Recently, there are several changes in my career that allow me some time to look back on the previous years and prepare myself for the next move.
Last year, I got a new exciting job which my task is to guide the inexperienced apprentices into real-life working environment. Each time after the three-month apprenticeship ended, I always figured out something interesting about the time before graduation. On the occasion of this time break-up, I’m typing this to my students, the guys who often call me “Dad” in fun.
STOP WASTING TIME
Do you want to regretfully look back on your past and your wasted youth when you turn old and shaky? I do not. I want to be an old man with thousands of stories to tell my grandchildren. So that they will understand how massive and worth living this world is.
Stop crying over a broken relationship that happened months ago or shutting yourself in to clickety-clack your youth regrets sorrowfully. Time will not come back tomorrow and will not make any profit. Do you really want to invest your time to all the shows on Netfix?
I don’t hope you to do something great, just spend some time to know more about things you like, attend some voluntary work to cultivate your social skills, apply for an apprenticeship to know the reality of a working life out there. If you think you like your current job and it provides you money, congratulations! There are either well-paid or low-paid jobs, mainly it depends on how good you are.
Mr. A has a job in IT which is well-paid and seems effortless. It’s not because of the job itself, but because he has chosen studying IT over wasting time on weekends for years with a low income which was just enough to pay house rent. Be patient with the job you’re doing, because “there’s nothing good but fast and easy at the same time.”
When comparing yourself to another, you are wasting your time which should have been used to increase your values instead. Use that energy for things you like to do. And truly do it now.
READ
A Vietnamese person, on average, read fewer than a book each year. And it’s certainly possible for you to stay out of the crowd.
Why must we read? Reading won’t guarantee your success but successful people do read frequently. There's no need for statistics or evidence from them, simply because I saw it from life.
Mostly people stop learning when they leave university. But to me, learning has just begun after graduation. That’s when no one tells you what to read, to learn, you can freely make the decisions. Isn’t it much more interesting? Start with subjects you’re fond of and gradually expand to others, religion, philosophy, music and astronomy for instances. Knowledge is always useful, one way or another.
People tend to like those who are like them. When you’re well versed, chances you and a stranger have same thinking or knowledge about a subjects will be much higher. When attending a big party, you can talk about autos with a garage man, about music with a communications director. If you say things logically and have evidence to back them up, although you’re just 20, no one will see you as a child.
When the development of cells and neurons of our brain reach their peaks, our brain will start to degenerate. Each second, we lose 32.000 neurons, which means 1.9 million neurons every minute. Find a way to recreate our brain every day, every hour, and cram it with its food – knowledge.
Nikki Nguyễn
STEP OUTSIDE THE COMFORT ZONE
Dare to do things that scare you when you’re still young. Try travelling alone, sharing your room with a foreign friend on Couchsurfing or applying for some one-year working holidays in Australia. Forget all the social expectations for now and assess yourself base on your own standards before trying to reach others’. People are always limited in their own narrow perspective on life. You need to broaden it, accept others’ differences and realize how small the 510.1 million km2 area you’re standing in. Where have you been to?
Our instinctive fear is like a defense mechanism. It helped our ancestors avoid perils and dangerous places. But in this modern world, fear sometimes prevents us from having worthy experience. Personally, I think fear is like a thin line. My heart beats were so fast and my legs were as if about to escape just before I stepped up to have my first MMA fight. At the moment of the start announcement, everything seemed to happen so slowly. It turned out not as scary as I thought. The biggest fear was in my head, in the childhood of a bullied boy during secondary school.
The feelings of overcoming fear was so special, and I hope you’ll feel it too.
Women are always attracted by knowledgeable men. If you’re fond of a woman, tell her about places you have visited and interesting things you’ve done. Make her gasp in amazement and attentively listen to you telling her about the differences between the Sunni and Shiite religions, about the great unnoticed Greenland on the map or about the unique habitat of the Wasabi plant.
Don’t pursue a woman. Live an interesting life and make her want to live it with you.
STOP BLAMING
Guess some of you may laugh when it comes to this point, and say I’m damn theoretical. You wanna travel, pick up your pack and go. Wanna scholarship, fingers snap and you have it. Wanna be an apprentice, you’ll be accepted for sure. But that’s not how life functions.
The “blaming” disease will break out when it comes to difficulties. The blame is on your parents, calamities, on the stupid group mate, the noisy neighbors, etc.
Have you ever think it was “YOU” to blame for?
You want to travel overseas but your family cannot afford it. Is it your parents’ fault? Or is that you haven’t “want” it enough to search for 462 visa which provides 200 slots from Autralian government each year?
Passing the buck and blaming others for their tough luck are infectious disease of cowards. It’s not only fresh grads that are infected of this disease but anyone, at any age. Keep in mind that you are not the patient of everyone. It’s just you who runs away from your responsibilities.
When there is a will, there is a way.
Vocabulary and phrases learned:
look back on: hồi tưởng lại
on the occasion of: nhân dịp
break-up(n): cuộc chia tay
(do sth) in fun: cho vui
a job in IT: công việc làm IT
be well versed: be knowledgeable
cram (v): nhồi nhét
kì vọng của xã hội: social expectations
narrow perspective on life: cái nhìn/thế giới quan hạn hẹp
defense mechanism: cơ chế tự bảo vệ
announce the start: hô bắt đầu
gasp in amazement
snap fingers: búng tay
pass the buck: đổ thừa
run away from one’s responsibilities/duties = abrogate one’s responsibilities/duties : trốn tránh trách nhiệm
