## Intro Hey Chris, How's it going? Me, well, not the best but not bad I guess. Right, first of all thanks so much for your time in advance, cuz not obviously not everyone is kind enough to put up a "book a time with me" link and is willing to share apart of their time with others, so really appreciate it. And interestingly I believe that should a organizational thing, you know, making people get used to booking time with each other. Well, you know, some people say I don't want others to tamper with my time In fact I think that booking others time truly shows respect for them, compared to using without asking, which is considered stealing. Alright. I cam here today to share a bit of my personal experience here for 2 months, academic-wise, mainly, and along with some problems and frustrations of mine. This script was originally written during the October break as my midterm personal reflection. And it came to me that why not share this with someone else and listen to what they think? I mean, theres no harm in sharing, right? So i rewrote it a little bit and turned it into the thing that i am reading to you in a moment. This script doesn’t fully represent my voice. Please rather take it as the voice of my inner child, who is really personal and vulnerable. The case, or problem, that I am going to present you is going to be pretty complicated, with no easy solution -- and in fact there is no easy solution to any problem. So for this meeting, my only goal is to share my thoughts, and listen to what you think about it, and hopefully stir some thinking and discussion. What I am going to say may sound like a complaint, but it really is not -- I am not calling for a solution or proposing change. Every change is hard to make. So for this meeting, just sharing thoughts, and please just listen to it even as a story, don't take it serious or personal. Its going to be a little bit long, and i hope you are patient enough to hear through all of it. ## Main Body Alright. My main point, in one sentence is: this school is not facilitating, and instead, limiting, my learning and growth, which I care a lot about, and in fact, the sole purpose of me coming here. How so? First, 80% of the time, I didn't learn anything. The IBDP course is simply not challenging enough for me. Math and Physics are pretty much kindergarten stuff. Class discussions are mostly shallow and unproductive. I have the habit of doing a daily reflection every day, and I always find it hard to answer the question of "what have you learned today in school" -- nothing, not really? And in fact, most of my time is wasted walking back and forth between dorm and school building, climbing up and down the stairs, and getting in and out of classrooms -- I feel like a ghost -- I go everywhere, but did not learn anything. I feel empty walking out of the academic building and back to dorm at the end of every school day. Second, even for the rest of the 20%, I can actually learn something, I am frustrated by the fact that my time is not used efficiently. I am not learning efficiently. Of course I can't say that if you let me go to take the IB final test today I will get a 45, of course there are new things to learn. But instead of getting 5 minutes of effective learning every day for 2 years, why not, let's say get 5 hours of effective learning every day for two weeks? That's about the same amount in total right? In other words, I am pretty confident that I can finish the IB in one year, and I don't want to waste the other year. Come on, it's 21st century, institutions like schools and libraries no longer hold a monopoly to knowledge and learning resources, and in fact one just learn as much and much more efficiently if he has the right learning method and resources. You have all those geniuses that dropped out of school or are homeschooled, right? A lot of times, for the last period of the day, teachers tell me, you look tired. Woah, what I truly want to tell them in response is that boredom is not fatigue. There's a difference between boredom due to the fact of me learning nothing from 8am to 3pm, but having rushing from and back the academic building, mensa and dorm, and the tiredness after a productive and fulfilled day at weekends, when I can learn things on my pace and focus for more than 8 hours. I carefully track every minute of my day, and I know that more clearly than anyone else. And it's not just class-time -- there are so many other time-wasters throughout the day. Just a very small example, last week during tutorial, we finished like 20 minutes early and we were out of things to do. Like we were just sitting there, staring at each other and not knowing what to do. It was 2:55, right, and i asked if I can leave early, because I need to do some grocery after school, and it would save a lot of time if I can catch the 3 - 10 bus instead of the 3- 40 one. And my tutor said no, we'll have to wait until 3:05. I was like, why? what difference does this 10 minutes make? I mean even if I don't have a bus to catch, I cannot understand why would i waste my 10 minutes there, rather than going back, taking a jog, take a few pictures -- there are so many other wonderful things to do with that ten minutes! What is she afraid of? All these are fundamentally frustrating for me because time is the ultimate limiting factor to any and all human creativity and achievement. Creating an art-piece requires time; wring a good essay requires time; developing a creative idea requires time; figuring out an interesting concept requires time. Even relaxing and letting the mind empty itself requires time. Our mind needs time to empty itself so that great ideas from the universe can come to you. That's the way of living as an artist in this world. Look, I don't have much time left -- I only expect myself to live until 80, and I don't have much time left. 63 years and 2 months, to be