Is Bad Luck Devastating?

I've met with more misfortune in school than my fellows who also study well. They think those mishaps are deeply harmful to my future. Is it really so devastating?

Ask:"As a good student in China, it is very easy to receive various types of honors and rewards. Educators, especially teachers and school leader, give you rewards of their own accord. And that can make you admired by many other students. But as I know you, you've missed many chances to have honor or reward from school or other educators. That is the sourc of your obscurity. Do you think your tough process for making others recognize you current is caused by your devastating misfortune before?"

Here I say something about my "unlucky" school life before. I admit that my life in school is not so smooth like my fellows, who studied well like I did in primary school and high school. In primary school, my class were invited to have a interview by local newspapers. After a week, each member of my class were known by some local neighborhoods except me. Because I was left out, both from the interview and photos published. And the rewards afterwards depends on your honor gained before including those interviews. So I hadn't got anything until my graduation of primary school, though I was No.1 of primary school graduate exams in neighborhoods, 1,000 students taking part in. 

After 2 month of summer holiday, I started my junior high school. 4 years later I began senior high school. In China, we call junior and senior high school as "middle school". At my time, primary school lasted 5 years and middle school lasted 7 years. I took part in 6 times of subject in the 7 years. But I was selected to take part in the higher level in none of them. I'd thought my study was quite poor. But when I was at the forthcoming graduation, a piece of information came to me and they it was confirmed: Judged by my ability, I should have been selected; but I was forgotten to be listed among candidates by teachers. 

I was a keyboard & piano player since primary school. I love composing my own music. Not only performed by my own, I also allowed my friends and classmates to perform my works. And for the past several years, my mates who sang my pieces have been chosen by some record companies and invited to TV programs because of their performances of my works. Many of them are quite popular at my city. Some are being trained to be a star currently. Sometimes they told me, "Zhang, you're forgotten!"

The stories above are totally named as "devastating tragedy" by my friends and classmates. I acknowledge that I am "wonder" among my peers: It is hard to imagine a student who met with same type of disregard for over 10 years. And "any of his extraordinary talents haven't been recognized but his fellows who used his works are recognized". My classmates believe that I "should have succeeded many years ago as a teen star". And "devastating" is used to describe my school life. Nevertheless, as I see, I think those"devastating" issues make me as what I am today.

As I wrote in the Preface, my classmates give me so many exaggerating praise of my knowledge and skills. They think I can master various areas of knowledge, some ability of management and speak some languages. If they're willing to use their exaggerating words to describe me as that, they should owe it to those devastating bad lucks.

In school, being selected to do anything is bound to cost students many spare time. And I could fill those spare time with what I was interested in. In primary school, when my classmates were called for the interviews, I stayed in classroom and though about general relativity, which was an irresistible attraction. I tried to write short passages to explain my comprehension about time and space. Giving me a time to consider or imagine about it gave me a deeper understand. Without the time then to be an original fundamental, I can't assert whether I can give so many speeches on college physic classes about relativity. And I can't have written so many articles published on websites and newspapers on campus about it. Assuming that I had been invited to be interviewed just like my classmates and then got famous in neighborhoods and got more honors or praises based on the interview, I would lost my treasure of instinct about relativity and physics.

At school, being trained for subject competition means your creativity should be arrested. Of course, all of your spare time is occupied by boring courses for huge quantity of exercises. If I had been fortunate enough like my fellows, I think I would have lost my basic creativity, just like common Chinese students. Actions varying from music composing to scientific conjecture request a student to possess creativity. 

Some of my classmates guess that if I'd been sent to international schools in Beijing when I was 15, I would have been recognized by those teachers from USA, UK or somewhere. And then, I might be introduced to some international organizations and then get well-known by many talent peers. They think that I'm feeling "lonesome" currently as my parents and I have missed to be praised by international teachers. But I don't agree that being well-known young is a type of success at school. I even can't agree that I should have been recognized as my fellows. To some extend, the earlier the man is recognized, the less he can achieved. In China, we often hear about such cases that a student used to be highly expected by the teacher then achieved nothing after decades. As far as I'm concerned, some people can be highly praised when they're children because their talents are simple. In China, teachers use exam grades as the standard. Besides, teachers, who only have touch with kids at school, have little idea about how society judge a man. My classmates argue that my thinking can't interpret why Michael Jackson was known as a child star but then kept on shining for 40 years. I hereby don't intend to offend Michael and the countless fans (including myself), but I have to acknowledge that talent of pop song is a comparatively simple talent, which can be recognized by a quick glance. That's why people often say being a star is a matter of fortune. The huge entertainment groups decide stars' fate. In addition, the achievement of a pop star has little comparability with that of Franklin Roosevelt or Barack Obama, both of whom were unknown at the age of those teen stars. We can't be sure that both of two politicians had no talent in music or art. We can only say that to be a star don't have to accumulate too much ability, but to govern a huge power do.

Bad lucks are not devastating, but to be a man with popular fame without enough ability to influence those important affairs are really devastating! 

Author's Note

career, school