Volunteering at Karinthy Primary School

I recently volunteered at a school in Budapest. The aim was to conduct a seminar with students aged 12-14. The school had a bilingual medium of schooling - English and Hungarian. This is something close to the English medium schools that are there in India, where English is taught from day one of school and all other subjects are also taught in English.

During the seminar, my colleague, Dan and I discussed a variety of issues, our experiences and any advice that we had for the kids. After the session, we also took a bunch of questions from the kids who attended the seminar. The whole experience was really amazing for me. There were several topics that I feel I handled well and a few others where I felt I could've done better. The whole experience was so beautiful that I decided to write about it here - sort of a mix of my experience conducting it and details of what I discussed, including issues I felt like I should've discussed better.

The principal of the school wanted us to conduct the seminar on 2 broad themes:

English

Why is it important? Our personal experiences in learning the language, it's role in multicultural corporate environments of MNCs etc.

I must admit that I was blessed to have had the opportunity to study at DPS RKP. In my school, we studied everything in English from day one. As a result, I've always been more comfortable in reading and writing in English over my native language, Hindi. However, until the age of 8 or 9, I did not like to speak in English too much. It wasn't because I wasn't good at it or was afraid of saying something wrong. I just didn't like to. I was more comfortable speaking in Hindi.

My family realised that it could pose a problem in the long run. My sister had always been amazing at English. She loved reading and as a result, she pushed me to get better in English through reading. By the time I was 10, I had developed a habit to read regularly. This stayed with me till I was 16. These 6 years of regular reading set up a strong foundation. The fact that all of my closest friends in high school were (and still are) amazing in English also helped. Most discussions, either related to studies or casual gossip, happened in English only. Hence, there were a variety of factors that contributed to the development of my English.

Over time I also realised the importance of the language. It helped me gain an edge over other people in group debates and discussions, in interviews for jobs/internships and during project presentations in class. When I started working as a Software Developer after my engineering, it gave me an edge over my peers. I could express my thoughts/ideas/solutions more clearly during meetings and presentations. The documentation for my projects was written in a very clear and crisp manner and my superiors found it very easy to read and understand my code. Even when communicating with people outside the firm (usually vendors of software packages), I was able to have effective communication. Now that I am working in an International firm in Budapest, English plays an even more important role than ever before since it is the only language (apart from very basic Hungarian) that I can use to communicate. I work with people from a lot of different countries and the ability to communicate effectively in English at work is of paramount importance.

What are some tricks and tips to learn English?

According to me, there are different tips and tricks that you can use. This depends on what your aim is and the methods that help you learn quicker. If you plan to improve in English as a language, I would suggest reading a lot. This helped me, my sister and even my parents who learned English at a much later stage of their lives as compared to me and my sister.

1. Read books and newspaper articles in English. Read 5-7 newspaper articles in English everyday, highlight words which you don't understand and look up their meaning.
2. I would also suggest reading books. Try and read authors coming from different regions or stories that are based in different locations across the world. This will give you insights into cultural differences and how the usage of words English varies in different parts of the world. It will also equip you with a wide variety of slang words which are unique to different cultures. You'll observe how a John Grisham is different from Philip Kerr and Satyajit Ray/Khushwant Singh.
3. It's not enough to just be able to read and understand English. Try writing and speaking in English as much as possible as well.

For a lot of people, knowing English is not the issue. The issue is understanding different accents and being able to speak in a manner that others can understand. I faced this problem when I first came to Hungary. I had a strong Indian accent. Even though my English was grammatically correct and it wasn’t too hard for people to understand me (I hope) when I spoke at a slow pace, it was difficult for them to comprehend what I said if I went too fast (which typically happened during presentations). So over time I had to neutralise my accent. I also had to adjust myself to be able to understand other people's accents. For this, I would suggest watching English TV series and movies without dubbing them in your language and without subtitles. Use subtitles in English as well if it’s hard in the beginning. If you don't get certain phrases, watch them again and look them up on the internet. It may kill the joy of watching the shows in the beginning but it will reap huge rewards in the long run. Before you know it, you'll be able to watch them in one go without subtitles.

Moving abroad

The principal of the school was really concerned about a lot of kids wanting to move abroad. She was worried that the kids don't understand the consequences of such decisions. In addition, it hurts the country in the long run too. She wanted us to kind of show the students that moving abroad is NOT the only solution and that Hungary is not a bad place and a lot of people come to Hungary as well for better opportunities. The aim was not to discourage the students from moving abroad but informing me well before they made such a decision.

Moving abroad is a big step in anyone's life. It involves a sudden and big change in your environment and lifestyle and it's not always easy to adjust when it happens. It's DEFINITELY NOT as easy as it looks in movies, TV series etc. and it's definitely not as happy as the Facebook and Instagram posts of your friends who have moved abroad.

