The fun of failure.
- Aoyumi Jung
- Feb 26, 2020
- 7 min read
Updated: Mar 7, 2020
21:30. 26.02.2020
We had 2 weeks of researching on a weird topic “Triangular Cooperation” which is not familiar with even people in civil society. I went for it because of this fresh-ness. We are learning about social changes, political science and our major is pretty much related to the theme – countries cooperations to achieve sustainable development, but the result was not on our side. Is it a failure?
Being a university student in Hanoi for 2 years, I did not join in any student competition with the fear of crowd and limited capacity. Many times, I went to contests of economics, Marketing, Finance, Startup, etc as an audience. I observed the way students presented their ideas and answered questions of the judges. I never thought I would compete with any team. The very first chance is recent when I saw a post from Ajarn Chris in GSSE family. He is the most active Ajarn who constantly shares nice opportunities for students. He has his world of work and businesses, but he never forgets his mission is to empower his students to learn and grow. This is the second time I reached out to him, I flipped through his post 30 seconds and texted him. He told me to form a team of 3 people. I invited 2 best friends at GSSE to join me who both are emotionally and professionally close to me, given the time constraint we had. At first, we consulted Ajarn Chris and Ajarn Diprenda to frame our idea until 3 last days before the D-day we approached other Ajarns for final feedback. We are not good at creative skills and made a team introduction video without any fancy edition. Ajarn even helped us to upload it to Youtube and add in subtitles.
The idea started by my wish
We had an idea to work on public transportation on a nice walk after school. I was looking at the buses picking up teachers and told Nath “In the future, I wish in a company that provides transportation services for its employees after work so that I don’t have to suffer from high blood pressure, pollution and stress driving my vehicle.” There it came to the thought on why not exploring the issues of Vietnam and Cambodia as we could relate my story to what we behold in both places.
A performance of memories
This experience is a train carrying me back to 3 years ago. After my first voluntary time to Thailand, I gained enlightenment in many areas among which there was transport infrastructure between Thailand and Vietnam. I was not in MRT or BTS before and everything was mind-blowing. Luckily, my Chinese friend took me around to buy tickets, insert the coin/ card, find which stop to get out. Thinking back, I could tell how innocent I was, and how different 2 developing nations were. Besides the diversity and modernity of the vehicles serving the people, Thailand outweighs Vietnam by road quality, traffic regulation and human ethics in travel. I hardly saw people intervening in other lanes, accidents in the pavement, neither any potholes in street. People queued in long lines to wait for their turn, no shouting or no rude behaviors. Of course, the situation in my country is getting better! Yet the striking dissimilarity made me think streets in Hanoi did not have any lanes because people barely follow the road lines.
A performance of statistics
How my awareness was shaped was then expressed in an essay about “Traffic issues in Hanoi” as an application for a leadership program. It changed my life afterward. Thus, the topic for the competition this time reminded me of what I wrote at the end of 2017. I read again the essay and laughed at my stupidity, and my intelligence somewhat. I threw in a bunch of opinions through my observation, suffering and lessons learnt. I even blamed politicians, construction companies and some people in charge without putting in statistics! Gosh, such a silly paper! I told myself this time to read thoroughly the entire landscape of transport system in Vietnam to talk about the things that make sense. I admit the essay was good in the sense that it reflects a story of an individual who got to go through the difficulties and innovation of 2 systems. And, I was too young to academically describe the background with convincing evidence. Eventually, our presentation at UNOSSC (United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) was remarkable with various figures compared to other teams. This should be the part I am proud of and there are no words to express my appreciation for my teammates and Ajarns. What can tell is our effort to read, research, discuss and revise for hours. We found this statistic irrelevant, old or too “sarcastic” then we changed, and changed… It was quite painful because I hate looking at numbers. Yet it is powerful.
