i paid attention to the ceo's dialogue today for the first time in my life. thank God.

i found it a bit odd, when he said that "hc students should be carrying themselves with pride", and after that, he was saying that we shouldn't be sleeping when he talks. maybe we have different definitions of pride?

ok. the dictionary says that pride refers to the feeling of pleasure or satisfaction which one gets from doing something well. so in other words, if we are satisfied, we don't have to improve more. if that's the case, it also branches out to meaning that we don't have to listen to people who are better than us, if we're so full of pride.

and there he goes, saying that we sleep when he talks. doesn't that show our pride in ourselves?

look, i'm not justifying people who sleep. hey, if i can stay awake, so should everyone else. i'm just deconstructing his argument, and what he says afterwards, and they seem to contradict one another.

i myself think that instead of carrying ourselves with pride, i think we should be carrying ourselves with humility.

but it all boils down to how we define pride. some people think of it as having self-belief, self-esteem, self-this, self-that. so we end up becoming so full of ourselves. no wonder we all become arrogant. i myself believe [i'm largely affected by my faith] that if you have pride, all pride should be in the Lord. hey, without Him, i am nothing. Christian. take away "Christ", you get 'ian'- i am nothing.

on the other hand, humility, to a lot of people, seems to be like, when you succeed, you don't take any credit, and just say "no lah, not really lah, it wasn't that difficult lah...". that's just being stupid. humility, to me, is to think nothing of yourself, and give all the credit to the Lord. that's different from not taking the credit and not giving to anyone else who rightfully deserves it.

the point of the matter is, a lot of people don't have pride without becoming arrogant. if you can show me 1 person who takes pride in him/herself and yet is not arrogant, i'll show you 100 people who are both. how can you expect people to listen to you if you want them to be so full of themselves?


---


the other interesting sentence the ceo mentioned today was that it's good to have a suitable amount of stress to push ourselves to work harder, but too much stress ain't good for you.

how do you define 'suitable amount'? oh, oh, i know! everyone has a different 'suitable amount'! - not helping... i don't think we'll ever know how much stress we need. firstly because we can't 'quantify' stress. secondly, if we think we have enough stress, it's actually too much, because we already feel it. analogy: you never know when you have eaten enough until you feel full. but then, by then you are already too full.

i understand his reasoning. without stress, we won't feel the need to study hard for our promos, tests, assessments, etc.

but i say that if you take away the stress, you take away all pressure on them to study, and they'll do even better. i know it sounds radical, but have we entertained the thought that if one day, there's no stress for us to study at all, we'll all become much better motivated students? i daresay that the only thing making us study now is for us to prepare for exams and more exams.

so you might argue, "then if we take away exams, you wouldn't study!" i don't agree. the thing is, if you take away stress from studying, students may at first play play play and play more. but sooner or later (probably later, then,) they'll start to realise that playing all day long isn't that much fun after all, and the pleasures of studying (as crooked as it might sound) are actually much more enjoyable than the pleasures of dota and whatnot.

the only explanation i see why so many students are still hooked to one hobby or another, be it dota or going out, is because they see so much stress in their studies that they use these activities to escape the pressures and live in a much more 'pleasant' world, in a sense. if you take away stress from their studying, they won't see the need for these hobbies anymore, and they'll be able to study more effectively. doing these activies satisfies an individual need to do what they want to. the reason why this reason exists is because they're not enjoying what they're doing now - studying. and that's because stress comes with studying.

so i say, take away stress, and you have better students.

i'm not saying i'm above these activities, or i don't play games, or whatnot. in fact, i still do, precisely because i still feel stress from schoolwork. heck, even blogging seems to relieve stress. this totally illustrates my point that take away stress, and you get great students! (because they won't be distracted by stuff they do to remove their own stress)



heh. all this ranting over something the ceo said. and half the student body wasn't even listening.