The quintessential phrase I learned in Thai was “mai pen rai”, translating to “no problem,”don’t worry” or “no biggie.” My adaptation of a more go-with-the-flow outlook occurred this summer as I volunteered teaching English to elementary school students in the Land of Smiles, also known as Thailand. Joining three other Georgetown students with [the student-run NGO Learning Enterprises](https://www.learningenterprises.org/), I embarked on a seven-week discovery of what “letting things be” was really about.

The Thai way of being and learning taught me-Teacher Deven, as my students fondly called me-what I value in education and in life. The Thai attitude helped solidify my beliefs in what a college education should do. As a new transfer student to the College from the School of Nursing and Health Studies, I embrace Georgetown’s Jesuit roots of liberal education. Even though the pressures of our world may be great, not only with the high achievement standards of my fellow Hoyas but also from the daunting hardships everywhere, I learned to look at my life in a more relaxed way though my Asian adventure.

Though Thailand met some of my expectations, especially regarding my students’ eagerness to dole out hugs and the devouring of profuse amounts of mango, unexpected lessons came outside of the classroom and the marketplace.

Stepping into a situation in which one cannot communicate in the native tongue is intimidating to say the least. The rural rice-paddy region of Bangkratum hosted few English speakers and my cramming of “Learn Thai 101” YouTube videos in the week before departure was inadequate preparation for communication. Many messages were lost in the shuffle, and I soon learned to wonder less and accept more. For example, a sticky situation in which I was left without a host family led to a random re-assignment with a teacher at our school. I literally got in a pickup truck, suitcase in hand, with a strange, non-English speaker and went to an undisclosed location. I couldn’t even ask her for her name at this point in my Thai language education. Subsequent situations (including the holding of my passport by Burmese border control) could have resulted in disaster, yet I decided to trust and accept my confusing circumstances.

Realizing that timelines really didn’t matter in the daily life of a Thai also forced me upon the beginning of the “let-be” breakthrough. I discovered that first, there is never an estimated time of arrival, and second, one shouldn’t inquire about it. In my experience, the Southeast Asian attitude tended to be more relaxed than that to which I was accustomed. My usual hour-ruled-by-the-agenda-book attitude had to change, since worrying about unknowns contributed to unnecessary stress. It was quite a process to try and adopt some Thai tendencies, but I hope I can carry them over into my crazed student life at Georgetown. Often, I get bogged down in feeling unfocused on my future, but I now see this overwhelming barrage of events, classes and busyness as an opportunity for growth. As Hoyas, we often feel like we have to be our overcommitted, over-caffeinated selves to be “successful.”

When things don’t go according to plan, I’ll strive for acceptance. I’m going to attempt to see this discombobulated life of a college student as perfect the way it is. Our world is messy, chaotic, painful, sad, dirty.and completely perfect. The world is beautiful, just as it is. Life, especially on the Hilltop, is not something static, but a flow of change, always getting messier and more chaotic as the semester goes on – yet always beautiful.

For Thais, it’s not all about tomorrow’s exam or the next day’s job interview. Granted, Thailand is a developing country, and it is starting to adopt some Western attitudes toward convenience, yet the Thais still manage to have a degree of Buddhist oneness with all things – an approach that I envy. Mountains dissolve to molehills more quickly in the rice fields . but the location is insignificant. This kind of knowing comes from within; this knowing is something all Hoyas are capable of. In Thich Nhat Hanh’s words, my hope is that I can sustain this new attitude into the semester by aiming to “smile, breathe and go slowly.”

Deven Comen is a sophomore in the College.

*To send a letter to the editor on a recent campus issue or Hoya story or a viewpoint on any topic, contact [opinionthehoya.com](opinionthehoya.com). Letters should not exceed 300 words, and viewpoints should be between 600 to 800 words.*

“