Reflection on Professor Sammler’s Talk

The part that I felt most related is the recall of Professor Sammler’s primary school life. She described that they had no freedom of speech, and the doodles were all about the merit of communism. Everyone around is “brainwashed” without any contact or connection with Western Germany. I could also relate to the fact that teachers beat kids because I was beaten by my teachers as well when I was in middle school. I don’t want to comment on the common features of the environment we were born in, yet I just quite sympathized with Professor Sammler’s experiences. Also, I was quite touched when she mentioned the wall fell and everything in her childhood disappeared. So when she mentioned she found the milk that she always drank when she was young, my emotion also turned to happy with her.

Another impressive topic was about the factor that caused the difference between the Eastern and the Western economies: the shortage of young workers. Everyone moved to the West in order to pursue a professional education, and females would receive “double punishment” if they stayed in the East. This reminded me of my own honor thesis, talking about gender discrimination in Chinese workplaces.