November was an especially busy month to be a student, because we had a speech contest, a final, and good-byes to prepare for. I also had friends visiting from Japan the week before the speech.
I must admit I'm not the best at maintaining balance in my life. Over the years I've definitely learned that when I'm really passionate about something, I tend to work my butt off, regardless of the consequences. My passion is something I've always taken pride in (why do something if you're not going to go all the way?), but it's also something that has consumed me as much as it has helped me.
Case in point: I really wanted to do well in my speech and my final. It's true that I'm generally a pretty competitive person (those who have had the misfortune of playing board games with me know this firsthand), but mainly I wanted to do well for my own sake. I came to Taiwan to study Chinese seriously, so doing well at the speech (even though I was terrified) and doing well in my final (also terrifying, but in a different way) were two big priorities for me.
I think during the whole month of November I slept maybe an average of 5 hours every night - when I wasn't studying Chinese, doing language exchange, or teaching English, I was busy trying to memorize the speech, which took even longer than expected due to the numerous corrections my teacher, exchange partners, and friends helped me make. But in the end, it was worth it, because I knew that speech backwards and forwards. I can still probably recite it from memory now. Maybe I can't pronounce every phrase correctly (Chinese tones are so hard to get down!), but I come pretty close.
Unfortunately, in the mist of everything that made up the busyness of November, I forgot to take care of one crucial issue, something that resulted in some serious consequences: I forgot to extend my visitor's visa. In Taiwan, you can extend your visitor's visa up to one month if you're a full-time student at an accredited university Chinese Language Center; after 4 months of continuous study you can apply for a resident's visa. However, the catch is that you have to go to the immigration office about 5-7 days before the visa actually expires; otherwise, it's a no-go. I didn't do that. As a result, by the time I discovered my mistake, I had already overstayed my visa by 2 days.
I never had to worry about extending a visa abroad before because 1) I either didn't stay long enough to warrant needing an extension or 2) someone else took care of it for me (as was the case in Japan, where I could pretty much stay for 3 years without ever visiting the immigration office). I remember during NCCU's orientation, they put a lot of stress on remembering to extend your visa, because the immigration office is not at all lenient when it comes to visa infractions, no matter how desperately you plead your case.
Once I realized my mistake (which, in a cruel twist of fate, happened to be right after I took my final), I had one choice and one choice only: to leave Taiwan and come back. Moreover, I had 8 days to get out or my fine for overstaying would increase at least ten-fold. Luckily, my discovery of my mistake coincided with our one-week break between semesters, so getting time off wasn't an issue. Financially, I probably could have done without the spontaneous round-trip ticket to Hong Kong, but plane tickets were not as expensive as I imagined, considering that I had booked it 2 days prior. And of course, I had good friends to stay with in Hong Kong, something for which I cannot express my gratitude enough. They made my stay as seamless as possible - if it weren't for them, the situation would have been significantly more stressful than it already was.
Going through the immigration office at the airport was the only time as of yet that I've seen Taiwanese officials look truly unfriendly. They don't take visa overstays lightly - even for students such as myself. Even though I had only overstayed about 5 days up until that point, I had to pay a fine and got a scary-looking stamp in my passport that basically says I can't enter Taiwan without a visa for one year. Unfortunately, this means my visa saga is not yet over, as I am planning to travel outside of Taiwan before my 90 days is up. Which means...I need to get another visa, in another country, if I want to go back into Taiwan. This obviously takes time and money.
When this first happened, I felt pretty miserable and stupid about it. Sure, I may have done well in the speech (with the help of numerous individuals) and on the final (also with others' help), but how could I have been so stupid to make such a costly mistake? The whole situation would have been easily avoidable if I had just remembered to stop by the immigration office the second week of November and applied, free of charge, for that initial visa extension.
However, I realize that lamenting over my stupidity and carelessness is rather pointless, as it doesn't really change anything, much less make the situation more bearable. On the contrary, I should really focus on the positive things that came out of this situation. Were it not for everyone who helped me - my friend who let me stay at her place and even came to the airport early Sunday morning to meet me, her boyfriend who cooked us dinner nearly every night and let me crash on their couch, my classmates who consoled me in my throes of misery, the office ladies at the CLC who helped me call immigration several times, my friends who told me what I would need to do to get this issue sorted out, even the immigration officers who let me back into Taiwan - this situation would have ended up much, much worse. I lost time and money, but I also realized that there are a considerable amount of people in this world that I am truly grateful for.
Ultimately, striving to do your best at any one endeavor should not overshadow other necessities in life, the most important being your health and peace of mind. While diligently preparing for my studies, I repeatedly neglected these two areas to no avail and as a result paid the price in more ways than one. What's the point of being a good student (or good anything, really) if it means you lose out on yourself as a whole? This is a lesson I continually forget, no matter how old I get. But I'm not a child anymore; I need to take better care of myself, for my own sake and that of others.
