Subject: Of fences and academic fields

Berlin, Summer 1983

How I'd come to earn the honor of being invited to my professor's home for dinner, I didn't know. I had only gone back to Germany for an exam and planned to continue my studies in Taipei after that.

The whole event got off to a bad start, too. Those days I was driving an old Volkswagen Beetle, the kind with a semi-automatic transmission which was designed for war veterans with one leg missing. Meaning, there was no normal clutch (rather a clutch relying on the centrifugal effect), but you still had to switch gears manually. Only this one didn't work very well, so my car tended to move in hops and jumps when I tried to take off.

So, while parking in front of his home, my beetle made one of these sudden jumps and flattened Professor Yu's Jaegerzaun - a very nice, well tended and beautiful wooden fence. It lay there on his lawn and I was mortified.

But Professor Yu didn't seem to mind very much and the evening went ahead as he had envisaged. Conversation was interesting and after dinner he took me down into his basement where I found myself in a library. Books on all four walls, all the way up to the ceiling. They looked old and expensive and they all seemed to be in Chinese.

"Do you think you will ever be able to read these?" Prof Yu asked me.
"Aehm, probably not, no," I answered, somewhat anxious. After all he was my professor, I studied China Studies and here were all these books in Chinese. Had he coaxed me down here for a little informal test in my reading skills? That would have been disastrous, as I had just barely scraped through the exam a couple of days ago.

"Let me tell you something," Prof Yu continued. "Even I can't understand everything in these books, which by the way, are all about ancient Chinese culture and especially coins. I have lived with this language all my life, and still..."

I was more than a little taken aback. Was he hinting that my Chinese was so atrocious that I was wasting my time? Was it really that bad? Finally I asked him what he was trying to tell me.

"It's very simple," he said. "Do you know how many people with an MA in Sinology there are in Germany? Do you know how many of them will never find a job in this field, but will instead end up driving a taxi, become mail carriers or work in a bar?"

I told him that I had no idea.

"It is not a pretty picture," he continued. "And I am very much afraid that one day you might join their ranks. I would not like to see that. And that's why I invited you over here today. To have this little friendly chat."

I didn't know how to respond to that, but finally I blurted out, "But what do you want me to do?"

"Well," he said and let it hang there. "You were doing well in my business class. And then there is always engineering. I want you to reconsider your options, that's all really. You should consider whether you really want to forge ahead and spend several more years of hard work to end up with an MA that might not be all that useful for you. Or whether it might be a better idea to add some 'hard skills' like engineering or business to what you have now."

"But I have zero aptitude for engineering!" I almost shouted at him, pretty much in a panic now. "And I simply detest those business types, who only think of how to climb the corporate ladder to line their own pockets. I wouldn't fit in there at all!"

"I just want you to think, that's all. You told me that you are going back to Taiwan. Fine. What I can do for you, is draw up a letter of recommendation to the best business school in Taiwan. It's up to you whether you want to use it. Just be aware of what the future might hold in store for you."

I went home very much in thought that night. And several weeks or months later, can't remember, I did indeed present his letter and even got accepted to the school.

What a strange journey life is. First my double major was biology & chemistry. Then philosophy, later China studies and suddenly MBA. To be followed later again by TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language). Weird. But interesting.

And I never heard about the fence again, either.

Cheers!

Holg

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