9 years??

Begin preparing for the interview. I can't believe that it was already 9 years ago when I first entered university. Couldn't help but being a bit nostalgic.

I still feel like my own education is still very far from being complete. I've accumulated a bit of knowledge, but I'm still looking for ways to really put them in good use. Now, I really regret a bit about my UG life. I should have explored more then. I just couldn't understand why I was so disengaged to real-life stuff until I was 23. Wasted a grand total of 4 years.

Oh, I have to correct myself. Actually, I understand the reason why my life practically started when I was 23. That was the first time I have ever lived away from both home and school. I had rent my own flat for the first time in my life.

The very first habit that I developed since I had my own place was reading, and I owed this habit to a book by (Prof.) Ovid Tzeng. The title of that book included a rhetoric, to incite readers to use their evolving brains to understand how the brain evolved. That was one of the most curious sentences I had come across until then, and it attracted my attention right away. The book wasn't of much use in terms of content, but it started my habit of going to the bookstore.

And then, I met the author that really got me and my English going. His name is Frank McCourt. He had written a trilogy of self-biography, the first on his childhood in Ireland, the second about his early years of immigrating from Ireland to the US, and the third on his life as a teacher. This is the first time I've read a man's life in such a complete manner, and it drove me to keep thinking about life. Through his books, I have come across quite a number of excellent novels, and I read on. He was why I suddenly decided to try translation, as an escape route from the mess I have had with physics.

Then, we know what happened next -- I met my third hero, the one who almost "saved" my life -- in a translation course. I came across his name in Ovid Tzeng's book, that's why I came to his class, just for the fun of it. Who would have thought taking a translation course taught by a seventy-something-year-old linguist would get you a chance to go back to science? Life is just too crazy and unpredictable. Sometimes, you just need the courage to try new stuff, but above all -- you need LUCK. You need luck to be able to get real help. I really can't say enough how much I owe to Prof. Wang, to be honest. When I thought of him, I thought about the numerous encouraging words he had said to me. Justified or not, those words really have helped me stand firm on the ground again and recover from a total lack of self-confidence in terms of doing academic stuff.

3 more years have past, and I'm 27 going on 28. Was it really fast. Am I ready to begin contributing to this thing called "education"? How are you going to handle it when you didn't have a complete education yourself?

I wonder. I hope this hall tutorship thing will help me out. I see this as one of the more "significant" ways to complete my own education. Whether I can continue to do research or be a professor one day (which I strongly doubt), actually, are of secondary importance to me. When you have the confidence in yourself, you can do anything, whether at university or elsewhere. When you have the confidence, you can see through the mist surrounding you, and find your own path. Be able to laugh off everything else that seems almost ridiculous, and live on. I hope I'll be there one day~~ to have this "internal peace" and "external freedom".