It was 6:45 on a Tuesday morning, and my tenth-grade son was slumped over his toast, staring at his phone with one eye. I had just put a container of cut guava into his lunchbox when he announced, without any preamble, “We have a quiz on oxidation furnaces today. I think I’m going to fail.”
I froze. “Oxidation furnaces. Like, for making things rust?”
“No, mom. For semiconductors. It’s the thing that grows a silicon dioxide layer on the wafer. We did the lab yesterday. It’s really hard.”
This is my life now. My son, who last year was memorizing the periodic table for fun and still sleeps with a dinosaur plushie on his bed, is taking a class called “Semiconductor Fundamentals” as a tenth grader. In Taiwan, this isn’t a special elective for gifted kids. It’s part of the standard schedule for the vocational-technical track, and honestly, it’s becoming more common in normal high schools too. When I first saw his timetable in August, I laughed out loud. Then I looked closer.
His day starts at 7:20 with homeroom. The first bell for actual class rings at 7:40. He has eight periods of forty-five minutes each, with a ten-minute break between most, a longer twenty-minute recess in the morning, and a forty-minute lunch break. The last period ends at 4:45. On paper, that seems reasonable – a pretty typical high school day anywhere.
But the reality is that the schedule is packed. He has Chinese, English, Math (both standard and a specialized version), Physics, Chemistry, his semiconductor class, and then two blocks of “integrated activities” that often turn into extra test prep. The semiconductor class meets three times a week. Three times. For a subject that I didn’t even know existed until I was in my twenties.
The first few weeks, I kept asking him what he was actually doing in that class. He showed me his notebook, which had diagrams that looked like abstract art – cross-sections of wafers, ion implantation processes, photolithography steps. He told me about his teacher, a former engineer from a local chip manufacturer, who would say things like, “If you get this wrong, the chip fails, but don’t worry, just retake the module exam.”
One afternoon, he came home and said, “We put actual silicon wafers in a machine today. It’s like a really hot oven. We had to use special tongs and wear gloves that don’t leave dust.”
“Did it work?” I asked.
“I think so? The wafer came out blue because of the oxide layer thickness. That’s good, I guess. Or maybe that means we messed up. I’m not sure.”
He shrugged and went to grab a yogurt. That was the moment I realized this class isn’t just for show. It’s real, hands-on, and tied to Taiwan’s biggest industry. But it also adds a layer of pressure that I never had to deal with at fifteen.
Here’s what an average day actually looks like for him, and for most of his friends in the same track:
He gets up around 6:15, eats something quick, and leaves by 6:50 to catch the bus. School starts at 7:40. The first few classes are the “core” ones – Chinese and English – and by 10:00, he’s already been in school for over two hours. By lunch, he’s had four classes. The afternoon has two more academic subjects, then the semiconductor class, then a period of “self-study” that is often used for more advanced math problems. At 4:45, he’s theoretically done.
But he isn’t.
Three days a week, he goes straight to buxiban – the cram school – where he does extra English and math from 6:00 to 9:00 PM. He gets home around 9:30, showers, eats a late dinner, and then opens his schoolwork again. The semiconductor class has weekly homework that isn’t just reading. Sometimes he has to draw a process flow chart or calculate etching rates. He’s a good student, but I’ve seen him fall asleep at his desk, head resting on a worksheet about dielectric materials.
The other two days, he doesn’t have cram school, but he has a lot more homework. And there are monthly exams that cover everything from the entire month. Those weeks, the schedule becomes a marathon. He gets home at 5, eats a real meal, and studies until 10:30. He’s not exceptional. Most of his classmates are doing the same.
What’s been hard for me as a parent is figuring out how to support him without adding to the pressure. My instinct is to say, “Don’t stress, just do your best,” but he’s already stressed. He knows this class matters – not just for grades, but because it’s a peek into his possible future. Taiwan’s tech companies are everywhere, and many families see this track as a direct line to a stable job. There’s a lot of weight on a fifteen-year-old’s shoulders.
What has actually helped, in a small but real way, is changing how I ask about his day. Instead of “How was school?” (which gets a grunt), I now ask, “What did you do in semiconductor class that was weird or cool?” That gets him talking. He told me about the time they had to measure the resistance across a tiny silicon chip with micro-probes, and one of his classmates broke a probe and the whole group had to start over. He told me about the cleanroom suits they practiced putting on – they look like beekeeper outfits, he said, and you have to step out of them in a very specific order to avoid contamination. These are details I would never have gotten with a normal question.
On the practical side, I’ve had to adjust our home environment. We used to have the TV on during dinner, but now we don’t. He brings his homework to the table and we sometimes solve problems together. He’ll ask me to quiz him on definitions – “What’s a dopant?” – and I awkwardly read from his notes. It’s not that I understand it; it’s that being involved, even clumsily, makes him feel less alone in it.
The other thing we started doing is protecting his one truly free afternoon. Every Saturday afternoon, he has no school, no cram school, no tutoring. I used to fill that with chores or errands, but now I let it be empty. He does what he wants – plays video games, naps, walks to the convenience store for a slushie. It’s not a lot, but it’s a boundary. It tells him that the system doesn’t have to swallow every minute.
I’m not saying I’ve figured this out. I worry a lot about whether his mental health is okay. Last month, he told me he was “tired of thinking about semiconductors” and I didn’t know what to say. I just nodded. We sat in silence for a bit, and then he said, “But the wafer was really pretty though. Blue and kind of shiny.” And that was that.
His teacher once sent out a note to parents saying that the goal of the class isn’t to make every student an engineer; it’s to help them understand what the industry actually does, so they can make more informed choices later. I’ve been holding onto that. Because the truth is, some kids will love it and go on to study electrical engineering. Others will decide it’s not for them, and that’s fine too. But they don’t know that yet. They’re just trying to pass the quiz on oxidation furnaces.
I checked his test score later that week. He got a 78, which in Taiwan is a B. He was disappointed. I said, “You learned what an oxidation furnace is. That’s more than I’ve ever known. I’m honestly a little impressed.” He rolled his eyes, but I caught a small smile.
Tomorrow, they’re starting a unit on photoresist. He told me they’ll get to use spin coaters. I have no idea what that means, but I’m learning to just listen. The schedule is what it is – heavy, structured, and relentless. But underneath all that pressure, there’s a kid who still finds a blue wafer kind of pretty. For now, that’s enough.
We’re still figuring out the balance. I don’t have a grand solution. I just make sure he eats, I ask about the weird things, and I guard that Saturday afternoon like it’s sacred. It might not be perfect, but it’s working, one day at a time.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » It was 6:45 on a Tuesday morning, and my tenth-grade son was slumped over his toast, staring at his phone with one eye