{"id":3505,"date":"2019-12-08T20:03:34","date_gmt":"2019-12-08T19:03:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.szinapszis.org\/?p=3505"},"modified":"2019-12-08T20:03:34","modified_gmt":"2019-12-08T19:03:34","slug":"they-know-what-its-like-to-study-hard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/semmelweis.hu\/hok\/en\/2019\/12\/08\/they-know-what-its-like-to-study-hard\/","title":{"rendered":"They know what it\u2019s like to study hard"},"content":{"rendered":"

Throughout the whole term-time, you work hard to succeed on the tests, and even then, you have to sit there in the exam period, bent over books\u2026 At some universities it\u2019s the term-time that\u2019s tough, at others, it\u2019s the exam period \u2013 for us, it\u2019s both. Yet somehow, when medical students talk to their friends who go to different unis, or their relatives, they can hardly imagine what can possible be so overwhelming.<\/em>
\nThe protagonists of the following stories know exactly what it\u2019s like to study hard, and they do justice to our perilous souls when we need a little empathy.<\/b>
\n 
\nFerrante, Elena: Neapolitan Novels<\/b>
\nLenu and Lila are best friends \u2013 they grew up in the outskirts of Naples, they are poor, but smart, and they both want to escape from poverty. Lenu considers Lila to be smarter than her, yet Lenu is the one who\u2019s given the chance to attend high school, later university \u2013 Lila\u2019s parents don\u2019t allow her to go.<\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\n

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Eduardo Castaldo\/HBO<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\nWe could say, for this reason, Lenu is more successful than Lila, however, their rivalry and Lenu\u2019s feeling of inferiority causes her to be jealous of her friend\u2019s life. She feels that Lila\u2019s life is changing dynamically, spinning constantly, while she\u2019s just sitting over books. Studying hard throughout the year consumes all her time and energy, and separates her from her friend for longer periods of time \u2013 this also adds to her fantasies about Lila\u2019a life being more colorful.<\/span>
\n\u201cAlthough I imposed on myself an appearance of self-assurance and an iron discipline, I gave in continuously, with painful pleasure, to waves of unhappiness. Everything seemed to be against me. At school I couldn\u2019t get the grades I used to, even though I had begun to study again. The days passed without even a moment during which I felt alive.\u201d<\/span><\/i>
\n\u201cFor the first time, I skipped school. I was absent, I think, for some two weeks, and not even to Antonio did I say that I couldn\u2019t stand it anymore, I wanted to stop.\u201d<\/span><\/i>
\nIn order to be a part of the upper-class intellectuals, Elena feels the need to obtain a rather diverse intellect: she starts to learn Latin, literature, dives into sociology and politics. She reads newspapers and at the same time, she learns from them \u2013 she absorbs different approaches and perspectives to meet the standards of different boys, her teachers and her sister-in-law. Yet, she feels like she could never leave behind her roots, the neighborhood she came from, she feels like she could never learn enough and that others will always know more than she does.<\/span>
\n
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Eduardo Castaldo\/HBO<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\n 
\nTwo different periods keep alternating in her life: one filled with motivation and hard work, the other filled with desperation, where she feels like studying eviscerates her and she can\u2019t move forward. That she pours all her time and her youth into a bottomless pit, while others get married, buy their own houses and have children. At this point, there\u2019s a clear separation between Lila\u2019s and Lenu\u2019s course of life: Lila gets married and starts a job, while Lenu is sent to university right after high school.<\/span>
\n\u201cThen I forgot about it, taken up by other problems: the bookstore, school, the class interrogations, the textbooks. Some I bought, most I stole from the bookstore without too many scruples. I began studying rigorously again, mainly at night. In the afternoon, in fact, until Christmas vacation, when I quit, I was busy at the bookstore. And right after that Professor Galiani herself arranged a couple of private pupils for me, and I worked hard for them. Between school, lessons, and study, there was no room for anything else.\u201d<\/span><\/i>
\nAll that hard work bore fruit, but anybody can see that studying in itself doesn\u2019t make you happy. Nobody can be happy if they study from dusk to dawn every day, and doesn\u2019t have time for anything else \u2013 we know this from experience. Especially, if one loses touch with their friends, without receiving any feedback. Generally speaking, Elena was a good student, but she had a year, when, despite all her hard work, she couldn\u2019t reach the desired results, which had made studying an even bigger torture for her.<\/span>
\n 
\nFor those, who are interested in the story, but feel like they can\u2019t read another letter because of all the studying, the first book of the Neapolitan Novels was turned into a TV show titled <\/span>My Brilliant Friend<\/span>.<\/span>
\n 
\nPoutanen, Kira: The Wonderful Sea (Ihana Meri)<\/b>
\nIn her diary, 15-year-old Julia tells the story of her everyday life, her family, school, what it\u2019s like to run in snow, to wake up in the middle of the night to do another round of sit-ups, to spit out sugar buns, to memorize Swedish words or to tolerate the smell of hair spray in the girls\u2019 locker room.<\/span>
