A Frustrated Student

Today, during school hours, I walked past one of my students. He was sitting right outside General Office, and not attending any class. I walked right up to him, and asked him what he was doing there.

" 'Cher, last Friday, they said that I was rude to the teachers. Hence, I have been asked to write a report of what happened. But 'Cher, I really wasn't rude. I was just asking the teacher something. "

"Is there anything else you did?"

"Well, I did exclaim something out. A vulgarity. But I was just exclaiming it. I didn't mean to use it to scold any of the teachers."

Honestly, if you ask me, perhaps what the student said was true. He didn't intend to use the vulgarity to scold any of the teachers. However, over the years, I realised that sometimes, it is not who you think you are that matters most. It is actually what others think of you.

In the case of my student, he genuinely believed that he had done nothing wrong. But from the teachers' perspective, obviously it seems that he had scolded them. Hence, it is nothing wrong that the teachers want to discipline him.

I think that this applies to every stage of our lives. Human relationships are very complicated and not easy to handle. We have to be conscious of what others think of us. If we're not, we might offend or hurt the people around us unknowingly.

However, there is a balance to this. We need to have a set of basic values and principles that we want to uphold in our lives, and we cannot compromise them even if our peers disagree with us.

To summarize, we need to be conscious of what others think of ourselves, as well as be ready to stand up for the basic values and principles in our lives.