14 Epiphanies Coming to A Beijing University's Graduate

 14 Epiphanies Coming to A Beijing University Graduate 

 1. I started working at a very small company. There were two other newcomers who were from colleges not as renowned as Beijing University (BJU is top two university in China) joining in at that time. Whenever the phone was ringing, always I was the one to go to answer, while my colleagues stayed motionless. Afterward, it became a routine that they waited until I went to pick up the phone since I could not bear it for longer. Every workday I had to check whether the litter basket was full and dump the garbage, while others, say, veterans or novices, need not to throw the garbage.

2. The work situation in China is very hard for a new graduate. Where in large enterprises, they might be able to afford time and money for green hands’ training and bear the losses bringing about by novices who are unfamiliar with their work. But mostly we are in small companies, where bosses are unwilling or unable to endure such losses, therefore, when they are choosing between a skilled junior college graduate and a BJU graduate, they would prefer the former.

3. Among Zhongguanchun, Haidian District and Beijing municipality, there is a large, cheap talent market, which predetermines that we are metals, not gold. In this environment, graduates are cheap laborers and a new graduate for a businessman is the same as what a migrant worker is in a construction contractor’s eyes, especially in the profit-oriented small companies. So, for a new graduate, first and foremost, becoming a skilled worker counts for much more.

4. When you are in BJU, enjoy self-respect thoroughly. Someone believes that it takes 3 years for a graduate to evolve into an obedient dog when he is a postgraduate. But when he works, he realizes that he has underestimated his adaptability, half a year is enough for him to become a ‘dog’. This statement was seen when I was a senior student, and two years later, I find its infallibility even can match Newton’s law. We enjoy the greatest freedom and democracy in China when we were in BJU, the sweet taste turns out to be a terrible legacy—We are not ready to cope with the situation when we are being severely reprimanded.

5. You might feel someone is very vulgar when you are in BJU, and determine to be a man absolutely refined when you are leaving BJU. But several years later, you would probably find that only those schoolmates who had changed their mind from refined to vulgar could take part in parties in refined costumes; while those unchanged would be down and out before you. Therefore, don’t laugh at those students who are vulgarian, because they may be the protagonist in your future reunion, and the example your MM set up for you to follow.

6. We have been always educated to be a man of faithfulness and sincerity. China possesses an old saying “Business doesn’t matter, morality must be maintained”. This adage probably holds true in western world where competition between enterprises has integrated with a little humanity. In modern China’s marketplace, it is nonsense. I’ll give you an example:

Because of my honest, my company lost a client, but I gained a friend; before this friend gave me a big deal in return for my sincerity, I had been fired for that failed operation; eventually, I brought this big deal with me to a new company.　This event ends up with a good result, but it is a incidental opportunity, and I believe few people have such a chance.

If you make a statistic on how many lies you tell everyday, you will be surprised at that you tell lies from the moment you enter office. You tell lies before your colleagues, boss, clients and at home. If your girlfriend/ boyfriend is still stay in the University for taking postgraduate or doctoral program (like me), they will be shocked to death by your behavior; they are likely woefully to say, ‘You shouldn’t talk in this way.’ Then, you may get more indignant and tell them, ‘It is necessary to tell lies to socialize or carry out business. If you can offer me a rice bowl, I’ll never do it again…’ Finally, you both will be disappointed in each other, say, your partner feels that you have changed, and you think of her/ him TOO NAÏVE, TOO SIMPLE and unable to share with you  

7. When you are still in BJU, watch stupid, childish films as much as possible, as the kind of Meteor Garden. I sniffed at watching such films in those years, but now I can’t help feeling sorrow in reminiscence of the occasions when all the schoolgirl of our dormitory surrounded a worn TV and watched. Today, we are not interested in any particular film and can’t adhere to any of it. Every now and then when we are watching TV, we just keep flip- flopping from one program to another.

