I never told this to my parents, I guess.
So, it was a sunny Thursday. The night before that was a total frantic. I had to do loads of homework, finish tons of projects, review for the upcoming week and not to forget, accomplish my designated task for our school activity. My mind was a pool of school works at that time. However, I was able to review a bit about some principles for our Geometry exam that was scheduled on that fine Thursday afternoon. "Crap", I told my pitiable self. I needed to quickly refresh my mind about the ASA, SSA or whatnot principles before our teacher enters the classroom. I had no choice but to rely on my overnight-stock knowledge and short-term memory, which I gained from that swift scanning of notes. And then came the testing time. Grains of sweat were forming on my forehead as I intently think of how would I prove that this and that angles were congruent. I concentrated, felt the pressure, tried my best, minded my own paper and successfully finished the exam on time. Our teacher made us check our papers. The process wasn't that long. "Give back to the owners," declared our grey-haired, tan-skinned teacher. I wasn't expecting getting a score in flashing colors. "37 OVER 50"-not that bad, considering that I preferred English over this mind-boggling subject, Math. To be honest, I wasn't also anticipating a notch higher than 40 because it was a hard test for sophomore-level students. However, the results were in the opposite side-contrary to what my intuition had said.
I could not imagine how my nerves reacted as our teacher announced our scores. What I got was in the average and the highest score was 47 out of 50. That was how I started to smell something odd. To cut the story short, I suspected that the people behind that high score cheated because I thought of no one being able to attain a score of 40 at that college-level test. I know, how pathetic I was to even think of that. I was insecure, yes-and furious. As an act of sarcastically congratulating the peak scorers, I slammed my file case onto the table and exited our room. All eyes were plastered on me. Fresh tears were falling from my reddened eyes. My friend followed me to the rest room, and there she witnessed how I cursed the top notchers.
Looking at that part of my existence, I couldn't help but sneer at my pitiful deed. It was really immature of me to even create that scenario. It was like I had belittled my classmates' capabilities. My classmates before saw me as a competitive, speculative person-never wanted someone to outsmart me; egocentric in the sense that I wanted to be the only person on the lime light. I feared being outwitted by someone. That 'geometrical' incident became an eye-opener. It made me realize that comparing one's self to others makes a vain individual, a person one would never dreamed of being.
"Count your joys instead of your woes". As I closed my eyes and randomly stuck my finger across the brown paper, this advice was where my finger landed. God has ways on how to put us into grasp that life is a rollercoaster ride, I thought to myself. Two years have passed. People now look at me as a sharp-witted individual who always aims for the best. Expectations might overcome me. Pressure might frighten me. But I know I am resilient enough to conquer all these stuffs and just focus on my goals. I just need to be true to myself because that is what it takes for a person to move forward.
When one of my classmates shouted-"Oh my gosh! You're only second to the highest on our Chemistry test! How bad is that eh?"-like he was trying to insult me, I earnestly answered, "Yeah. I guess, I hadn't reviewed that well. But hey, I obtained a perfect score on our Trigonometry test!"-with a smile painted on my face.
