An Abrupt Departure

The students in my Tuesday and Thursday Oral English class from the Zhanjiang Normal University are graduating at the end of this semester. It seems hard to imagine my students going out into the real world in just a few short months. It will be a new experience for me to have students under me graduate and have them leave to find jobs.

I imagine that teachers who face this frequently are generally excited for their students. Happy to see them finish one part of their lives and begin a new part. Like they must, I also hope for the best for my students. I am anxious to find out what they will do and hope that they will want to stay in touch long enough for me to find out. At the same time, I am also a bit nervous for them.

All the while, I was thinking I would have at least another two months to prepare myself for this event. This afternoon I was given a surprise announcement by Apple and Vicky, two of my students, that they had taken jobs in Guangzhou and will be leaving Zhanjiang on Sunday. They will be back for exams and graduation near the end of January, but no more class.

With a rapidly growing economy, these are exciting times for the students in China. Their prospects today almost certainly look brighter than those of the generations just behind them that faced a civil war, the Great Leap Forward that left the country plagued with famine and the Cultural Revolution that declared war on the educated class. In comparison, now is a great time to be coming of age in China. But, China's development is far from complete.

In a country with 1.3 billion people, there would seem to be an endless supply of labor relative to the number of good jobs available, I think this works to hold down wages. This is most true in the case of unskilled labor, but even students with a college degree may be vulnerable. Previously, in Tianjin, a student from Tianjin Normal University told me that nearly five million students graduate from colleges each year in China. In the face of so much competition, he worried about finding a good job.

Many students, like Apple and Vicky, graduate and migrate to the big cities that have experienced faster development than other parts of the country. Cities like Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Shanghai are places where opportunity awaits any who will come and try their luck. Downsides are that the cities generally have a higher prevalence of crime, the students will often be far from family and friends and the simple fact that having so little money limits their mobility and leaves them susceptible to being stuck if they end up in a bad situation or job.

As China continues to grow, I know that there will be many opportunities for those who can find them and the situation will continue to improve. I may worry a bit for my students, but I know they are educated, capable and able to take care of themselves.

To celebrate their success, I took Apple (who is one of my best students) and Vicky to Pizza Hut this evening for dinner. It was their first time to visit Pizza Hut (cost prohibitive for most students) in the three years that they had been in Zhanjiang and I think it was a special treat for them. I'm hoping that the next time I visit Guangzhou, I'll have two happy and eager tour guides ready to show me around the city they call home and tell me all about their new careers.

Apple and Vicky, I wish you both the best of luck!