Humility
[I¡¯ve done some haughty things in my life, but I really learned the meaning of humility when I went to America.]
I was overlooking 250 students with beaming smiles, hands full of flowers, and hearts full of memory, as I stood on the last row of the auditorium, the exact spot I was exactly a year ago. I led myself drift away with the flashes of reminiscence.
It was the home-coming ceremony and orientation for the 8th graders. Shrunk from the awe and strangeness the other students emitted, I, an Asian girl of 5 ft. and nerdy glasses, sat on the very first chair of the very first row.
I was the most attentive student throughout the whole session, only I didn¡¯t understand any of the words coming out from Mr. Court¡¯s mouth. Staring at the blank sheet of the notebook where I was going to take notes on, I felt strange stirring in my first. Friendless and desperate, I stood at the top row of auditorium and stared at the seats and the stage, where just five minutes ago, were booming with excited kids. That was when I determined my mind that, a year later, I would be getting out of this place with pride. As I stayed there blankly, my eyes poured out the tears that my heart couldn¡¯t let out for itself.
Everyday, school never led me to ride a bus back home without some kind of mark of humiliation, or a wounded heart. At English class, I could not understand a word. The sound and the meaning of the teacher¡¯s words danced ferociously around my head, never calming down. In gym class, I was the only one left out from the picking-teammates rounds. Even in math class, with an answer sheet full of correct answers, I had to have my mouth zipped because I didn¡¯t know how to explain a simple solution in English. One might say that the experiences I had to go through are just typical of what foreign students experience in the beginning. But honestly, it was just too much for a bumptious girl from Korea filled with pride and self-assurance over anything and everything. That was when I realized how little I was; how I was ¡°a frog in a well deep down.¡±
The school turned out to be fine. I received many awards of acknowledgement and gained my confidence back. But I cannot imagine what kind of a girl I would have become without the year; most probably full of arrogance and false pride.
I stood on the last row of the auditorium, and tears again poured out of my eyes. Only this time, my heart told me that it was not the same tear that I had shed a year ago.