Today, we have a story written by Sabirah H in the 8th grade. This is a great story!
Want to share some original artwork, poetry, short story, or something else creative that you do? Send it to Mrs. Patterson at
mpatterson@scvcs.org. It must by your own original work!
A Lesson In Humility
Hello everybody! I would like to share a story about humility with you and why you
should stay humble and keep your hands off the high horse. To put it simply; the word
humility means to be a modest person, to remain humble and grounded.
Sadly, sometimes as humans we forget to stay humble and have humility with ourselves
and those around us.
We often forget that God created everyone equally and that we should love our
neighbors, take care of those around us, and stay true to the truth. It’s in our human
nature to act selfishly or stupidly because we often believe that we are better than
someone else or know better than we really do.
Every once in a while, we are taken off of our high horse and reminded that we should
stay humble and never think we’re too good to be taught a lesson.
And that’s where today’s - well more like yesterday’s story takes us.
Yesterday evening, I was sitting on my older sister’s bed while it was misting rain
outside. I didn’t know what to do since none of the youtubers I watch uploaded anything,
my friend wasn’t online because she was working, and I wasn’t ready to start writing
another story yet. I thought about taking an I.Q test to see how smart I am. I will now
make a point to mention that I was fully aware in the beginning that I’m not the brightest
bulb in the drawer. I just wanted to see where I’d fall on the graph of intelligence.
I know that most I.Q tests online are fakes and don’t really mean anything, so I went
with the safest option: The Mensa I.Q Test. It’s a test that has puzzle-like exercises, it’s
about 35 puzzles and you have somewhere around 25-minutes to complete the entire
thing.
The thing about this story that really sticks out is that in the article above the test, it says
you need to be a minimum of 16-years old before you take Mensa. I figured that I knew
better than the professionals and decided that if I rounded my current, it would count.
But that’s not how life works at all. I soon regretted that decision, as you will soon find
out in this story.
At first, things were pretty simple and straightforward. Even though the “questions” on
the test weren’t formatted the way I’m used to seeing questions formatted in school, I
quickly caught on and started to solve the puzzles. Trouble began to appear over the
horizon a few puzzles into the quest. It started to get harder and harder and I began to
get nervous that I might not be able to solve the problems.
I noticed myself getting frustrated and restless because I got tired of answering the
questions and didn’t understand them anymore. Soon enough, I began to quickly scan
over the grids and the answers without paying very much attention to details or anything
else. In the back of my mind, I could hear the voices of various teachers telling me and
my classmates that “Slow and steady wins the race!” and “Don’t rush to get stuff done,
take your time and you’ll succeed.” but I pushed it to the back burner and kept up my
actions.
I sat there proudly as I waited on the results to appear on the screen, but my once
prideful soul melted into a goopy, sad, embarrassed mess as I read the result. It said my
I.Q level was “68”, I knew it was inaccurate because I rushed to finish the test instead of
taking my time to figure it out, but I wanted to rush because I thought it’d be best to rush
ahead instead of taking out the time to attempt to make an understanding.
Had I listened to my teachers, the instructions on the Mensa test, and logical thinking, I
would not have failed the test, or at least gotten a higher score.
In a way, I’m happy I got humbled because it taught me that slow and steady does
indeed win the race, despite what you and I might’ve thought before I shared this story
with you. Getting humbled and retaught an important lesson is a necessary part of life
and it’s okay to make mistakes, but you must learn from in order for it to count.
