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A Taste of Taking Care of Little Kids
by Alex Aw
Twelfth Grade, Developing Virtue Secondary Boys' School
Speech Given at the CTTB Buddha Hall on May 12, 2010
My name is Alex Aw; I am one of the boys’ school seniors. I'm from Malaysia. In a blink of an eye, four years have passed. I have encountered various kinds of conflicts and difficulties during my stay in CTTB, but I was able to gain a lot of experience from these conflicts and difficulties. For example, I learned the very important skill of how to associate and get along with someone and how to solve conflicts. All these experiences will be very useful as I continue my adventure in life. At this place, I have a taste of how the real society is. Besides, this place also prepares me mentally to face all kinds of obstacles I will face in the real society. This is a place that completely changed my definition of life.
Before I came to this school, I was an ignorant little child. When I was in Malaysia's public school, I had a few mischievous friends. Having them as my friends had changed me from being an obedient child to a mischievous one. In the school, I had completely lost interest in my study and only fooled around with my friends in most of the classes. Whenever I got back from the school, the very first thing that I would do is to turn on the computer. Then you would see me staring into the screen until 7p.m., which was my dinner time. After dinner, I would do my homework for like 30 minutes before watching television. Sometimes, if there wasn't any good movie, I would go back to my computer until midnight. Those demons had poisoned my mind, all I can find in my daily life was either computer or television. With these technologies in my life, I left out my studies, which resulted in terrible grades.
One day, I was tired of getting up 5 to 6 in the morning to go to school, so I suggested quitting my study. I said, “Mom, dad, we will eventually end up in a box right. When we leave this world, we are not able to take everything that we have learned and gained throughout our life along with us, so what is the point of wasting all your money for me to study?” (P.S. Don't learn from this mischievous bad example) My parents were stunned by this question. After that, my parents found this school and decided to send me here.
At that time, I was new to the outside world and eager to explore more about this world, so I promised to try this school out. By agreeing to this, my parents spent even more hard-earned money on me. This sacrifice became an invisible force that motivated me to study. Through the limitation of computer usage, only watching movie once a week, and the division of boys and girls, I have significantly improved in my grades. Under such a wonderful and less distracting condition, I slowly realized the importance of study and value it. My interest toward computer has also slowly decreased.
In this school year, because of certain factors, a few other students and I have to take care of little kids. At first, I had a great heart for those lovely innocent little kids and thought, “This is going to be a very easy job.” Then I realized a lot of the kids don't listen to instruction at all. Whenever I lecture them about something, those words will go in from one ear and then out another. This behavior is either caused by their hyper activeness or underdevelopment of their brain. Even if they understand you, but after a few minutes, they will repeat the same mistake again, which is why I have to continuously remind them about the rules. However, this is not a bad thing. I was able to learn something from this job, which is “patience.” This group of disobedient children creates a mountain load of troubles to those who take care of them. After taking care of these children for a little while, I have became a bad-temper person. However, I will not explode on them because I always remind myself to be patient and to be a good model in front of younger ones.
Although taking care of them waste a lot of my energy, I still enjoy playing with them during recess time. In this short year, those little children almost make me go crazy. I consider myself lucky because this is my first year to take care of little children and also my last year. Sometimes in this mischievous group, I see their resemblance in me. Right now, I have a little taste of how my parents feel when they take care of my siblings and me. I admire them because they have raised us with their own pairs of hands. No matter how troublesome we are, they still have the patience to guide us. So I will take this opportunity to thank my parents for what they have done for me.
