Character is gold
Character. noun The mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual.
When I was in high school, I was notorious for being a bad student. There are about 7 or 8 classes in 10th grade, and every teacher teaching 10th grade knows me, or at the very least they’ve heard of my name. That is how bad I was.
I sleep in the class, I never hand in my homework, I don’t write anything on my exam papers. By the time the semester ended, the ranking came out, I was literally at the bottom. There were about five hundred students in 10th grade, and every last one of them had better grades than me.
I didn’t care, but I suppose that’s what makes a bad student, they don’t care.
However, I was different from the conventional bad students, I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, I don’t pick up fights for stupid reasons, I don’t talk back to my teachers.
To sum it up, I don’t make troubles. If my teacher wants me to stand up during the class because I’m not paying attention, I stand up.
The way I saw it is that just because I hate schooling, that doesn’t mean I have to make troubles, disturb others or disrespect my teachers. I respect my teachers, except that I was always late to school and I never listen to the class, and I made it clear that I appreciate everything they do to try to help me.
For a while, I talked and laughed with my classmate who was sitting next to me during night class. (There are no teacher in night class, you do your homework and study on your own)
I wasn’t proud of it because we were disturbing others, and that violated the bottom line I set for myself.
When people reach a certain age, they start to develop their own guidelines and systems. They have their own understandings of what they can do, what they would do, what they can’t do, what they wouldn’t do. Guideline is something you believe, something you follow, and following those guidelines takes character.

For some, their guideline is “respect women”.
For some, their guideline is “Don’t do drug”.
For some, their guideline is “help others when I can”.
And for me when I was in high school, my guideline was “You can fuck up your own life, but don’t fuck up others’. That’s why I kept to myself most of the time, and I made an effort not to disturb my classmates when their goals are get into a good university.
Some of my other guidelines at that time were:
“Respect my teacher”
“Be nice”
I followed my guidelines, because I wanted to make a statement,
“I might be a fucked up student, but I’m not a fucked up person.”
And I’m grateful that all of my classmates treated me with respect.
Out of all the words in English, the word “character” is my favorite. Character is one’s core, it is what matters in the long run.
Character is gold.
