Finding My Rhythm: The Real Talk About Balancing Work and Studies as an International Student

Where it all began: A bird’s-eye view of the remote village that shaped my memory long before the digital age.

The other night, I couldn't sleep. Not because of stress or the famous Brugge bells chiming every hour. I couldn't sleep because I was trying to remember the sound of my grandfather's voice.

He died more than 20 years ago. But in that quiet darkness, with my wife breathing softly beside me and my five-year-old son dreaming in his room decorated with IKEA furniture and a nightlight shaped like a cloud, I closed my eyes and chased the memory. And slowly, like a radio finding frequency, it came.

He was telling the story of a brave prince who crossed seven oceans and thirteen rivers to rescue a princess from a demon king. His voice was rough like bark, but it rose and fell like the hills of our village. I was lying on a straw mat, pressed against my father's warm back. No electricity. No screen. Just the moon through the window, the smell of cow dung and wood smoke, and a story that made my heart race as if I was the prince himself.

The sounds and smells of home—where life was lived in the rhythm of the seasons, not the speed of the internet.

I must have been six. The same age my son is now.

Two Worlds, One Morning

I still remember my first day of school. My mother walked me barefoot down a muddy path. I wore a faded shirt that was too big, donated by an uncle. My bag was a cloth sack. My pencil was a stub, sharpened with a kitchen knife. I didn't speak a word of English. I didn't know what a computer was. I didn't even know there was such a thing as kindergarten. I was six, and school was a dark room with wooden benches, a slate board, and a teacher who carried a stick but rarely used it because respect was already there.

This morning, I walked my son to his school here in Brugge. He wore a bright yellow raincoat, a backpack almost as big as his torso filled with healthy snacks and colouring books. The school is warm, clean, full of educational toys and kind teachers. He started at two and a half. By three, he could sing songs in Dutch and English. By four, he was tracing letters on an iPad.

I looked at his small hand in mine and thought: Two different centuries, existing at the same time, connected by blood.

The Gathering Dark and the Lonely Light

When I was a child, evening was not a time; it was an event. As the sun fell behind the hills, we children would race to finish our chores. Bring the goats in. Fetch water. Spread the mat. And then, the gathering.

All the neighbourhood children—maybe ten or twelve of us—would meet under the big banyan tree or in someone's courtyard. We played kabaddi, dandi biyo, hide and seek until our mothers' voices carried across the fields. There were no toys from shops. We made balls from old socks, cars from discarded bottle caps and wire. We fell, we bled, we cried, we laughed. We learned to negotiate, to share, to lose, to win. We learned that friendship meant showing up, even when you were tired.

On Saturdays, if we were lucky, we walked forty minutes to the only house in the village with a radio. A dozen of us would crowd around it, silent, reverent, as if it were a temple. When a Nepali folk song crackled through the static, we didn't just listen. We felt it in our bones. That radio was our internet. That shared moment was our social media.

Last Saturday, my son came home from a playdate. He walked in, dropped his bag, and picked up the iPad without a word. Within seconds, a cartoon was playing. Bright colours. Fast cuts. Loud music. He was laughing, but he was laughing alone. I sat beside him, but my presence wasn't required. The screen was enough.

The silent distraction—while technology connects the world, it sometimes makes us laugh alone.

I thought of that radio. Of forty people breathing the same air, swaying to the same song.

I thought: We had nothing, but we had everything together. He has everything, but so much of it is alone.

The Weight of Slates and the Light of Tablets

Let me compare honestly, because nostalgia is a liar and I don't want to become its victim.

The Old Way: What We Gained, What We Lost

We learned slowly, deeply. We had one textbook for the whole year. If you lost it, you shared with a friend or memorised from the board. Memorisation wasn't a choice; it was survival. And because we memorised, we owned the knowledge. I can still recite poems I learned in grade three. I can still solve fractions in my head because I didn't have a calculator to rescue me. Our minds were our only library, and we kept it well-organised. 

I recently wrote about how this mental library is being threatened by what I call The Silent Theft—the way modern life quietly steals our ability to remember the things that matter most." 

But let me be honest: that system was also cruel. It was rigid, hierarchical, and punished curiosity. You didn't ask questions; you absorbed. If you couldn't keep up, you were left behind. There was no diagnosis for learning difficulties, no extra support. You were just "lazy" or "slow." Many brilliant children, especially girls, never saw the inside of a classroom beyond grade five. Our education was deep, but it was narrow. It gave us memory, but not always imagination.

The New Way: What We Gained, What We Lost

My son's school is everything my village school was not. They encourage questions. They teach empathy alongside mathematics. They have speech therapists, educational psychologists, colourful books, computers, and outdoor learning. A child who struggles is not punished; they are helped. A child who is gifted is challenged. There is art, music, physical education. The goal is not to fill a vessel, but to light a fire.

A different century: My son learning with tools, warmth, and resources I never dreamed of at his age.

But here is what frightens me.

