As losinasia pointed to above. It can be excruciatingly painful to get through the OP’s current predicament. Been there many times in Taiwan. It’s no picnic. OP, grow very thick skin and keep your eye on the prize. It’ll be over soon
This issue here is not “working for free.” What I see happening quite a bit at colleges in Taiwan (not just in the case being discussed in this forum) is a form of social outreach / social contribution, typically delivered in what my students call “disadvantaged areas.”
Guy
which has already been explained as not useful in post typhoon times, if this is the case then i would put it in the same category of behaviour as working overtime for zilcho pay. if it was something useful and helpful then its understandable.
I dunno man. There are no doubt lots of problems with Taiwan’s universities–and in the case of this thread, the peer pressure / bullying seems decidedly unpleasant. But the outreach / social engagement part that I tried to highlight is surely a positive–at least in principle, if not in this specific case–in trying to make Taiwan a better place.
That’s my two cents.
Guy
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Uhh what justice? but anyways, you decided to not go w the flow so now you’re getting negative social feedback…what did u expect?
If the school offered its students a choice, then you are free to make your choice. There’s really no wrong or right to the choice you’ve made. You don’t wish to burden the people who are already suffering. Nothing wrong with that choice.
I don’t know what your classmates did there, but if they went with the original plan, which reads like “teaching local kids”, I’m pretty sure learning isn’t their number one concern when there’s no food or water. If they went to bring them supplies and offered help to rebuild the community, then perhaps it was a meaningful visit.
It sounds like you were sure you won’t be able to offer them much help, so you didn’t go. I’d say you’ve made a good choice. If your classmates judged you for it, even after you’ve explained your position, then they are pretty immature, and you don’t have to worry that much about it. But at least try to explain your side to them, if their friendship is important to you.
I think that if you brought your own food and water, you would be more helpful than a burden.
The best advice was for OP to “blame” her parents.
Also, OP, you said your blood was boiling. A key to surviving Taiwan is to not let any situation, regardless of how absurd or unjust, effect you emotionally. For the lack of maturity the Taiwanese have in many regards, they have a surplus of emotional maturity/suppression. You must approach these people unemotionally, as friends, actively finding opportunities for yourself to calmly explain that you wanted to go, but unfortunately your parents forbade it. If you can do this, you will have their friendship and respect. If not, you will lose it. This situation will repeat itself with its many faces during your entire stay here.
You still haven’t grasped the concept have you?
It doesn’t matter if you brought 1 gallon or 10 gallons of water and enough food for your entire convoy on your back on this trip, you could still be a nuisance to the people of Taidong and specifically the people/employees of the place(s) the OP was going.
Yes, you brought your own food and water, but the people of Taidong would still have to take time out of their day, in which consisted of acquiring their own food/water and other issues regarding recovering from the devastating typhoon, to make sure you were well taken care of.
I would say, put yourself in the shoes of people who have been devastated by the typhoon for one second and see how you would react, but I know you’d just come up with some snide response to try to up my suggestion.
Suppressing emotions has noting to do with emotional maturity. It’s all about group-think and saving face here in Taiwan. Suppressing emotions is a way of saving face, but it doesn’t mean that Taiwanese are mature.
If OP believes in doing the right thing, then Taiwan is a horrible place for that. Ironlady probably gave the best advice, when going against group-think, you have to have a socially valid excuse.
OP, you made a decision and you take whatever comes with it. What is to whine about?
My experience. You have to be willing to make sacrifice for your friends in order to keep friends. This is true everywhere on planet Earth, even among chimps.
Other commentators had suggested that deficient characteristics of Taiwanese had something to do with your misery. I don’t agree with them.
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Some view it as emotional maturity; others view it as suppression. It depends on how you look at it. Most foreigners, especially ones who haven’t lived here for long, see it as the latter. However, it can’t be argued that it would require emotional maturity to be the bigger person and explain that the parents forbade going without getting upset at the classmates’ initial reaction and lack of understanding.
[quote=“lostinasia, post:41, topic:155540”]
I know universities have summer activities where university students go to “disadvantaged” (poor? mountainous? aboriginal?) areas to “teach” the local kids for a few hours, perhaps over a couple of days. The teaching isn’t high level - it’s fun and games…
My impression is these summer camps are somewhat well-intentioned but really not useful semi-charity work.[/quote]
Just so we know, when you say ‘my impression’, are you talking from experience with university students working in Taidong to help with reconstruction efforts? Or do you mean something you vaguely imagined in between watching TV series while lying on the sofa?
As an actual official, I think I’m qualified to give an opinion on that! I regularly have your ‘hapless university students’ come to work here. And sure, they come knowing not very much about farm work, but by and large, they are great, and useful: interesting young adults, open-minded, politically aware, and keen to learn about a life-style that’s very different from theirs. I mentioned that a couple quit immediately after the typhoon with the ‘my Mummy made me do it’ defence, but they were soon replaced by two fantastic young guys. Yes, there was some stuff to deal with that’s beyond their knowledge, but a lot of it wasn’t. A lot it was cutting up blown down trees and dragging the branches to a pile. And yeah, we had water and electricity problems for a couple of days, but they showed some grit and initative and we got through it. Far, far from being ‘inconvenienced’ by their presence, I was incredibly grateful for their invaluable help in righting the ship. A bond was formed, we stay in touch, and I will remember their contribution forever.