A performance of self-reflection
Amid courses’ assignments and some other jobs, the time we worked on the competition was mostly in the evening. This time is not as stress-out as when I was in HCMC (over 3 months of exhaustion). I like how we live in the hectic speed of life like Singaporean or Vietnamese working styles. The pace of work in Thailand is distinctly slow and meditating. I savored our intensive exploration though! I took the initiative to enter this game, so my teammates chose me as the leader. This is fun. I like to be the leader of a group sharing alignment in characteristics and cool ideas in which I just play the connecting role, but not the best “expert”. Today in the class of “People, Community and Networks” of Ajarn Matthew, we discussed which are more important for being leaders: qualifications or skills. I said “skills” if I had to answer. It is possible for a person without expertise to direct people in right positions and shine with their know-how. Specialists can’t always do a good job on administration. So probably I am more on the back-end side for others to voice out. Fortunately, my teammates trust me as a leader, they listened to my request, my pushing questions, my tenacity, and my perspectives.
A performance of endless thoughts
I was granted the chance to speak in front of high-level people 2 times before this “formal” stage. One time was in Sands Expo Convention Center Singapore to pitch our impact startup idea with investors within 5 minutes. The second one was to share my stories about Lens on Mekong with people from the UN, WWF, Embassies, Enterprises and Government working on Environment for the future of Asian Delta. Nevertheless, I am not likely to be used to articulating ideas in front of these people. My mind in few first minutes went almost blank. I am sure my speech did create confusion for people. Then I took back confidence. I looked straight into the eyes of the judges, I felt the attention to our speech that amplified our tension. In response to their look, I spoke whatever came out, and made up some silly part out of the preparation as I forgot something. I am not good at creating things out of nowhere. It was just that – like a documentary was pieced together in words over 20 minutes. After all, it ended. I don’t wish to do it again. I tried my best.
This time is unique in the duration of speech, and the topic. I am personally in love with youth education and environmental advocacy, never talked about public transport. We had only 4 hours to practice, to count in total. The first hours were the night before the last day for us to see the flow among different pieces and the timing. We understood the structure of our presentation much better and realized many missing points especially after getting critical inputs from Ajarn Stephane. We learnt we had been thinking of Triangular Cooperation too optimistically, ignoring necessary pitfalls such as social responsibility, governance and return rates among international cooperation. Accordingly, the last day was another heavy-researching time, we ended the day without having the energy to practice. We began working on the script along the way commuting to Bangkok, at van station, on the taxi, in the waiting area of UN Convention Center, even in WC.
A performance of trust and love
We reached the venue but in the wrong gate, they showed us the way to get in. We met another team accompanied by their supervisor, but our Ajarn probably did not come because he was looking for a substitute for his class. There were some changes in the agenda, initially, our performance would be in the afternoon but it turned out in the morning. We rushed to practice but I could not make it fluently as expected. In the middle of jumbles, Ajarn Chris arrived. We said hello towards him in joy. He gave us a very warm smile. He said “You guys have been doing a great job. Now just relax and let it go, don’t force yourself too much. When you are on stage, slowly let things out, you can do it.” I almost cried. Early in the morning, some Ajarns and staff at School of Global Studies sent us kind wishes. That moment made me realize a sense of responsibility on our duty to perform well, not just came to test ourselves, but also to leave some footprint in there.
A performance of friendship and recognition
I always know my friend- Nath is smart. If she put serious effort into something, I am sure she will disclose the most charismatic performances. I was impressed by her talk about Cambodia, and her entire part. Her English was intellectually excellent without jumbling words, her voice was clear and strong which are way different from class presentations when she was asleep. Hang is good at finding high-quality sources of information and she can point out strengths and weaknesses of our arguments. I am good at “?” recapping our ideas, seeking feedback and finalizing our work. Can it be called a strength? It sounds like a gossip person. Haha. But yeah, I love my team, and I love GSSE, indeed.
This is not our vain attempt. Thank you GSSE with all my dignity for your support and encouragement. I apologize that we could not make it better for our school to be remembered. I will continue working hard as always. I am happy and grateful for how we converge at this point in life. The result of the competition did tell much about the quality of the work, yet it is not everything. As the final message, I shared on behalf of my team, of SGS on stage:
“what we shared today is just part what we know and what we can express, the importance is whether we could continue the momentum after getting out of this room, and take actions in reality.”
Actions speak louder than words.
With all my heart,
Linh
Comments