Under Pressure

Yesterday was the last day of classes and that means the beginning of the Christmas vacation that we teachers and students get every year. And that also means that I would be finally getting some break from the hectic schedule I have had in the past weeks and that’s a very nice and refreshing idea.

Not that I am complaining. I love my work. I reckon educators are among the noblest in occupation. And besides, I had always prided myself for almost always wanting to have work at hand and have my hands full and do abhor to be doing nothing and getting paid for doing nothing, in contrast to NBA stars, to be doing what they do best and still be getting paid very handsomely for it. We all desire to be like that, don’t we all?

But just to sit around and getting paid for being that is just not my style. Although I have a feeling that it is just the style of some if not many people in our midst.

My work motto was “I work best under pressure”. Although I must admit that it’s not an original motto of mine. When I was an editor in chief of a college publication back in my college days, I once had found myself interviewing this lanky and fair bespectacled lad who had applied for a position in the school publication. I asked him that since he was an accounting major as I am, and that I know how hard it is to be one, could he handle more work as a news reporter? He had said so gallantly and so confidently, like an unbending soldier, that indeed he would be able to handle that and that if he could describe himself, he had said that “he works best under pressure”.

I was awed of course by his answer and plus the way he spoke it in flowing English, I was ultimately impressed. So in short he was a shoo-in.

I kept thinking about that motto, or principle, or dogma or whatever that kind of thing is termed as. I even had some feeling of envy on why I didn’t thought about that for myself as it came to me as an original idea. I thought a little that he was a humbug (His name by the way is Mr. Jason Teng and he is a CPA now). What if I put him in a pressure cooker, could he work the finest? Now that’s just kidding on my part.

But I hope he won’t mind if I’d be using it to describe my work attitude. In fact I had already used it once or twice before just to impress somebody.

But hey, with all the pressure from work I had most recently, I’d be careful in declaring that motto. So I guess I have to say, “I work best even without pressure”. Now that sounds better.