Last year I followed one course, obligatory, in which we had to prepare a summer camp. We worked for one year but two days before the beginning here came the super-mega typhoon. It was July and the summer camp was supposed to be in Taidong, which was devastated. The school didn’t cancel anything, even if there was no water or electricity in the location. The Professor gave us free choice and, after talking with many people, I decided to not go. Many were the reasons. The safety, the fact that I didn’t want Taidong people to help us getting back water and supplies when they had to help themselves… and my parents asked me not to go. I know I’m 20ish and I’m an adult but I never see my parents and this was the only thing they asked me in a long time, I didn’t want them to be worried sick… Am I behaving like a child?
Anyway, I didn’t go and now I’m facing all the consequences. Many of my classmates don’t speak to me anymore, they criticize me when I’m not there saying that I’m superficial and that I left them in a shitty situation.
Should I try to explain myself? Should I let it go? Should I just accept that I made a mistake?
All of this is even more difficult to me because I know that in my country they would have cancelled the summer camp and my classmates would have never hated me for a choice I was legitimated to do.
I don’t get it. What do you mean by ‘prepare a summer camp’? You had to construct the camp? You were teaching there?
If you were merely attending a course of some sort (or intending to), and your classmates elected to rough it rather than just not turn up, I would just tell them to go f- themselves. It’s their own silly fault for turning up in Elbonia and wading around in mud when nobody was asking them to, and they probably know it. I don’t see any point trying to calm them down.
University, yes. And with preparing the summer-camp I mean that we prepared what we were going to teach (some simple classes) and some games for kids. We also collected the money. Because my Chinese is still not that good, I didn’t have any kind of tasks or responsibilities, I just had a marginal role in one game and that’s it.
It can be tough here, the whole class identity ethic (and associated childish behavior) stays active much further along than in most Western countries.
Kids, especially if they’re tracking in post-secondary education, mature much much later than most people are used to in the West.
These kinds of stupid grudges can be really common, even for people in their mid twenties.
Wow. Why did they not just speak to each other and cancel the whole thing? I suspect they’re embarrassed that they put themselves in such a ridiculous position, and the foreigner is a convenient scapegoat to blame for their poor life choices.
Anyway, what Rocket said. Imagine you’re dealing with 12-year-olds and you’ll probably figure out an appropriate solution
They got no water for one week and electricity after 3 days. Firehopper50, even if it’s not life-threatening would you go for a 2 credit course ? And you also would have to pay by yourself all the tapped water you need to drink and shower etc. etc, because school is giving you nothing.
Without saying that people had first to work on helping my classmates before they could go and help themselves because, from what I understood, since it was just two days after the typhoon, there were still trees on the roads and stuff like that.
So your general advice is to do whatever everyone else does, regardless of the consequences?
TBH the OP might have done better by phoning everyone beforehand, telling them she intended not to go, and encouraging them to do the same. The lemming-like behaviour of the typical Taiwanese student would probably be enough to secure compliance. Bit late for that now though.
But yeah, no need to apologise. You might as well just berate them for being idiots because you’ll get the cold shoulder from them regardless.
? And you also would have to pay by yourself all the tapped water you need to drink and shower etc. etc, because school is giving you nothing.
