“When someone makes a decision, he is really diving into a strong current that will carry him to places he had never dreamed of when he first made the decision.” – The Alchemist by Paolo Coehlo
Having committed myself to another semester of studying Mandarin up at Tsinghua comes with a lot of caveats. Foremost of which is, being willing to work and study at the same time.
I was lucky enough to be able to avoid such an arrangement when I first arrived in Beijing. My savings allowed me a somewhat carefree lifestyle as a full-time student. No need to work and earn. Now, however, I realize that not having an income can be unsettling.
This week gave me a preview of what life was going to be like as a “working student.”
Because I now work part time for Live the Language Mandarin School, one of my “privileges” is that I get private one-on-one classes. My friend Andreas, who owns LtL, insisted upon it. Two hours of lessons for the two days that the head teacher was available. Being the Mandarin geek that I am, I of course, endeavored to preview the chapters I wanted to study (I had early on decided I wanted to finish one of our class textbooks) and even did homework that my lao shi assigned.
Cool.
However, I also agreed to take on an assignment from Steven Schwankert, owner of Beijing’s one and only dive shop, editing the references he was using for his upcoming book, ‘The Real Poseidon Adventure’ (due for release in late 2010). The work turned out to be a lot more laborious than I thought, demanding quite a bit of research and not just the cut-and-paste job Steven had used to sell me the project.
As if that wasn’t enough, this week was enrollment time up at the university. And in China, this meant practically half a day spent getting medical check ups, arguing with the staff about my student card and fixing visa documents. On top of this, we are having placement exams to gauge which class we all end up in for the coming semester.
By Wednesday, I was stressed. I had just attended another “networking” event as part of my Student Adviser duties at LtL. And another one was on the calendar for later in the week. I had classes in the morning while in the afternoon, I would park myself alongside Steven at Union Bar & Grille where we would be pounding away on our respective Macs as notable members of the Beijing expat circle dropped by to pay their respects to one of Beijing’s longest-staying foreign residents (today it was Kaiser Kuo of the Beijinger and Damien Leloup, general manager of the Liaoning Dinosaur Museum…). Initially, he had told me our deadline was this coming Sunday. And having been trained in Advertising all my life, I took this to mean that I had to submit all the chapters he had sent to me for vetting by Saturday night at the latest.
And so it was that on Wednesday night, after having spent more than two hours studying and another six hours working with Steven on his book, I found myself still plugging away at the work till 3 in the morning, in anticipation of the busier days ahead.
Why? Because there were social calls to take as well.
Filip, a Polish student from New York and one of our first LtL students was leaving for Shanghai and wanted one last hurrah with all the cool people he met in Beijing. And Renee, a 101-K classmate at Tsinghua, had suddenly decided to forfeit her second semester to take a job in HongKong and wanted a farewell bash as well.
How did I manage all of that?
I didn’t.
I woke up at 9 o’clock on Thursday after my all-nighter working on Steven’s book with that sick feeling of not having slept enough. I had to cancel my Mandarin class. I focused all my energy on getting Schwankert’s notes out and cleared away in time for the Sunday deadline. I made it to the second networking event and glad I had more than enough energy to make some quality connections (even made a new friend I believe…), and even managed a conversation or two with Chinese folk I met.
But I had to miss Renee’s farewell dinner tonight.
Fortunately, in between munching on Union Bar’s awesome homemade potato chips, nachos and mushrooms in cream cheese (yum), Steven told me our deadline had been moved to Wednesday. I could suddenly breathe again.
And so, after I got home tonight I had time to reflect on the last few days and realized, I had to write about all this. Because as hectic and demanding as life in Beijing can be, I have to say, it’s also getting more and more interesting. I’ve never had this much variety in terms of the things I did before or the people that I’ve met. And I think I’ve met a lot more people in the last week alone than in my entire 5 months in Beijing. And everyone has their own struggles and stories. It’s really quite inspiring.
I could feel disappointed in myself for the way I tend to scatter my energies doing a lot of things (and we haven’t even thrown Ultimate Frisbee into the mix!) and dropping the ball in some aspects of my life. But I guess this week gave me a good gauge of how I have to conduct myself if I want to balance it with studying and earning a decent wage at the same time. While Mandarin will always be my first love and priority, I know that I also need to balance it with other things, not just because I need to, but because the variety will also be good.
A good friend of mine once told me it’s hard to sustain things intensely for too long. And perhaps that’s true. Eventually, life comes calling. For me, that means just picking at most two things I could successfully divide my time into and intensely focus on. Then maybe, life won’t be that much of a struggle to keep up with at all.
Only one way to find out!
Go, grow & glow. 