What do you do

to buck the system?

My daughter’s part-time job as a university student in Japan is teaching/tutoring at what they call a ‘juku’ (塾), or ‘cram school’. It’s an after-school classroom where kids catch up, maintain, or get ahead in their studies, especially in preparation for entrance exams at high school and college. Lyndi’s been there almost her whole time at university and was planning to keep going until spring, when she gets her degree and starts her regular job.

I was talking with her on the phone last night and asked, “How’s your job going?” What I really meant was “How is your real job going?” as in the one she’ll start in spring; the college-senior, new hires/soon to be rookie workers are called in now and then to do orientation/familiarization stuff for the company so I thought she might have some news. But she thought I was talking about the juku.

L-I quit my job.

D-What?!

-I’m going to start another juku.

I either misheard or she forgot to add ‘at’ and so I thought, “My daughter has quit the electronics company she hasn’t even started at and start her own night school? What the deuce?!”

D-You’re going to start your own school!?

L-Uh, no. I’m quitting my current juku and am going to another, a little closer to home.

-Ahh. But you’re still set to be an employee at X after graduation, right?

-(laugh) Yeah. Just changing to another juku.

-Okay. But why are you changing? I thought you liked Z juku.

-I do, and actually I didn’t want to change. I really liked that job.

-So why are you leaving? You’re almost done.

-They’re making me wear a mask. And I don’t want to wear one.

-…….

-…….

D-You are my princess!

She laughed.

D-You knew I’d like to hear this, didn’t you?

L-Uh…Yeah.

I guessed that her boss at the local branch didn’t want her to go but was following orders from the central office in Tokyo.

“Yeah, he even got the mask rule changed for me. He said instead of October I didn’t have to start wearing it until December.”

-When people wear masks anyway, huh? And that would have been already pretty close to your graduation, right?

-Yeah. But I’m not wearing one, so I quit.

There you are. Perhaps it’s a small thing- a college student changing from one part-time job to another. But she had to give up something. She liked her boss and co-workers. She liked going downtown. She liked her students that she’d become close to over the last couple years. She was good at the tutoring, and quite comfortable and it was an easy job for her. It would have been only a couple months more after the December rule enforcement. They probably would have had a party for her after four years there. How many friends and family would have told her, “Oh, just suck it up for a couple months. What’s the big deal?”

But she left. She wasn’t going to let the suits in Tokyo tell her to wear the damned mask. I think it’s a pretty good story and I’m proud of her.

The system is evil but we don’t have to always fall in line. One question I want to ask on the USA Interview Blitz is this: What do you do to buck the system? It could be small or big, but you gotta have something.

Photo of little girl leaving the darkness and walking to the light by Jonathan Smith on Unsplash. Thank you Jonathan!