Miscellaneous Notes and Old Echoes
Source (中文): 杂谈与旧日回声
This chapter is intentionally a bit off-topic: personal opinions, stories, and some “learned the hard way” moments.
This is an edited archive of older writing. It includes references to school violence, long-term insomnia, and past suicidal thoughts. Those passages are personal memories, not medical advice. If you are in immediate danger, contact someone you trust and local professional support.
Training, Career Choice, and Self-study
In recent years, the internet industry in China grew fast. It became both “the hottest field” and also one of the most misunderstood.
Because the pay can be good, a lot of people from other industries try to jump in.
If the only reason you want in is “the salary is higher than what I have now”, but you do not enjoy the daily work or understand the practice it requires, the more urgently you push yourself in, the more painfully you may later push yourself out.
Try to optimize for work that you enjoy and can do well. I hope you get to live the life you want—not trade life away just to survive.
I’ll quote a passage from Front-end Developer Handbook 2017 (with the named institutions removed):
Lately a lot of non-accredited, expensive, front-end code schools/bootcamps have emerged.
These avenues of becoming a front-end developer are typically teacher directed courses…
Keep in mind… this is the web! Everything you need to learn is on the web for the taking…
However, if you need someone to tell you how to take and learn what is actually free, and hold you accountable… you might consider an organized course.
Otherwise… I am not aware of any other profession that is practically free for the taking with an internet connection… and a burning desire for knowledge.
— Front-end Developer Handbook 2017
So if you want to enter the industry through training, my advice is:
You’re trying to join the internet industry. You should have “use the internet” as your first instinct. Spend that expensive tuition on something fun for yourself.
If you’re still a student and a bootcamp tries to push you into “student loans / installment plans”, be extra careful. Some of them are genuinely shady.
Are Bootcamps Worth It?
I trained for 4 months and spent 20,000 RMB on web front-end development.
Two weeks after finishing, I got an offer from Meituan.
I admit I wasn’t the best student in class.
But I was the first one to find a job.
And it was a big company.
I’ve always believed hard work can make up for talent. If you’re determined, a lot is possible.
It’s been one week since I joined. Everyone is nice. They even gave me an electric scooter, a helmet, and a coat.
Anyway, gotta go—new order just came in.
“Five Minutes a Day: Can You Really Learn English?”
A lot of training businesses sell the idea that “N minutes a day” will transform your English. Five minutes can be useful for a review, a short shadowing exercise, or three sentences of writing—but it is one gear in a system, not a replacement for one.
English is a language. It takes repeated contact, active use, and feedback over time.
“Fragmented learning” often ends in:
- giving up
- or getting distracted into something else (like discovering you really love American TV shows)
If you’re working full-time, you need a real plan: combine methods and build a system.
Before paying for a course, ask whether it provides practice, feedback, and an observable result rather than a beautiful number of minutes.
Kindle and iPad
I know a lot of people’s Kindle and iPad are collecting dust… or being used as instant noodle lids.
That might be funny, but is that really why we bought them?
A Pretty Painful Learning Story (Personal)
In middle school, I ranked No.1 in my grade. I got arrogant.
In 8th grade, a new math teacher arrived. I couldn’t stand that he sometimes explained easy problems incorrectly. I looked down on him, ignored homework, and basically did my own thing in class.
One day he messed up another problem. I laughed and shook my head. He must have been holding it in for a while—he snapped and beat me. Later the principal found out and fired him.
In 9th grade, I repeated the same mistake with another math teacher. This time it wasn’t because he was wrong, but because his method wasn’t “optimal”. I got beaten again. My deskmate even cried. I somehow didn’t feel much pain.
Later that teacher apologized. He slapped himself, grabbed my hand, and tried to make me hit him. I said, “The last teacher who hit me got fired.”
He told me his father was seriously ill, his brother was unemployed, and he needed this job. We made a deal: I didn’t have to attend his math class; I could go play.
And I really didn’t attend his math class after that.
Afterwards, I completely lost interest in math. I even ripped up my certificates from math competitions.
Youth. Ego. Sigh.
In high school, pressure got intense—not only from school, but from my own unrealistic expectations.
Because I didn’t manage “charging” at night (resting) well, I was exhausted in the daytime. Then at night I couldn’t fall asleep, worried that lack of sleep would ruin the next day… which made me even more anxious… which made me sleep even worse.
My homeroom teacher criticized my free-falling grades and kept calling me into the office.
The grade director only cared whether I was late again so he could “score a point”.
My dad stopped attending parent meetings once he learned how far my ranking had dropped.
Over time, it turned into a vicious cycle. I developed insomnia. I was disappointed in myself. My seat got moved to the front row. My bed got moved into a hospital.
I spent two years treating insomnia. It was a dark period.
During that time I had moments where I didn’t want to live anymore. “Insomnia is painful” is honestly an understatement.
Many cold nights, I cried alone in the bathroom, wondering what life meant.
I just wanted one good night of sleep. But I couldn’t.
No one told me that life isn’t about beating others. It’s about enjoying the process of moving toward your goals—and letting results be a reward for your actions.
Before the insomnia, I wrote with my left hand. During the insomnia, to kill time, I learned to write with my right hand. I practiced calligraphy, which eased the pain a bit.
I spent more time on calligraphy, won competitions, and got perfect scores in Chinese essays more than once (I remember the one criticizing exam-focused education best).
Then something shifted. At night I started feeling sleepy again. I could sleep.
My grades improved a bit too. I still did poorly on the college entrance exam overall, but my high scores in Chinese and English helped me get into a decent university (by then I basically never touched math again).
So when you’re at a low point in life, try learning something new. You might find unexpected joy in it.
Learn to let go, accept yourself, and find what you truly like. If something is necessary for your work and life, try to learn to like it.
That’s part of why I’m sharing these experiences—to help people waste less time and take fewer detours.
During college, my English teacher had it out for me. It started because I forgot my textbook in one class. She asked me to spell words… and I got all of them right.
She praised me in English. I showed off a bit and had a fairly fluent conversation with her.
The whole class looked at me with envy (or contempt—hard to tell). I still feel a little proud when I remember it.
After that, she kept targeting me. I never escaped roll call again.
I hated her.
Then, thanks to her “efforts”, basically the whole department started watching me. Every attendance check began with: “Is the guy from Class 2 here?” If I was there, they didn’t bother calling names anymore.
By the second semester of junior year, I failed 19 courses.
At the start of senior year, the university wanted to demote me back a year. Graduation seemed impossible.
Then the English teacher helped me talk to the homeroom teacher, the department head, the academic office… and insisted I stay in my year. The deal was simple: retake 19 courses; if I failed, I’d drop out.
Senior year, I carried a heavy backpack and studied every day in classrooms and the library. Every evening on the way back to the dorm, I would “hate my English teacher again”.
How can someone be that intense?
Final exams: 26 courses. I was exhausted.
When I found out I passed all 19 retakes, I almost cried. I finally got to slap that “you won’t graduate” story back in the face.
And then I wrote this as my graduation message:
“In college, never fall in love with your teacher.”
Summary
After all this, my conclusion is: talent may affect your starting point, but practice, feedback, and interest determine how far you go.
Effort is not magic. It is the most reliable place to start—and it works best when pointed in the right direction.
About the times I got beaten by teachers: I take responsibility too. I didn’t respect their dignity and acted like a jerk.
This chapter contains exaggeration, jokes, and real pain. Read it as an old echo, then leave it in the past.
Next: Afterword: Progress Is Not Leaving Yourself Behind
Prev: Learning English with AI
Next: Week 1