specific. I don't want to waste the best time of my years when I'm in my prime creativity; I don't want to waste my life in high school where I learned nothing and have little time for self-development. Apologies for sounding a bit aggressive, but at then end of the day I guess I am just frustrated by the fact that we are all gonna die one day, but even when we are alive we cannot fully pursue what we want. There are so many other exciting things happening around the world that will shape humanity's future -- Elon's starship and brain-computer interface, The Browser Company's browser to revolutionize the way humans interact with information and knowledge -- we are still in this information revolution that has been going for decades and will keep going, and I can feel that I am the one there to push it forward and benefit the rest of humanity. To summarize, based on my current level and given time to learn on my own, I am pretty confident that I can pass the exams and get a 45 for IB in less than a year. I don't understand what are the other 1 and a half years used for. And most important of all, the current system and method is not facilitating my learning and growth -- that sounds like a problem with the system, but I'd say it's more of a problem with me -- I have special learning needs and my mind works a little bit differently than every other people. Given internet access, I can connect to the world of knowledge at a high bandwidth, so it's a pain in the ass to listen to people talking to me at 1.0 speed. In other words, I am ahead of my time in the way I learn and deal with information & knowledge. My learning habit requires special accommodation for it to reach its full potential. nonetheless, coming here to learn is the sole purpose me coming here and paying money (I don't take any scholarship by the way) -- I come here not for uni application, not for a number or score, and definitely not for any sort of validation from any organization -- I come here to learn and develop myself into a global citizen, life-long learner, and a world-changer. In the end, I'd just like to say that unfortunately this is probably not the best education I want. A good education is empowering rather than limiting. A good education is liberating rather than restraining. A good education makes students feel like they are there to create history. A good education seeks to find the right learning method for each and every particular brain, instead of fitting different minds into the same model -- that's the industrial model of education -- and human mind is a terrible thing to be wasted by the way. I read through the WEF Education 4.0 taxonomy report, and as i go through the skills and qualities listed, sadly i don't think a lot of them are cultivated in our classroom. You may say that this is an IB school at the very basics and we have to conform to its rules and limitations. But I just want to make it super clear that before calling ourself an IB school, we are first and foremost a UWC school, and UWC should be a global pioneer in terms of experimenting with education models and new innovative ideas, instead of letting itself be trapped in the IB system. Look, IB was created more than 50 years ago -- God knows how long does it has left until it becomes outdated. But one thing for sure is that UWC created IB, and IB should serve UWC instead of limiting it. But here, we talked about the dutch government and the IB much much more than UWC. Of course there are limitations within each and every organization -- but at the same time there is always a way to do meaningful things within the restraints and dance with the ankle chains. I don't appreciate complaining about the limitations of one's environment, because my father always told me that the truly strong men never complain about their environments -- they use them to their best. After all, all of the aforementioned stuff sound like a complaint and me pointing finger at the school -- but rather, in fact, it's the reverse, the problem is all mine. It's my brain and special learning habit that requires special accommodation to reach its full potential, and this is totally my personal, special case. I see what I could have become, yet am powerless to bridge that gap, which frustrates me. The one who is talking to you right now is no one but a teenage boy who thinks he's smarter than anybody else and can see the world at its core. And that teenage boy do not feel comfortable here. He deserves a better future and a better environment where he can learn freely, his talents being fully developed, and his knowledge being made effective. It's never the problem with his environment -- in he may never find a place where he is happy -- rather, it's his unfulfilled potential and the better future he clearly sees but not exist yet -- that is up to him to create for the future. Human create things because we have a deep belief in things that don't exist yet. Nonetheless, he sincerely hopes that his voice and be heard, he perspective seen, and his stories shared. He doesn't want to die alone and unknown. That's why he came to you. ## Outro & further discussion To be really honest, before this I have absolutely zero idea what will your reaction be like, and I'm also really nervous about it. That's why I have absolutely no idea how this conversation will go, and my brain is totally empty right now and I can't think straight. I also came because I thought this would be like, sort of a challenge for me. A lot of what I wrote clearly sound naive and immature to you, and thank you for bearing with that. And again thank you so much for your time, I really don't want this to look like me taking some one else's time to complain about my personal issue, and I am really interested in your thoughts. It's also OK if this is too much for you and you need more time to digest, we can talk again next time.