When I was growing up, I hated being called hardworking. It didn't feel like a compliment. Even now, when I want to be a hard worker more than ever, being called hardworking feels like a backhanded compliment. The negative connotation of hardworking has been so ingrained in my head that I have to consciously remind myself of its true meaning.
According to Bhutanese society (at least while I was growing up), there are two types of people : hardworking and intelligent. You can't be both. Being hardworking means that you're dumb but you try. Being intelligent means that you don't even need to try. Maybe that's why we would never tell our friends about the staying up late studying but would gloat about not having completed studying before the exams.
I remember the "How many times have you completed your revisions?" or the "Paa... choe dii tsa 100 times revise bey tsaw wong!" when I was in Class 12. To which I would embarrassedly reply that I went through it once or twice even though I probably went over it four or five times. I don't even understand why I was so embarrassed of being seen as a hard worker. I should have been proud. Damn right I completed my revisions!
There is this misconception that people are born naturally smart or dumb and nothing can really change how you are. It's all based on "tse hema gii lay". Now that's complete bullshit. You may be naturally inclined towards some disciplines but the environment that you are brought up in and the effort you put in can make you smarter.
I was just reading about a professor of photography at the University of Florida, who divided his class into two groups. Group A was to be graded based on the quantity of photos they took- the more photos they took, the higher their grades would be. Whereas, Group B was to be graded on the quality of their photos- they only needed to submit one photo but that photo had to be perfect. At the end of the semester, what was amazing was that the best photos came from the Group A. They had been taking so many photos and actually putting into practice what they learned that they were getting better. For Group B, they were spending so much time on thinking about how to take the perfect picture that they weren't able to practice as much. So basically, this just proves the age old saying- Practice makes perfect. Effort and hard work makes a whole lot of difference and there is no substitute for it. We all know how difficult it is to put in the effort into anything, really- to have the discipline and to not procrastinate. So, being a hard worker is actually a huge flex.
In general, I believe we should be more conscious of what we say and how it could affect others. For the longest time, I was afraid of being labeled a "hard worker". I wanted people to think that things came easy to me. But it obviously doesn't. We need individuals to understand the reality of the world and that there has to be effort to succeed in any area. It is crucial that we create a generation of individuals who value effort and strive to become hardworking individuals.