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. It is a historical record, not current guidance.
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.
The central reminder in Front-end Developer Handbook 2017 was simple: public learning material is abundant; a paid course mainly buys structure, feedback, and accountability, not secret knowledge. The source belongs to an earlier period, so this page keeps the idea without reproducing a long quotation.
If you consider paid training, check whether it provides real practice, observable outcomes, instructor feedback, cancellation terms, and post-course support. If an organisation pushes a loan or instalment plan, write down interest, default terms, and employment promises, then give yourself time to decide.
Are Bootcamps Worth It?
The following is a personal experience, not a general link between tuition and employment: I trained for four 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 large company.
At the time I believed hard work could make up for talent, and that determination could take a person far. That was a personal belief, not an employment guarantee.
That was simply the result in my case. It is not evidence of a course’s quality or a typical hiring probability.
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
Many people’s Kindle and iPad are still collecting dust. A device earns its place not through its brand, but by reducing reading friction: comfortable text, search and annotation, and a design that makes you willing to return a week later. If it does not serve the task, you do not have to keep it.
A Pretty Painful Learning Story (Personal)
In middle school, I ranked near the top and gradually became arrogant. I was subjected to violence at school after mocking teachers and dismissing their mistakes; the school later dealt with one teacher. Another teacher lost control after I provoked him and apologised later. I used his family difficulties as a reason to keep skipping class.
Violence is never an educational method, and I should not have humiliated someone because I thought a method was not “optimal”. The memory leaves two responsibilities: being hurt was not my fault, while my arrogance and avoidance were mine to examine.
I eventually lost interest in mathematics and tore up competition certificates. Youthful ego left more than a joke; it left consequences that required repair.
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).
When you are at a low point, try something small that can leave a result. It may not solve the problem, but it can give a day one point you can hold.
Learn to let go, accept yourself, and find what you are willing to approach for a long time. If something supports your work and life, try to understand and practise it instead of spending all your energy on dislike.
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 little and had a 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 began watching my attendance, and I rarely escaped roll call again.
I treated the attention as persecution and used skipping class as a form of resistance.
Later, the English teacher helped the department take my attendance seriously. Each check began by confirming whether I was present.
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 speak with the homeroom teacher, department head, and academic office, and insisted that I stay in my year. The condition was clear: retake 19 courses or leave. She accepted a risk and returned the choice and consequence to me.
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”.
I thought she was too strict. Later I learned that strictness and malice are not the same thing.
Final exams: 26 courses. I was exhausted.
When I found out I had passed all 19 retakes, I almost cried. I no longer needed avoidance to prove that I was right.
My graduation message became: “In college, never turn avoidance into a romance.”
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 or the only place to start. It works best when directed toward a goal that can receive feedback, carry consequences, and become more real over time.
About the violence: I take responsibility for my arrogance and disrespect, but none of that justifies being hurt. This chapter contains exaggeration, jokes, and real pain. Read it as a historical record, keeping what helps today’s judgment and leaving the rest in the past.
Next: Afterword: Progress Is Not Leaving Yourself Behind
Prev: Learning English with AI
Next: Week 1