Dear students & teachers,

Hello, everyone! Welcome back to our beautiful campus. We have had a really difficult time, and many of our students have been away from school for more than 5 months. All of us have gone through a lot. What should we do in this VUCA era?

Perhaps, only by building a strong inner world can we take it easy when facing and handling those challenges. However, before we construct our inner world and accumulate our energy, we must first try to discover and find ourselves so that we may be able to find a bigger world, stand the test of various hardships in life, overcome difficulties and face up to challenges.

What are we supposed to find out about ourselves? I hope all students will find out at least the following 4 aspects by keep learning and practising.

Firstly, learning is your own responsibility. Everyone begins the process of learning from birth. As long as they live in a normal and healthy society, they can learn to walk and talk on their own even without being taught by parents, and when they learn to talk, they will keep asking, "What is this?" "Why is that? "What's the matter with that? "What should I do? "......" In order to improve ourselves, everyone is born to learn. In this sense, learning can be considered as an intrinsic genetic capacity.

Education, on the other hand, gradually came into existence so as to make everyone learn better. In essence, schooling provides an external condition and environment to support students' learning. Therefore, all students must be aware that they must learn independently, they must be responsible for their own learning, and no one else can affect their efforts paid in learning and the results they will get accordingly.

Secondly, find your dreams and set your goals in life. If you don’t aim high, it will be hard for you to navigate; Without setting the right goal, you will feel less motivated. Students should set their goals in life during high school years. They should weave dreams and set goals in life through their own thinking and analysis, and based on their own reality and needs, then they should study hard and take every action to realize their dreams and achieve their goals so that they may become self-motivated in improving and transcending themselves.

Thirdly, people are different from one another. People are born different, and each person should "find out” how he or she is different from others. When it comes to learning, not only each student is advantageous or disadvantageous in his or her learning potentials, but also they may learn different things in their own preferred style, at their preferred time and place, so the results of their learning may vary. 

Therefore, everyone should be clearly aware of the differences among people, and stop comparing with others but with yourself. “Have I done better than yesterday? If I work hard today, will I do even better tomorrow?” I believe each student will make him or herself better and better by keeping improving little by little and step by step.

Fourthly, develop your own interests and strengths. Each student should try to "discover" his or her own strengths, and pay special attention to the cultivation of interests, the formation of hobbies and the development of strengths. People tend to achieve success in areas where they are advantaged, so each student should gradually find their own advantages in the process of learning and practice through comparison, analysis, summary and reflection, and devote more time and effort to making more extensive and in-depth study so that they may turn their advantages into their own interests and hobbies, then their strengths, and even their majors which require their further studies and their careers. In this way, you will probably harvest a better and successful life.

How can we better “discover”ourselves? Today, I want to discuss the following 4 points.

Firstly, learn to make choices in practices. Engagement is the first step on the road leading to success. Without engagement, there is no possibility of success. We should experience in learning by attending various courses offered by school and feel in practice by participating in all kinds of school activities; We should discover ourselves and gradually make our own choices through constant comparison and analysis. "Choice produces responsibility" : On one hand, choice is an indispensable ability in the process of everyone's growth and development. We should try to establish our own values and standards of our own choice and develop the ability to make sensible choices. On the other hand, all of us should learn to be responsible for our own choices, "you will make progress and achieve success because you’ve made right choices", but "you will also have to bear the risk of failure for your wrong choices".

Secondly, practise with faith. No one’s life is always trouble-free. “Isn’t it true that a rainbow always appears after a storm?" Everyone is likely to experience repeated setbacks and failures after making a choice. At this time, we need a strong will to hold on to the choice we have made, and we need to stick to our faith and move forward. "Confidence is the key to success". No one can achieve success easily. A loser may have just failed once but never has the courage to stand up, while a winner may have failed countless times but is never discouraged and finally succeeds.

Therefore, we must have every confidence in ourselves and our success, and try to take action to achieve our goals. Meanwhile, I must tell each student: when you look back on your past life, you won’t feel regretful even if the result is not satisfactory because you kept trying and fighting and had a worthwhile process.

Thirdly, improve yourself by self reflection. While learning and working, no one’s dreams and goals will remain unchanged. If such changes make sense, it might actualy means that we choose to stick to our faiths in a different way, which requires even more wisdom.

There are opportunities everywhere in our society, and they are always waiting for those who are prepared for them. Our society is always changing, and everyone is likely to face many opportunities. The key to our success lies in whether we can find new opportunities and seize them by summarizing and reflecting on our past and present, and our interests and strengths.

Fourthly, devote ourselves to a great cause with gratitude. Finally, I would like to point out that to "discover" ourselves also means that we also need to find out our relationship with others, with nature, and with society. To find out our relationship with others, we need to  realize that when we grow up, no one, including our parents, has to be nice to us and devote everything to us. Whether to be nice to us or be devoted to us is the choice of others, and if they are, you should be grateful to them and try to repay them with gratitude. Meanwhile, you should also understand: when you choose to be kind to others, or be dedicated to them, you shall not require reciprocation but just are willing to do so.  Perhaps in this way, you can face life more calmly, accept the various interactions between you and others and the consequences of those interactions, and thus you will live a more peaceful and pleasant life.

In terms of our relationship with nature and society, we need to realize that an individual is so tiny in nature and society. We need to keep devoting ourselves to a more beautiful nature and a better society with a gratitude for all the gifts given by nature and society, and we need to pay respect to nature, and comply with our society.

Facing the rapid development of artificial intelligence and its applications today, facing the universe we still know little about, and facing the philosophy and ethics which may need to be rebuilt in the future, we can only further develop ourselves through discovering ourselves. Only through discovering ourselves can we find a bigger world, have a deeper thinking, a bigger vision of ourselves, mankind and the universe, and can we make a more realistic plan for ourselves and better improve ourselves so that we may become Chinese people who can blend in with the world and illuminate it.