I don't know when it started, but among the engineering students I am with, there has been a rise in refined selfishness and extreme utilitarianism that makes me uncomfortable. After careful consideration, I believe this is a bad phenomenon of single-value measurement, quantifying time, and result-oriented thinking that has been passed down and developed under the influence of the college entrance examination education.
Cause#
The reason for thinking about this comes from the article "How Much Are You Worth" in the SJTU Manual, which I am very familiar with. Six years ago, when I first entered university, my mother also advised me not to "waste" my time on cheap labor. If I needed money, I could ask my family for it. In university, I should spend my time on studying and improving myself.
I used to agree with this, but after going through these years of twists and turns, I now have a different view.
Quantified Life and Time#
Every student trapped in the college entrance examination education has experienced the feeling of their personal value being quantified, and at the same time, their life's time being quantified. In most areas, the time in high school is fully utilized for studying for the college entrance examination. Time for physical education, personal rest and entertainment, and developing emotional life are all considered to be time lacking cost-effectiveness and are deprived. It's as if a person's energy is a constant-sized cake, and if these parts are cut away, there will be less left for academic studies.
In the article "How Much Are You Worth," readers will find a familiar feeling, as it also quantifies a person's time in a certain way, but here it is in terms of "worth" or "hourly wage," carrying a sense of capitalism devouring humanity. However, in terms of time and experience, college students have completely inherited the thinking mode of high school.
Overly Linear Ideal World#
In the eyes of engineering students, it seems that the world can always be simplified. Everything can be extracted as a "representation" or "variable" through mathematical modeling, and problems can be rationally transformed into "optimization problems." Assuming that these problems can be represented, perhaps such "optimization problems" are highly-dimensional nonlinear problems under the influence of emotional factors, or even discontinuous optimization problems, and their optimal solutions cannot be obtained.
In other words, when it comes to how a person should spend their time, absolute utilitarian thinking cannot be embraced.
Should We "Waste" Time or Not#
One of the great sorrows of being a problem-solving student in a small town is that as long as one is not studying or improving (the author is also a member of this group), it is considered a waste of time, causing a strong sense of guilt. Emphasizing that every period of time must be meaningful is like being forced to write reflections after a trip, which in itself makes things meaningless.
On the other hand, study time is not something that can be squeezed out. For most university students, their study time does not depend on how much free time they have, but on how much energy they can allocate to studying. Doing some labor unrelated to academics, exercising, or even "wasting time" to record personal experiences on a blog may all be ways to expand energy.
So I want to say, if necessary, go ahead and do it boldly, even if it means wasting a lot of time for meager gains. On one hand, it may make a tight life a little more comfortable, and on the other hand, it makes us cherish the time for studying and research even more. As long as the balance is maintained, there is no need to feel guilty about "wasting time".