I used to believe I lived by Voltaire’s quotation “My job is to say what I think”, but, to be candid, a more appropriate motto would be “My job is to say the opposite of what others think.” I mean, I had, in the five years, at Tsinghua International School, advocated Hume’s skepticism, Democritian materialism, and even Holocaust denial regardless of my personal beliefs. That type of personality has been the most helpful in developing my mental alacrity, logical analysis, and proper usage of evidence which are valued greatly by American culture.

Then, if I have the qualities valued by contemporary Americans, why do I still suffer in this school where the curriculum is fundamentally American? Part of it has to do with my teachers despising that particular personality quirk. The behavior progress report even has a nice name for not being contrarian, “Refraining from peer correction.” But that only a subsidiary issue. By far, the prevailing reason comes from another thing also valued by American culture; that is Collaboration. As nice as, sharing our gifts, ideas, and talents, and working together to solve problems sound, collaboration is as practical as Classical Communism and as helpful as the plague.

No, to those who accuse, I do not abhor collaboration because it is at odds with my mental belligerence. It is because of the human inclination to defer tasks to others whenever possible. So when a teacher begins saying “Look how nice I am, I am actually giving you less work because each of you only needs to do half of it“, I wonder if America’s debt and the War on Terror would be over if students ran the public institutions.

I still recall the day my ambiguity towards group work and collaboration collapsed and I joined the resistance against its overwhelming and malevolent sphere of influence. But tensions were building ever since I entered this school. Those two things were like the clouds that block the sun, or the mire that traps anyone foolish enough to cross it. That is, the classwork I could finish in ten minutes took me an hour because I had, in the words of my fifth grade school teacher, to help my teammates who aren‘t exactly Einstein and Mozart.

If collaboration is my enemy who tortures may by the day and by the hour, then my fifth grade teacher, Jeremy Scaramuzzi, whom we refered to as „“the coffee dude“, would be its leader, organizer and commander. He was the one who pitted me against that hydra. He was the one who utilized collaboration to its greatest potential by placing me with the most redundant people. In fact, by that fateful day in which I began hating collaboration, which was only in the middle of the school year, I was forced to face collaboration no less than 354 times. As I have learned also that day, the hard way, Jeremy hid a mind of Napoleon and Tamerlane behind his warm exterior of smiley-faced doors and cute guinea pigs. He was able to entice me to make a very foolish move and then punish me accordingly somewhere in a schoolday schedule populated by Mesoamerican human sacrifice rituals, Orwellian propaganda promoting groupwork, and then doublethink. In other words, we had a schedule of morning meeting, the typical classes, and then afternoon meeting.

It happened like this; at the beginning math class Jeremy said “Today you will do a project“

I was praying “Oh please not in groups“.

“in groups“ Jeremy continued.

“Oh please not a poster“

“You have to do a poster.“

Oh yes, that was probably when I got wind that this wasn’t going to be an enjoyable class. But then, one can always hope for the better. “Oh please don’t put me with Emily and Eric“, I continued hoping

“And Tony,“ Jeremy said, “You‘re going to be with Bob and Joe.“

You see his genius? By assigning a group poster, and by assigning me with two completely redundant people, one who smells like the less refined places of Beijing, I had an ideal circumstance of messing around and not doing my work. Thus, I ran around in circles trying to avoid that disgusting groupmate who did a spectacular job cooperating by chasing me around.

Jeremy in concord with his plan, caught me and told me to sit in a corner. When I opened my mouth to explain he said the most ridiculous and injust words a teacher can possibly say, “I don’t even want to hear your explanation. Your going to have a talk with Debbie Kurtzburg, the primary director, again.“ That, a kangaroo trial, was a violation of the Declaration of the Rights of the Man and Citizen.“

I was still shaken when I walked back from that torture session. To my great surpise, they finished the poster without my help. Yes, you would think that after this revelation and two and a half more years of more groupwork, I would have not only recognized its value, but also become a master at it. But, as God is my witness, that has never happened, yet. I might have reconciled with Jeremy and the 5th grade and even recognized their importance, but collaboration is still the cloud that blocks the sun and the mire that traps anyone foolish enough to cross it. Alas, I gues s I am more of the person who eats freeze-dried noodles while checking Weibo than the sociable American erudite. “So be it“, I say, I, after living all these years in Beijing, prefer its ridiculous translations and Oriental toilets to America’s blind men tramping of into the forest with Tommy guns and Terminator-governors.