortunately, this setback was a blessing in disguise. A couple of weeks ago I came across some papers I had written in the early years of college and decided to read what I wrote. It was the most incoherent piece of work I’ve ever written. I’m glad I was retrained in this skill and gradually learned how to communicate better through writing. Obviously this is still a work in progress, but I’d have to say I’ve come a long way. This blog is the proof in my pudding.

Today I realized that I have another setback that I must conquer. This was realized while trying to demo my application to another group’s VP and trying to explain why we needed a request to fix a bug in our system. I had a difficult time trying to express my thoughts eloquently. At times I believe I think a couple of steps faster than I talk and as a result I have to pause to gather up my thoughts to speak. My mind is constantly racing much faster and I can’t organize my thoughts very well and would get caught in the “Ums” and “Ahs” of a point. I would feel myself flush with embarassment and throwing looks of “HELP!” to my supervisor in hopes of getting bailed out. Most of the time that works, but today I had nobody so I pretty much bullshitted my way out of it. What’s even worse is that they knew I did as well. I need to be more prepared when speaking or presenting to people. So today I want to take the first step in realizing that I have a problem and I need to be aware and most of all prepared for ALL discussions whether it being small or big. The only common thing with this new issue and previous ones is that I will need time for me to realize that I’ve moved pass this problem and finally gain the control of my speaking skills without ever feeling embarassed. I feel its a good thing to admit your weaknesses and to do something about it. Its this constant need to better yourself which should drive your motivation to constantly improve your current situation. Never be stagnant and feel sorry for yourself.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 30th, 2006 at 12:00 am and is filed under Work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.