Moving abroad is definitely an exceptional experience. You meet new people from different cultures. You get to see places you've only read about or watched on your TV screens before. You learn new things and you also teach other people about things that they may not know about where you come from. It's certainly an enriching experience in many ways. For those of you who are obsessed with social media, it also gives you an unlimited source of content to post on Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook. That said, what you don't see is the cost at which all this comes at. This is something that no movie will show you. This is the cost that your friends won't post on Facebook about since we all like to show the best version of ourselves on the internet. So it’s important that you see this side too before you make that decision. In order to explain it better, I won't just draw from my own personal experiences but also from those of a large bunch of my friends and relatives who have moved abroad.

Life isn't always rosy once you're abroad. Once the honeymoon phase of moving abroad fades away, reality slowly starts to sink in. You realise that there's no close friends and family that act as a safety net once you're abroad - at least not immediately. You have to do nearly everything on your own and things do get quite hard at times. In a lot of situations, you don't even have anyone to share all this burden with. Even though it's quite easy to stay in touch with family and friends back home in today’s world, you don't feel like telling them anything that might worry them. It happens quite often that you feel extremely lonely once you're abroad. Maybe it's because you miss your family, or because the girl you love has fallen ill or there's some personal struggle you're going through. The reasons will range from a major festival that is celebrated back home to your sister having a baby. Whatever the reason may be, this feeling of loneliness is the biggest cost of moving abroad. You can try and offset this cost by making new friends. That definitely helps. I am blessed to have the friends I have found in Budapest but still, it will never feel the same. Time and again, this feeling of loneliness comes up and you have to be strong inside and just ride it out. Be brave. This is the one cost of moving abroad that you can never truly account for.

If the loneliness isn't enough, there's the cultural disconnect that you will start feeling after a while. On one hand, you will miss the cultural practices that happen back home - the festivals with friends and family, the food, the favourite pub etc. On the other hand, you will feel like you're the odd one out in the new environment. Whenever you move abroad, you will have to adapt and get used to the culture and lifestyle of the new place. It could be anything from changing the way you dress to changing what you eat or speaking a new language. No matter how well you do it, there will still be a cultural disconnect that you will feel. There will be things that will excite you that others won't even care about and vice versa. I guess this cultural detachment or isolation is what pushes people to find others from their own country in a foreign land. This is why the Chinese will stick with Chinese and the Indians tend to look for other Indians. I wish I could say that this is enough.

On top of it all, there’s the financial aspect of moving abroad. On a lot of occasions, moving abroad involves things like giving up your current job, taking a loan to fund education etc. All of this puts extra pressure on people to perform - doing extra jobs on the side, trying to get the best possible grades and at the same time, spend as little as possible on expenses. When combined together, a lot of people start feeling under too much pressure. Pressure that they can’t even release or share with others.

While I can't put an absolute number to the cost of moving abroad, I can surely tell you that they are significant. In addition, these costs vary from person to person and hence, people make different decisions.

1. Some people are glad that they moved abroad, don't plan to come back home but settle abroad. Reasons may vary from a better standard of living to an unstable domestic or socio-political environment back at home.
2. There are others who live to regret their decision to move abroad. They do not assess the costs of moving abroad carefully and as a result they come back sooner than they planned initially. I have had friends who went out to study abroad but couldn't adjust too well and came back before finishing their studies or as soon as they finished their studies. This is bad, especially if you end up coming back in the middle. Imagine you spend about $60,000 to study abroad for a year but come back without getting anything in return. This is what happens when you don't assess the costs of moving abroad correctly.
3. I also have friends who assessed these costs perfectly, decided to move abroad for a certain time period to study/work and gain exposure but with a view to come back home eventually.
4. At the same time, there are people who realise that the costs of moving abroad are higher than the returns that they're going to get. For them, family and the feeling of serving their own country is more important. As a result, they decide against moving abroad.

The above options are just some of the several other possible decisions that you can make. I guess the key message is that whenever you decide, you assess the cost and returns of the decision properly before making that decision. It's like buying clothes at a mall. Once you like something, you also look at the cost and decide if it's worth it or not (unless you're super rich and in that case, I guess moving abroad is just as much fun for you as shopping). The only difference is that with life, there's no number to the cost and the payment doesn't happen upfront. The cost is how much you value the things you're going to lose once you move abroad and you will have to bear this cost at every step of the time you spend away from home.

The biggest mistake that you can do is to look at only what you're going to get as a result of moving abroad and not consider the cost at which it will come or vice versa (keep looking at costs and ignore the returns). That is how people end up making decisions that they live to regret. One thing I can tell you for sure is that the weight of regret only grows heavier with time. So try and not do something you regret for a significant part of your future life.