Adapting to Change

What if one day you realize that you have just won the ten million dollar lottery as you quickly flip through the newspapers while getting ready to rush off to work? The sudden flashes of changes in my life would certainly have me choking on my coffee! Back to reality, change is all around us in our everyday lives. Overnight, we had news of terrorist attacks and outbreaks of diseases that affected our lives significantly till today. Immigration laws and health regulation standards have moved a notch higher as a result. However, not all changes are bad. News on discoveries of new medicines could mean saving the life of a loved one.

As stated in the book “Who Moved My Cheese” by Dr. Spencer Johnson, people are generally uncomfortable with change; people won’t change unless they have to. Change brings about uncertainties and many people tend to associate the negative outcomes with change. Nevertheless, a quote by John F. Kennedy, “change is the law of life, and those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future,” clearly pointed out the need for us to deal with changes. I believe that adapting to change is important in every aspect of our lives.

During the first week at the freshmen orientation of university, I remember the resident director talking about the differences in transmission and experiential models of education in Singapore and the U.S. respectively. The presentation struck a chord with me as I recalled my experiences of my secondary school days. Tests and examinations meant memorizing as much information as you can from the textbooks, and regurgitating the related information required. A series of good grades had proved the method to be successful for me. It meant that studying at the last minute would work, and I could spend as much time as I wanted on computer games without worrying about revising my schoolwork every day. Apart from the hiccups in my language results, I passed my Cambridge “O” Levels examinations with distinctions and enrolled into junior college.

Similar to Hem and Haw, complacency grew on me and clouded my judgment. My failing grades were starkly in contrast with what I had achieved back in secondary school. I became very much of a concern to my tutors, whom sought to help through giving more remedial lessons, which I detested so much. Stubbornly denying their advice that burning the midnight oil was not the best method for scoring in exams, I continued with my procrastinating habits. Not surprisingly, the results justified the efforts put in my studies and I had to settle for a failure grade in my final examinations. In retrospect, if I was adaptable to the change my approach to studies and more responsive to the goodwill of my tutors, things would turn out more favorably. Nonetheless, failure did serve as an important lesson to me.

Through my second week in university, my siblings and I had to take up the household chores as my mother went through surgery to remove a tumor. I never realize that doing household chores were not as easy as what it seemed to be. Like Hem and Haw, taking things for granted and adjusting to the sudden change was not easy. I used to depend on my mother to do the cooking and the laundry and all of a sudden, I had to do it myself. In addition to exchanging criticisms of bad culinary skills between my siblings, I had a difficult time in managing my coursework. All these would have been better off if I had started somewhere earlier. Failure of adapting to change would mean no food and re-using dirty clothes!

Moreover, taking things for granted might