The first time I read the expression “life happens” was in a syllabus of an online course that I was reviewing. The professor indicated that he understood there would always be reasons for students to not complete course work, because “life happens.” In the case of “life happens,” he asked students to communicate with him: “No response, no explanation, or showing no sign of life will result in an F!”

Over the years, the strict yet humorous tone of that syllabus stuck in my mind. And so did the notion of “life happens.”

Life happens. As much as you try to take control, life sometimes just takes its own course of action.

Then, on January 29, 2018, life happened to me.

My doctor told me that I had cancer. At least, that’s what I heard when she said the biopsy indicated that the nodule on my thyroid was not benign.

When life like this happens, one quick decision to make is who do I tell?

One group of people on my tell-or-don’t-tell list is my students. Most of them have been studying Chinese with me for a year and a half. This was the fourth consecutive quarter we’ve been together. I remembered the syllabus that stressed “life happens.” Shouldn’t this be a chance to tell students that life could happen to the professors as well? I also thought of the student development theory that said the social and emotional gains students made in college were much greater than the intellectual ones. If that is the case, should I use this crisis as an opportunity to role model a way to respond to life happening? I decided to share the news with my students and continue my teaching.

Teaching

The next day in class, after we’d done the daily quiz and pre-lesson dance (yes, we dance in every class to pump oxygen into our brain!), I made the announcement. After a moment of silence, students started to react: “Oh, no, Laoshi (teacher), it is not true!” “You will be OK, Laoshi!”

 “Of course I will be!” I assured them before moving on to the lesson.

The lesson ended up to be the best one I ever had. The class was as active as it had always been, but I felt those eyes of students affixed on me even when I stopped lecturing. Only one student pulled out his phone. When class ended, a few students lingered. One told me that his mother had the same problem and was fine after treatment. Another told me “thyroid cancer is treatable, I just checked the Internet.” He was the one who just broke my no-cell-phone rule in class!

In the next class, Will, a tall and quiet student approached me after class. “Laoshi, my dad is a doctor. I asked him. He said you will be fine.”

Leaving the classroom, I felt a strong sense of humanity, as if I’d just had a nice gathering with family and friends. My classroom became a place where care and empathy were shared among humans, regardless of what role we were serving.

In our last class before my surgery, I told the students that my plan was to move my teaching online during my two weeks medical leave, but the Chinese Studies program had offered to get me a substitute teacher. I asked them if they would study online with me or go with a substitute teacher.

“Ni!” They answered unanimously. “Ni” means “you” in Chinese.

“I figured you would say this,” I shook my head and teased, “I already said no to the offer. Who, other than me, would pick up a bunch of spoiled kids like you?”

When class ended, Will walked up to the podium and said, “Laoshi, can I give you a hug?”

I hugged him and laughed, “You really are very tall!” Just recently he was complaining about being stared at while he was traveling in China because of his height.

Another student waved at me, “Laoshi, Jiayou!” A word we just learned in class for cheering on a sports team!

Then, for the next two weeks, teaching took place—on my phone!

As an online learning designer, I finally had a chance to practice on myself. I had one lesson to cover during these two weeks. The topic was on the Chinese New Year, which happened to be taking place in real time. Life happened in a coordinated fashion.

I posted the video of the lesson on our learning management system, and shared a document summarizing the learning goals and assessment methods. The rest of the activities would take place on WeChat, a social media app that had become ubiquitous in China. A few months ago, I had written a blog on teaching by texting. So here came Episode II.

I delegated character learning to students just like in our regular face to face class. For the four grammar structures, I typed them up on WeChat (It was nice that WeChat has the option of either recording or typing your message, because for a couple of days I wasn’t able to talk due to post-operative voice fatigue). Students then jumped in to either speak or write a sentence using the grammar structure. I was able to provide instantaneous response to each post, thanks to the message alert on my phone.

WeChat screen captures: Students are on the left of the screen; I am on the right.

WeChat captured the one-on-one interaction I had with a student while the others observed and learned from it. It also served as a platform for my students and me to establish a personal connection and share life events—especially when those events related to our topics of learning. To me, teaching becomes holistic when students are part of my life and I am part of theirs.

Left: I used a grammar structure to explain flowers made of vegetables.
Right: A family photo of mine to demonstrate Chinese New Year’s Eve dinner.

Learning

While being able to teach created a sense of normalcy for me while “life happened,” it was learning—through reading and reflection—that enabled my own emotional growth. Just when I felt like I was drowning in a sea of information on cancer, survival rates and mortality, one day I walked into my office and found a book lying on my desk —When Breath Becomes Air. Stuck on its cover was a note from a colleague. Gently she suggested that I read this book instead of seeking answers on the Internet.

