Personal experience of a student from Zhejiang University

Our 20 days of the "support education" activity were over in a blink of an eye. I still remember the day of our departure and the not too familiar members of the team and how we started our journey full of curiosity and enthusiasm. My university years are the time of my biggest growth period, and the third year of university is the year when I have changed the most. During these years, I have thought about myself for the first time, confirmed my true ideals, determined the kind of person that I want to be. At the same time, I have been studying a lot of books, I also have carefully examined myself and decided to live in another way. A long time ago, my mother told me a sentence: "Love cannot wait". Up to know, I didn't care about the meaning of this sentence, but reading "The Tuesday I spent with Mollie" revived my memories of this. Many things and a lot of feelings keep my heart under pressure. Relying on my youth, I waste my time on games. Not only my studies, but also every other aspect in my life is stagnated. I am no longer that high school boy full of dreams. With my reflection, I want to determine my own ideals, decide the kind of life I want to live. I hope to be a good serious person, I hope to follow the example of so many people around me and improve myself gradually. So, I have been looking for activities in which I can volunteer. In one of them, "a Syrian girl confused the lens of the camera for the barrel of a gun, and put both her hands in the air". This really hurt me in my heart. I want to do something, so I want to participate this time in the "support education" activity. Fortunately, I passed the interview, and, before going, prepared a lot of thing, thought about many classes and prepared a lot of stories. We departed full of passion, but many things went contrary to our plans.

I have very strong feelings towards our life during the 13 days we stayed in the mountains. For the first time in my life, I had to call "bed" the classes desks and live squeezed in with my teammates so many days. For the first time in my life, I had to cook myself my 3 meals every day. For the first time in my life, I had to be worrying about these children abnormally energetic and full of vivacity, worrying about they might get injured, keep on emphasizing discipline. For the first time in my life, we were in this little village, away for the big city hustle and bustle, without internet or television, enjoying this kind of quiet, very satisfying. The first time .... too many first times. I think we did a lot of things, but unfortunately, I feel I failed in this activity and I didn't achieve what I promised to do.

I was wrong in the first class. We mixed together all the students and then separated them randomly into 2 classes. This led to having pre-school children with children from the first and second year of Primary School all mixed together, so they had different basis. The pre-school children are very difficult to organize, while the first and second graders have already started being naughty, so the result of the class was very bad. Furthermore, I also didn't consider properly what the children might like. In my wishful thinking, I only prepared for the kids what I liked before, or are curious about or like now. I prepared the cartoons that I like the best, "Doraemon A", prepared a lot of material related to "the universe" and "the galaxies", as well as the ancient Greek stories about the solar system's planets, but the kids didn't show any interest at all in them. Because of this mistake in the first class, the class was really a big mess. I let them watch "Doraemon A", but they didn't like it. To be honest, it was very sad for me, and I felt I couldn't like the children the same as before. The class became very serious and I started to come into the role of a math’s teacher, emphasizing over and over again the relevant knowledge and asking the students to do a lot of exercises. Even after school hours, I would ask the students that were playing in the yard about some classroom knowledge, so the students liked my lessons even less. The rest of teammates also had some problems during classes, but the students were full of energy. They start knocking at the school's door from 6 in the early morning, come in and start to play, and they can continue like this until 11 at night. All of us became particularly tired. After that, an accident happened and this intensified all the tensions.

One rainy day, in the afternoon, many of the children didn't go home and stayed in the playground playing. and because we didn't take good care of every child, a small girl hit her head against the stairs and was wounded. She was bleeding a lot. We were in total disarray, and because of the rain, the mountain roads were full of mud. It was impossible to transit, and impossible to get the girl down to the city. The only thing we could do is to use the most basic method to disinfect and dress the wound and send the girl home accompanied by the mayor of the village. This event had a great influence on us. Although the wound was not very serious, and the next day, when we visited the child, it was not a big deal already, all of us were blaming ourselves. We decided to force all the students to take a nap in the afternoon in the classroom. This made the students dislike the school more and more, so the number of students attending class slowly decreased. I have thought a lot about this incident, but what I thought the most is the fact that I believe every school should have its own clinic. If not, at least every school should have the basic medicines in storage. All we had at the time of this accident was bandages that were already out of date. For children to have some sort of accident is something unavoidable, so it should be required to have the essential medicines on hand. I worry very much about what to do if the children get injured, because there is not doctor in the village, and it takes at least 35 minutes to come down from the mountain, so it takes a long time to reach a hospital. I am really worried about this, so I think the most essential medicines should be stored at the school.

Afterwards, when the children knew that we were going to see the families, even less students came to class. At the end, one day only half of the students came to school. We felt really depressed and sad. So, since the students were not at the school, we had to go to visit the families. This gave us very strong feelings. It was the first time we knew how much they lack water. Under the eaves of each house they all have a set of pipes to collect rainwater in cellars. Normally, when it rains, we collect any clothes hanging outside, but they hang them out outside so the rain water can wash them. I really regret that, at the recess time, I was washing my clothes in front of the children. I really regret it. On the last day, we prepared a sports day for the children. Everybody was very happy, but, at the end, we had another accident. Again, a child was injured when he hit his head against the wall. Although it was not very serious, and was only bleeding a little, but it made us even more depressed....

The "support education" activity ended this way. During this time, almost everything unimaginable has happened: the kids suffered accidents, we had no water, no electricity, we had no food and even we got sick. I had cough for a full 20 days, after going back home my body was dehydrated, my teammates had the flu, diarrhea and were bedridden, we had storms in the mountains, etc., etc., a lot of things. We had grown up because of it, but, did we really do all we could for the kids in the mountains? Were we really a good example for the kids? I really doubt it, and I feel very depressed because of it. At least, I feel that I will never forget anything that happened during this activity, and I will summarize and assimilate all the experiences in order to grow. I will work hard to improve myself, work hard to achieve my dreams, try to obtain more resources in order to be a good example for the children and do more for them, because I believe that after being part of this "support education" activity, I owe the children a dream and an example.