Teacher, do you think your life is interesting?

The question, and the student's unexpectedly depressing reply to my answer, caught me off guard a little bit. I am teaching English, and though I don't enjoy it, the money is decent. Today, during a tutoring session, one of my students mentioned that they would like to become an archaeologist later in life. So I pulled out my laptop and showed some pictures of the archaeological dig I participated in during the summer of 2006 in Rome. As I showed the photos, class ended, and I was packing up my stuff when the student asked, "Teacher, do you think your life is interesting?"

"Uhh... on the whole, I guess, yeah." About half of my students are of the type that enjoy studying English in their free-time, and this was one of the more enthusiastic of those. "Why do you ask? Don't you think your life is interesting?" I asked.

"Everyday is the same as the one before and the one after. It's all study and work.", came the reply. This was especially surprising given that summer vacation is still in session for Chinese students. Ordinarily, the Chinese students I'm familiar with just seem to accept that their lot is to work hard as students and do as their parents wish. I tried to explain that working hard now was a way to have fun and do interesting things later, or something to that effect, but the sentiment wasn't genuine.

Really, I was just happy that I never had that type of pressure, and that I was never part of a system where the numbers are so stacked against each student.