When Breath Becomes Air was written by Paul Kalanithi, a thirty-six-year-old neurosurgeon who was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. The book chronicles Paul’s life journey, from a biology and English literature student, to a neurosurgeon, to a patient confronting his own mortality. As I read the book, I found myself identifying with Paul in a number of things: fate, life, calling, and literature.

Fate: Getting a Share of “Life Happenings”

Imagine a thirty-six-year-young and sharp-as-a-tack neurosurgeon who had been working 100 hours a week for six years as a resident doctor, just a few more months away from his dream job of a neuroscience professor at Stanford, and all of a sudden struck by this terminal disease. Life didn’t just happen. Life seemed determined to tear him apart!

Yet Kalanithi never asked the question of “why me,” because—as he said in the book—he knew the question would be “why not me?”

Comparing myself with Kalanithi or anyone, I felt that I had been most fortunate—my 49 years of life were mostly an intensive experience of happiness. I was also the one in the best condition to receive “life happenings” as I have surrounded myself with a strong support system from home, work, and everywhere in between. So, I too didn’t have any complaint when the news arrived. The difference is that I survived and Paul didn’t. In fact, even the timing worked out perfectly. The tumor I had—which had been called and treated as cancer—turned out to be “benign” thanks to its reclassification by medical doctors in the field. So once again, I found myself favored by life. The worry and the pain of going through the surgery were merely my share of life.

Life: How to Budget It?

The word “budget” emerges when you are dealing with things with limits. When it comes to life, the idea of budgeting it hits when the limit becomes clear and present. Paul Kalanithi’s effort to set up goals based on the “if-then” situations reminded me of those goals of my mothers. She was 72 when I was pregnant with my son. I remember her telling me that her goal was to live until after I finished my “month”—a term that Chinese people use to describe the first month after delivering a baby. In Chinese culture, receiving good care during “month” would impact a woman’s health for a lifetime.

A year later, my daughter arrived, and my mom repeated her goal of taking care of me through “the month” before she would allow herself to die. After those “months” passed, Mom said she would try to take care of the kids until they both got to school age. Twelve years later, I told my 84-year-old mother that since kids could pretty much take care of themselves after school, she didn’t have to come to our house and prepare dinner for them. “Then,” she said, “What’s the point of me living?”

I think my mom has obviously figured out the question that Kalanithi had been wrestling with: what makes life worth living in the face of death? Small as it might seem, the value that she saw herself carry was the driving force of her life.

About Responding to a “Calling”

I knew that medical doctors, especially those who worked as surgeons, had very demanding (and hence highly paid) jobs. But little had I known how demanding it could be until I read When Breath Becomes Air.

A hundred hours a week! Nine-hours-long surgery! Falling asleep in the car in the parking lot before driving 15 minutes to get home! Collapsing on the living room floor before being able to walk to the bedroom!

Who would put themself through that kind of pain even for the sake of money? I thought. Then I read Kalanithi’s description about doing so for a calling. And at the same time, I met a life version of Kalanithi in my own operation room: Dr. Moo-Young, the surgeon who treated me physically and mentally with exceptional surgical skills and upbeat spirit.

According the Medscape Physician Compensation 2017 Report, “gratitude/relationship with patients” was the top choice selected by physicians as the most awarding aspect of their job. It was followed by “being very good at what I do/find answers, diagnosis.” It was not the high salary. I started to develop greater respect for those who work in the medical field—the doctors, the nurses, and the pharmacists. The respect then expanded to all who had made the choice of making what Kalanithi called “a virtuous and meaningful life.” And that includes those who had the luck to touch people’s life by teaching!

Literature: The Power of Words

In his 22-month battle with cancer, Kalanithi said he found more answers to the question of life and death from literature than medical sources. Like Ernest Hemingway, who first immersed himself in experiencing life and then withdrew to write about it, Kalanithi made the choice of writing about his story while facing his own mortality. While literature enriched Kalanithi’s life when he was living, it connected him to life when he was dying.

I thought back to a couple of months ago. On the deck of a cruise ship people gathered: sipping wine, bathing in the sun, chatting with their peers…or working on a computer. Actually there was one person working on his computer—my father, a professional writer who at age 86 still refused to retire. He turned his screen to me and showed me a Word document with a title page that read “Story of the Nuns in Fuji Mountain (Manuscript for a 40-episode TV Series).” He’s starting a new project: a World War II story with materials that he and I had gathered in Japan many years ago. I looked at this bald man, his eyes glistening with hope, his hands busy typing. I decided not to lecture him on the reality of today’s television market (like who would ever fund such a high-cost war-themed TV series?).  Instead, I pulled out my phone and recorded him working on his TV series. I knew this recording would be the best TV episode I could use to show my kids how to live their lives to a fulfilling ending!

Wrapping up this longest blog I’ve ever written, I just want to tell you: when life happens, teaching may sustain you. And learning can be enormous!