Excellence

So the front rows have advantages: closeness to teacher, smart and soft girls around and being confident. So it’s important where you sit and stand. It’s gonna affect your standing, your ranking, your feeling, and your future.

My parents, Richard and Helen, taught me every day after school. Richard was a strict father. He would demand me to learn at exactly the same hour and for the same duration. Helen was softer and more caring about the difficulty of learning. Both of them were really outstanding students when they were young. Richard was smart but quiet. Helen was beautiful, smart and meticulous. Her writing was beautiful. She would just scrap her paper if the writing wasn’t beautiful. She would write the lessons all over again until she got all perfect. Yes, she’s a kind of perfectionist.

Teacher and parents taught me a lot, and finally I was the top 1 of my class! In my mid-semester exam, I got the highest score! That was amazing… Now a barely pass in grade one became the best student in grade 2. How important was that to see the contrast? To see that one teacher didn’t determine my future because another teacher would show the opposite! Well, I had to give the credit to my parents, too. They work hard and spend every night helping with homework. I guess this is what Helen is doing too… :-)

Anyway, I didn’t mention one thing. My teacher assigned me to be a class master. Do you know what a class master is? Well, it’s someone who looks after the class. He or she took attendance of students, made sure that everyone stay quiet during teaching, and oversee the schedule for cleaning the class. Yes, students needed to clean the classroom before the class started. Around 4 or 5 students had to come to class early with brooms to sweep the floor. Sometimes a few students would come late and the class became messy. So as a class master, I had to make sure that the class was clean, and that meant I would need to clean it myself!!!

What I enjoyed being a class master was the cane. My teacher gave me a can to whip anyone who didn’t listent to a class master. I rarely used it because I was gentle but the cane showed the power. Students would just keep quiet when I showed the cane. Just show, not use. But that is the beauty of power: you just show.

Oh, I forget to mention the rudeness. Rudness was important for a class master! Really really important. But rudeness has to be used with gentleness for maximum impact. That’s a subject of another story. For now? Yeah, just end it with power of a cane… And the cane looked like a magic wand to me.