A Person Changing My Life
The person changing my life
“And I can tell you it went fine”
— — — Schindler’s list
When I review my life in the past, the most impressive memory for me is about a person. He was just my art instructor, but gave me the most important lesson which change my whole life in the future.
In China, the last year in middle school was the preparation process for students to take significant examination which determined which high school we can step into. In this year, we had to practice same questions infinitely, wrote plenty of papers, and took millions of quiz for the last examination in June. In this hard but vital process and after getting several bad grades, I lost my direction unfortunately. I was fed up with studying, and began to miss classes. I started to lose interest in anything, including my grades. I was numb every day with the paper I got C, and quarreled with parents. I still remember I threw my books to my mother just because she disrupted me to sleep, and insulted my classmates when they got same Cs with me. In that period, I felt that I was abandoned by the world, and no one could understand me, even my closest parents. When I struggled with self-doubt and despair, my art instructor rescued me from abyss. In every friday, he would take me to many beautiful parks to sketch and tell me the name of each bright and unique flower. I could lie on the grass and bask in the sun, relaxing myself completely without thinking why I became such a bad person or heard everyone’s doubts and sarcasms. Whenever this time, I always feel that I had wasted my life on lots of useless things and thoughts, and decided to change myself and hard-working; however, when I came back to school and faced other classmates and countless test papers, depression and despair returned to me again.
Until one day, he took me to the orphan, I changed myself totally. I stayed with homeless and disabaled children for three days. In these three days, I played with them in scruffy football field, taught them math and English under obsoleting thatch, and saw them eating same millet congee and bread everyday. I finally realized how happy my life was: I had a complete and loved family and received formal education in the clean classroom compared to their life in the world. I finally learned how valuable it is to study hard and accept others’ questions and criticisms, as there were many children who didn’t have chances to be educated and had better life or went to more wider world through hard work. Since then, I didn’t reject countless tests and parental naggings, and prepared carefully for the last and the most important exam.
Therefore, I thanked my art instructor so much. He reminded me to cherish the hard-won life in front of me and made efforts to make it better, instead of complaining about obstacles I faced in life and give up. When I got a great performance in the last examination and stepped into my dream high school, I still remember all valuable experiences he gave me.
Later, when my parents and friends asked or worried about my conditions again, I always use the most impressive sentence for me in “Schindler’s list” which is a movie my art instructor took me to watch to answer them coolly: “I can tell you it went fine.”