As for the aboriginal communities, you’re dead wrong if you think it’s just them that want/need some benefit from these young adults. They enjoy imparting stuff as well – it’s a cultural exchange. Sorry to break this to you, but that’s a good thing – not something to make snide remarks about.
Yep. I agree. Brilliant advice if your goal is to teach a young person how to cunningly deflect taking responsibility for their actions.
But OP, just because I disagree with the advice you’ve been given, it doesn’t mean I am on the other extreme. I’m not. I am not condemning you whatsoever. I’m fully aware that groups can ostracize a person coz they’re a bit different – that’s what has happened to you, I guess. That sucks.
But two wrongs don’t make a right. At the end of the day you can’t take responsibility for other people’s actions, but you can take it for your own. If you did make a mistake in this one instance, that doesn’t matter – everyone makes mistakes. What matters is how you file that in your brain. Coz that will determine the pattern for dealing with similar situations that can and will crop up suddenly in the future. And they will happen suddenly. You will deal with them in a reflex way. What’s that reflex gonna be?
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What my university students write every year about the summer camps they’ve just hosted / held / attended, or the ones they’re planning for the upcoming summer. Glad to know they’re more helpful than I’d have thought. None of my students have ever talked about reconstruction work, and seeing as how what the OP wrote about was a camp that had been planned long before the typhoon, I doubt that’s what they were planning to do either. I’m really surprised - I had no idea their summer camps involved going to farms and helping with clean-up. All they ever write about is playing games with kids and trying to teach them something, like what the OP writes about here. Are the students you’ve worked with also there as part of university courses?
And as an official (damn, I thought the “Taidong Council” thing was just a joke, sorry!): really? So if you’ve just had a typhoon, and you’ve got 30 university kids coming on a coach, planning to do a couple of days of teaching activities, part of an annual thing that happens? You’d want them to come under those circumstances, when the water and power have been cut off? Wouldn’t you at least want to tell them ahead of time, “Look, we’re under a bit of pressure right now, and if you want to come out and help with the clean-up that’s great, but how about we delay the teaching activities for a week or two”?
The trip that the OP decided not to take part in was not intended as a reconstruction / post-typhoon assistance project. It was a teaching camp for playing games with the kids.
(My cynicism is not in the least directed towards aboriginal communities. My main concern about these summer camp activities is that they don’t provide much benefit for the local communities, but rather just give the university students a chance for a bit of cultural exchange; I’m glad to know the communities get something out of them too.)
I truly hate it when Asian people make me do things I have no interest in doing. OP, you didnt want to go. You probably should have made a bigger sob story at the time. You only have a year. They are probably not close to the level of emotional maturity that you are at now. Suck it up, and move on.
I assume they did have a chance to cancel it if they wanted to.
The students that i get here are doing it off their own bat. They didn’t sign up for typhoon relief work either, but they stepped up when that’s what it turned out to be. My point is, they are interesting young people that proved to be a great help in a time of need. Seems reasonable to extrapolate that many of the ones who went on the said camp are also like that.
There is a tone on this thread that all young Taiwanese are useless air heads. That’s way off the mark - in my experience.
Again, i am not saying this to attack the OP. I admit - i don’t fully understand his or her situation and ostracization is a very real problem - just giving some first-hand experience of Taiwanese uni students that i have dealt with.
TaidongCouncil:
While I’d largely agree with the rest of your comments, this doesn’t make much sense:
Reason: even if the OP had turned up, she was apparently just a spare part. She had absolutely no role in the summer camp. The students were not moving trees, doing farm work, volunteering with the cleanup etc etc. As far as we can tell, the whole thing was pointless make-work to earn some course credits.
There is no “responsibility” to take here. She decided not to waste her precious life-hours doing something futile, and if she needs a culturally-appropriate excuse for doing that, ironlady offered a pretty good one.
Now, as you mention, the students could have organised some ad-hoc help while they were there and cancelled the camp activities. However, volunteering is, well, voluntary. The OP doesn’t have a duty to help fix Taidong. And as far as we know, the other students didn’t do this.
My S.O. regularly comes home fuming about her effete and incompetent university administrators. So I’m not entirely surprised they were incapable of making a decision about this.
I have my doubts how effective the excuse will be though. I mean, if you absolutely needed an excuse at the time, it would serve well enough, where back at home you’d be laughed out of any future contention for even suggesting it, and likely cursed at. While for cultural reasons that wouldn’t have happened here, it would still have 100% been seen for what it is–an excuse–and no one would have felt any better about it or the OP the next day. Now it’s well past any possible utility.
“Friends are for the weak.”
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What i meant was, the aboriginal community, if that’s what it was, would have had a chance to cancel it if they wanted to. They didn’t. Why do you think that was?
And why are you so sure that what these volunteer uni students were doing there was ‘futile’?
If you, or the OP, or anyone else doesn’t want to volunteer to help - that’s absolutely fine - but can you please get off the backs of those that do.