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VietNamNet Bridge – The lure of electronic games, gambling, fashionable clothes and high-faluting accents . . . the pitfalls are many for students from countryside who aspire to become townspeople.
Lan left her home village for her first year at Hanoi National Universityscarcely a month ago. Already she has changed herself so much that her high school classmates cannot recognize her. The timid and uncommunicative bookworm has become a brisk, joyful and fashionable girl.
The classmates have concluded that the noisy life in the big city has affected Lan and turned her into quite a different person. When Lan was still at high school, all she cared about was that she had to learn a great deal so she’d pass the university entrance exams with high marks.
On her arrival in Hanoi, however, Lan decided immediately to make over her image to fit the life in the city. She has spent money on clothes and fashion. She’s gradually learned to speak her mind and behave boldly.
Lan is something of a success story. A lot of other students from the countryside only change themselves for the worse when they seek to become ‘city people.’
Tuan came to the Hanoi Commercial University from the central region. All of his fellow students are northerners. He decided that he should learn to speak with the accent of the northern region, lest his heavy accent cause other people to misunderstand. Tuan believes that this is necessary if he is to integrate into the new ‘community,’ city people with their northern accent.
However, Tuan got in trouble with his new way of speaking. After his father heard him talking with neighbors in the northern accent, Tuan was chewed out for being ashamed of his roots and not wanting to remember where he is from.
A small village background also gave Van, a student at Dong Do private university, an inferiority complex. She decided to wear fashionable clothes and use luxury products to keep up with classmates who all came from rich families. She phoned her parents to insist that she needs to commute to school on an expensive scooter instead of a motorbike, just like all her classmates.
Van believes that she has become a stylish girl who is not in the same social class as her high school classmates any more. Not surprisingly, Van no longer has friends to share experiences and learn together. She only has the ones with whom she goes shopping or playing.
The ‘fatal traps’ in the capital city
Duc passed the university entrance exam with a score of 28/30. His high marks did not surprise anyone, because Duc was always the best student in his high school class. Now, however, this once excellent student, the hope and pride of his family, does not even know when he will take his semester exams.
“Why should I care what exams I have to take or when? I won’t pass them, anyhow,” he said.
Duc was called ‘Robot’ when he was a high school student. At that time, Duc thought that his life had been programmed already, and Duc only had to do two things: eat and learn.
It’s quite different now. Duc only has one pastime — computer games. Duc goes to an Internet café to play games every day instead of to the lecture hall, and lives in a ‘virtual world’ instead of enjoying the real life.
Viet does not get bogged down in games like Duc, but he has another addiction: gambling. Viet has ‘burnt’ his money in gambling and his main occupation now is ‘gambler’ instead of ‘student.’ That is why Viet has had to change schools three times. He is still only a first year university student, though he first entered a lecture hall three years ago.
It is true that people have to change themselves to adapt to a new life. However, not everyone knows how they should change themselves.
VietNamNet/VnMedia
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