My son does not know how to be bored. There is always a screen, a game, a video. When he is frustrated, his instinct is not to sit with the feeling, but to reach for distraction. He has friends, yes, but their play is often scheduled, supervised, mediated by adults. Nobody gathers under a banyan tree anymore. Nobody invents a game from a stick and a stone because the iPad offers infinite games, perfectly designed, instantly gratifying.

He will never know the desperate joy of that Saturday radio. He will never know the ache of waiting a whole week for a single hour of music, and how that waiting made the music sacred.

He will never know the silence of a village night, so deep you could hear your own heartbeat, because his room is never truly dark or truly quiet. The nightlight glows. The city hums. The tablet charges on his desk, patient, waiting for morning.

The Mobile That Changed Everything

I was in college when I first saw a mobile phone. A rich friend's brother had brought one from Kathmandu. It was the size of a brick. We crowded around it like we once crowded around the radio. Someone called the number, and the phone rang. We actually clapped. It felt like magic.

Now my seven-year-old nephew in Nepal can unlock an iPhone faster than I can. He watches YouTube cartoons while eating, while travelling, while waiting. His parents are good, loving people, but they are tired. The phone is the cheapest babysitter. And who am I, living in Europe with my fancy life, to judge them? 

It’s a stark contrast to how we grew up, and it made me think deeply about The Digital Shadow we are casting over the next generation's childhood.

But I wonder: what stories will he remember? Not his grandfather's—his grandfather passed away before he was born. Will he remember the prince and the demon king? Or will he remember the bright, forgettable faces of animated characters that last five minutes and vanish, replaced by another, and another, and another?

Back to the roots: Carrying the seeds of ancient stories into the new light of tomorrow.

What We Carried, What We Left Behind

Here is what I believe, sitting in my warm Belgian home, writing these words on a laptop that holds more information than my entire village library ever did.

We, the generation of the radio and the muddy path, carried something precious. We carried patience. We carried the ability to wait, to listen, to sit with silence, to find joy in scarcity. We carried community—not the curated, filtered community of social media, but the messy, demanding, glorious community of people who have no choice but to depend on each other.

And this new generation? They carry the world in their pockets. They will never be bored, but they may never know the creative burst that boredom births. They will never be lonely in the old way, but they may never know the depth of a few, carefully chosen friendships built over years of shared struggle and play. They will know everything, but will they know what it feels like to not know, and to hunger for knowing?

Conclusion: The Inheritance of Two Worlds

Last night, I turned off all the screens. I took my son onto our small balcony. The bell tower of Brugge was lit, beautiful, ancient. He was restless at first, asking for his iPad. I said, "Let me tell you a story."

He sighed, the way five-year-olds sigh when adults are being difficult.

I told him about the prince who crossed seven oceans and thirteen rivers. I told him about the demon king with ten heads, and the princess who was brave, not just beautiful. I made mistakes. I forgot parts. I improvised.

Halfway through, he leaned against me. His little body relaxed. His breathing slowed.

"Papa," he whispered, "was the prince scared?"

"Yes," I said. "But he kept going anyway."

I don't know if he will remember this story. I don't know if, thirty years from now, lying awake in some distant country, he will close his eyes and hear my voice, the way I still hear my grandfather's. I don't know if the ancient magic of oral storytelling can survive in a world of infinite streaming and endless notifications.

Brugge, Belgium: The backdrop of our new life and the place where the next chapter begins.

But I know this: for twenty minutes, there was no screen. There was only voice, and breath, and a boy listening in the dark.

And that is a technology no update can replace.

My grandfather never learned to read or write. But he gave me stories that have travelled across continents and decades, and they still work. They still make a five-year-old in Belgium lean closer and ask, "Then what happened?"

Maybe that is the real curriculum. Not the one in textbooks or on tablets, but the one passed from voice to ear, from heart to heart. Maybe the old school and the new school are not enemies. Maybe the task of our generation—my generation, standing between mud paths and touchscreens—is to carry the old stories into the new light.

To be the last radio. And the first storyteller of tomorrow.

Before I end this, I want to say something clearly.

This is my personal story. These are my memories, my feelings, my fears, and my reflections. I am not saying the past was better. I am not saying the present is worse. I am only saying this is what I have seen, what I have lived, and what sometimes keeps me awake at night.

Maybe your childhood was different. Maybe technology gave you opportunities you would never trade for anything. Maybe you feel this new world is brighter, smarter, kinder. And maybe you are right.

I am not writing to argue. I am writing to remember.

If you have lived between two worlds like I have — between radio and smartphone, between muddy paths and touchscreen classrooms — I would truly love to hear your story.

What do you think we gained?
What do you think we quietly left behind?
Do you feel closer to your children than your parents were to you, or further away in a different way?

Share your thoughts, your memories, your experiences in the comments. I read every one of them. Maybe together, through your stories and mine, we can understand this change a little better.

Because in the end, maybe the most important thing is not choosing old or new.
Maybe it is choosing to stay human in both.

If you enjoyed this, read my latest post about How Small Habits Can Transform Your Life.