A lifetime lesson

Life has its own way of preparing us for what is to come. I do not personally believe there are lessons more valuable than others as long as we can use them to make better choices in the future. We can learn from others' misfortune as well as their triumph in life, but those that stick with us are mostly the ones we learn through trial and errors.
However, it is not every day that one can say "I learn a lifelong lesson today" but when it happens, it may change a lot in that person’s life or sometimes bring a new way of approaching life situation.
I am an optimistic guy and I believe in the good part of humanity (at least I did). I used to think that the government could have done a better job in any part of the world, and I still believe in that, but I used to put all the pressure on the officials until today. I used to believe that it only required a certain consensus among those who govern us to make this world a better place, but I finally discover that the fact that we are HUMAN is enough to understand why life has become so complicated.

Today in my economics class everything came clear to me, and it went like that:

I am taking microeconomics class and it is one interesting class that is designed to open the students' mind on what drives certain firms to act a certain way depends on the kind of markets operate those firms. We usually take a quiz every time the professor assigns homework, which is his way of testing our understanding of the subject. We were supposed to have only seven quizzes for the entire semester, but interestingly we were on our ninth quiz when all of a sudden he said today we are having a quiz. To answer the question of the quizzes we usually use a Scantron paper, but this morning there wasn't any.

The instruction was clear: “Look only in your paper, and any movements of the head would result of a zero.”

So I received my paper and to my surprise there were only two questions. The first one said “Write the number “1” one if you think everyone in the class will write that number and everyone will receive two extra credit points.”

The second question said “Write the number “2” two if you think everyone else will write one and you are the only one to write that number you’ll get 10 extra points while nobody else will, but you have to be the only one to write “2”. If more than one person writes “2” no one receives a point.”

I read both answer two times to really understand what the professor meant, and then I wrote a big one for the choice and turn my paper in.

Professor promised the anonymity of the test, but however he would count them to us. After everyone turns in their paper. I was smiling and thinking that we got him this time since that particular professor is known to never give extra credit points.

To make the story short; four people wrote the number “2”which, you already know, rewards nobody a point. But that is not my life lesson yet.

The professor said to the class: "I will step out for three minutes and you all can decide on the group how to allocate those points."

As he stepped outside most everyone said together, "let's write the number “1” as a group". One guy in the back responded, "how do I know that everyone will write it?" And everyone start laughing, and then I said to all of them “Guys, we can do something different, is there anybody in the class who is failing and desperately need those ten points to pass? We would agree on giving those ten points to one single person who really needs it.” One lady who sat behind me look at me with an “awe” look, and then she repeated what I said as of sign of acceptance, but nobody said anything. After a few second of silence another lady said what if someone is having a C, the class responded “No, the person has to be failing or close to fail”. After that answer everyone said together let’s put the number “1”.

The professor entered the class back again and passed around another paper of the same content as of the first one. After completing the task we turned our paper in, and the professor started going over the paper one by one calling out the number in each one. There was that chocking silence as he said the number “1” after another… yeah, you can imagine… and then came the first number “2” HOLY MOLEY, and then came another “2”, and other “2”.

I was sitting there flabbergasted by how everyone agreed to write down the number “1” and then three people decided to write “2”. I couldn't believe how a class of less than twenty-five students couldn't agree on one single thing. JUST two extra points. I was imagining their faces being so serious while saying so. The hardest thing is that no one will ever know who those three students were and even “I” should be looking suspiciously by my classmate (assuming no one looked at my paper) since it was anonymous.

The lesson I got today was that no matter how hard we try to educate the human, there will always be that primitive part of him/her which force him/her to think only about personal survival. It doesn't matter how hard we try there will always be that percentage of the population which will not cooperate, and anyone who wants to do something good should never wait for general consensus as it may never happen.

Man I was sad…

Author: Audate, Starson

Real story at HACC (Harrisburg Area Community College).

(Picture taken from google community, not my property and author has the right to ask to take it off)