Meanwhile, to all the living, walking, breathing HKUST camaraderie, please please please do not try aping late Mr. Poon Kei or Ms. Feng Ye or the two dozen other students of HKUST who have taken this ultimate decision to end their lives. Agreed, life is a bitch. Agreed, Professors are morons who overload us with too much work in too less time. Sure, TAs give us horrible assignments which even the smartest Mainlander has no clue about. Last but not the least, the guy who invented the normal curve is the biggest sonofabitch ever to be born on Planet Earth and deserves nothing less than the guillotine followed by a firing squad. But, please remind yourselves these are temporary aspects of life that are going to go away in a bunch of years. Very soon, you are going to be freely walking away from the Redbird and you are never going to come back. These are short-term problems and remember, there are 10,000 of us facing identical, if not worse, conditions and we take it with a smile on our face.
The fact that HKUST is such a terrible demanding mean mistress is why I love studying in here so much. The seven odd months in a year that we put in here are undoubtedly challenging and stressful. Homeworks, assignments, projects, meetings, presentations, AGMs, EGMs, LLCs, society work, social life...every one has their own cocktail of miseries in life. But, what we need to realize and appreciate is that without hard work, there is no true sense of learning and without learning, there is no sense of achievement. I have personally seen the sense of education in a lot of reputed private universities in India and believe it or not, lecturers lecture because they have to and not because they want to. Students cram stuff and beautifully regurgitate in the exam but ultimately, they have no idea why they did what they did and the whole idea of education fails in such a scenario. But, in HKUST, we are challenged every day, every hour, every minute and only by boldly taking/screwing up such challenges, do we learn. In the words of former US President Abraham Lincoln, only the test of fire makes fine steel. This way we are the finest steel in the region and trust me, if you can survive HKUST, you can pretty much handle everything else this world/life throws at you.
It is extremely easy to write a blog post saying "Challenge is fun. Challenge is cool". But when I'm personally confronted by the heavy workloads common to most students in HKUST, I too would want to kill myself, my Prof and the moron who quoted Abraham Lincoln (in the reverse order). So, here are a few suggestions to cope up with this stress that is so fundamental to our lives:
1) Find someone (friend, sibling, Peer Counselor, stranger) and tell them "I can't take it any more". Let all your frustration out on them (you can apologize later) and start afresh. Talking to someone always helps relieve the mind of tension (Warning: Think twice before you do this with a fellow HKUST student. 99 times on 100, that person is in a worse-off state and is bravely taking it than you are. Every UST student hates when a less busy person cribs about how 'busy' a life he is leading. So do watch it whom you whine to)
2) Talk to your Professor/TA. Tell them you tried your level best but you can't finish the work. Most Profs prefer having a Late Submission to a Late Student. A lot of them are really sweet and will happily give you an extension.
3) If you did horribly in your quizzes and exams and feel that Mayan-predicted End of the World is already here, RELAX. People do way more horrible than you have ever imagined and proudly flaunt it with their friends. Yours sincerely managed a cool 1/10 in his first quiz at HKUST. Put an emo status on Facebook. Go argue with your Prof. Get drunk. Study your arse off for the finals. Do anything but do not blame yourself. You are way more than what your GPA says you are.
4) Lastly and most importantly, do understand Hong Kong University of Stress and Tension is the most overrated description we can give ourselves. A lot of courses in our University is actually pretty chill. Unless you keep procrastinating like me until the very last day, you should be able to handle UST Terror pretty decently. If you are from Beijing, you should actually be like "Bring it on, bitches". Students suffer more in Universities in Mainland China, Japan and USA. So, stop crying and start working instead.
Studying in HKUST doesn't translate to handling all the problems in the world alone. When you are stressed out, talk to people. Only when we hear your problems from you, can we collectively help you. When we read it in the coroner's report, it is too late. Do think of your family, friends and colleagues before you try to go do some cool emo mature stuff.
Once again, I condole the premature death of Mr. Poon Kei. May your soul rest in peace and may this be the last ever time we get an email beginning "We are very much saddened to announce the passing away of our beloved student...".
Sign-off link: HKUST's own version of Gangnam Style. Let's Oppa Engin Style!
