Embrace Change or Get Left Behind… A glimpse thought of a Non-Teaching Personnel in an Educational Institution

Change is constant. Everything undergoes changes.

If change is going to happen anyway, why do we often resist changes in our lives? Maybe we get comfortable with the life we have been used to. Maybe we are afraid to lose, fail, and get rejected.

We also resist changes because we go through some difficulty adjusti ng.

Few years ago, since I learned to drive a car. Driving a manual transmission car is never easy because one needs to simultaneously control the break, clutch, gas, and the steering wheel while looking at the 180 degrees of the road while it’s moving.

For me to master driving skills, initially, I drove just one route.

I did not want to change my route because I was afraid I’d get lost, that I’m would get into an accident that my, as yet inadequate skills would not work.

A few years ago, my husband decided to go abroad for a better future. Just like learning how to drive, that separation has not been easy. It rankles me even now.

But one has to move on; so I did by keeping myself busy, in school and at home.

Almost a year from now, due to COVID-19 pandemic, much of the workforce is grappling with a new normal which I think, no clear end in sight specifically in education sector wherein there is a massive and abrupt shift to remote learning.

Indeed, non-teaching personnel like me is at particularly high risk of losing the job.

Thank God I didn’t lose my job, I’m still working in the company though there are quite adjustments in pay and in working hours.

Learning how to drive, far from loved ones, and career challenges: these all introduced changes. Difficult? Stressful?

Yes but I embraced it all! Doing so made me realize who and what mattered most in life - family, friends, who accepted without question. Made me focus on what's essential in career, relationships, and life. As Winston Churchill said “A pessimist sees a difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty.” Embrace change and learn how to deal with it, applying the time-tested values handed by our el der s.

And at the same time, perceiving them from the current dimension of our modern world.

Hopefully, a balance will be achieved and the result will be fruitful.