\nJulia is in high school, and is anorexic. The teachers are scaring them, saying that their pace at the time was not enough, that they have to study more, that they are not kids anymore, and they can’t eat that many sweets from now on. She wakes up very early in the morning just to get to school on time, and she spends the whole winter break studying just to finish every task they were given in school.<\/span>
\nHer friends and classmates are pushing each other in studying and in their diets as well \u2013 \u201cwhat did you write there, because I wrote this and that, wow, this was so easy, wasn\u2019t it, how can I be this fat, look at her waist, so thin!\u201d<\/span>
\nA little, blue hell. The stress, the lack of communication with her parents, her future \u2013 she doesn\u2019t want to work and to run a household; she doesn\u2019t want to cook all day just so that everything she made disappears in 10 minutes, and she doesn\u2019t want it to be evident that she, being a lady, would serve the others \u2013 led to her eating disorder, her anorexia. We, the readers can see the signs throughout her diary, but it is heartbreaking to witness how late the people around her notice them.<\/span>
\nAnd of course, studying. There\u2019s no better way of describing what it is like to attend high school than the way Kira Poutanen did: to memorize unnecessary details, to constantly prepare for tests and pop quizzes, to be nervous about the results of a simple vocabulary test, to wake up early in the morning, to take the late afternoon bus home, and to change clothes in a tiny locker room along with everybody else.<\/span>
\nIt is painful to read all this, but we can empathize with Julia, and it feels good to know that we are not the only ones suffering. Moreover, we can also draw strength from the fact, that we\u2019ve been there, done that, we don\u2019t have memorize these kinds of things. It is salute to the work of the youth, and a bit of a reminder of what studying is like for teenagers.<\/span>
\n 
\nFrank, Anne: The Diary of a Young Girl<\/b>
\nNow that we are feeling sufficiently sorry for ourselves, and for anyone, who was ever damned to memorize at least one collocation, let\u2019s look at the bright side. Studying in itself is a productive, positive thing, that helps the individual as well as society to move forward, and is something you can do with joy \u2013 Anne Frank is the perfect example for that.<\/span>
\n\"\"
\nAnne lived in complete isolation with her family for two years \u2013 both of which she spent studying, so that she wouldn\u2019t drop behind her peers, and also to make herself useful. This was her window to the world \u2013 for her, this new knowledge was like the fresh air she couldn\u2019t breathe in. True enough, she herself chose the study material, and, apart from algebra, she really only did study things that caught her interest, and since she didn\u2019t have to prepare for any exams either, studying wasn\u2019t the primary source of her stress \u2013 for us, that might be a little different.<\/span>
\nIn the entry she wrote on May 16, 1944, she listed what the members of the Annex Family were studying. Her older sister, Margot decided to do most courses, but here\u2019s what Anne chose:<\/span>
\n\u201cAnne Frank. Shorthand in French, English, German and Dutch, geometry, algebra, history, geography, art history, mythology, biology, Bible history, Dutch literature; likes to read biographies, dull or exciting, and history books (sometimes novels and light reading).\u201d<\/span>
\nReading Anne\u2019s diary, we can look into another young girl\u2019s mind, we\u2019re there with her through her adolescence \u2013 setting history and their tragic situation aside, it is still a good read. We can witness her problematic relationship with her parents, how she separates herself from them, how she deals with confinement, but we can also read about her first love and her ambitions. She wanted to travel, to write, to learn even more \u2013 no matter the amount of stress it causes us, we can still be grateful for even getting the opportunity, even if it is not much of a consolation in tough situations.<\/span> \t \t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Throughout the whole term-time, you work hard to succeed on the tests, and even then, you have to sit there in the exam period, bent over books\u2026 At some universities it\u2019s the term-time that\u2019s tough, at others, it\u2019s the exam period \u2013 for us, it\u2019s both. Yet somehow, when medical students talk to their friends …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101958,"featured_media":3354,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[591],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-synapsis"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"1970-01-01 01:00:00","action":"","terms":[],"taxonomy":"","browser_timezone_offset":0},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/semmelweis.hu\/hok\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/semmelweis.hu\/hok\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/semmelweis.hu\/hok\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/semmelweis.hu\/hok\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/101958"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/semmelweis.hu\/hok\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/semmelweis.hu\/hok\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/semmelweis.hu\/hok\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/semmelweis.hu\/hok\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/semmelweis.hu\/hok\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/semmelweis.hu\/hok\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}