8. When you are in BJU, take more lessons, play less computer games in dorms and sleep less. Pay attention to those distinguished senior professors, and try to seek some topics to discuss with them, like listening to your grandma telling a story, because you will never have someone to teach you with such patience after employment. No matter what the boss ask you to do, don’t ask HOW, and solve it by yourself. Don’t take asking questions as a virtue. It is a virtue only at school. At workplace, when you ask more questions than is good for you, the good-tempered boss may give you a cold shoulder, instead the bad-tempered boss may satirize you, saying ‘what a BJU graduate, you even have no idea about this?’  You may excuse yourself in your mind for just having contacted the business for two days. That is your fallacy. The boss wants result rather than process. It is not his business to tell you HOW, anyway, you have to finish it. Having slept through so many lessons in BJU, now I feel terribly guilty, owing the lecturing teacher too much.

When you are in BJU, be in love at your convenience, because only the love you experienced in collage is true love, and your counterpart most probably keeps the relation with you for chemical reasons. You may go to zoo together by a crowded bus in the summer sun, shaking and trembling in the smelling niche. That is a kind of happiness. When you work, the expectations change. If you have related to her for 3 years without purchasing power to afford an apartment or having a chance to be given a raise, you are doomed to lose. If you have kept steady with her for 3 years and are not able to buy a house and marry her, you are finished. You may begin to think if you are wasting her time, her youth. This time when you take bus together, sadness fills your heard: a great BJU graduate, with his girlfriend are bumping in the bus.

10. When you are in BJU, forgive your roommates’ donkey act. Don’t get angry or demand satisfaction when she/he carelessly spilled a glass of water on your English dictionary. Don’t complaint when she/he forgot to take their stinking socks away from your bed. Don’t care too much about she/he has borrowed two yuan RMB from you for buying fruits. Don’t be exasperated against her/him for their little weaknesses. When you work, you will realize they are not so loathful, being surprised at why you have been angry just then, forgetting all their misdoings, retrospecting the mild fragrance  which has thronged the dorm when you were having night talking in bed and the joys sharing a bought package of snacks. When you enter the university, you might think that sincere friends are in senior high school only. When you work, you will find that in a university give the best chance to meet a real friend, who will communicate with you, offer the help you need for a lifetime.

11. If you are a schoolgirl, when you are in BJU, be considerate to those schoolboys who are crazy on you, in spite of that you dislike or even loathe them. No matter how much you dislike them, after all, they really like you, for you are likely an angel in their eyes. When you work, you are merely dog’s dropping in your boss’ view. We are given few chances to gain the purest things in a lifetime. Many years later, you might have experienced much too much bitterness and lost your awareness of good and bad, when you encounter them again, you might probably realize that they are just right, not of a trace of ugliness…you will be very very sorry.   

12. Read more and surf less when you are in BJU, don’t waste your time on such trifle things as watering or QQ talking. Once you leave the campus, you can only have junk journals and snack books such as Ruili, Chendu Has Forgotten Me Tonight, you will no longer given a chance to think about Wan Sheng He Feng Ru Song, needless to say to read the books stored there. When I was a sophomore, I was amazed at that all the masterpieces had been read stopped in senior high school. Until I work, I find all the books I have read are those being read before graduation.

13. You may abhor those damn bicycle thieves when you are in BJU. You may get up at five minutes to class beginning, then walk leisurely to class. When you work, you most probably get up at six in the morning, impatiently take a bus which is crowded as a sardine can, waiting for your bus squeezing forward in a jam traffic. Congratulating on yourself for the boss hasn’t arrived and you have been five minutes late to work due to a traffic jam on your way to work, one of your good colleagues has got ready to report on you to the boss. After going through the same awful jam on the way home, you manage to do some reading, looking up and the clock hand pointing to nine. Moreover, you likely haven’t had you supper.

14. If you are a schoolgirl, don’t risk on an extreme diet to lose weight when you are in BJU, since it may give you a trouble stomach with which you will be depressed when you work. You can choose not to go to class for official holiday when you are at school; but when you work, even if you have a severe pain, you probably try your utmost to stand on your feet and go to work; because you want to save the few opportunities asking for a leave for your most need. You may choose slim rather than health when you are in BJU, but when you work, you will realize that health is the most precious fortune.