Not One Less: A Reaction Paper

MATH 1 (MST)
First Semester, AY 2014-2015

Individual assignment No. 3
Assignment Title: Reflection paper/Reaction report on "Not One Less"

Name: Dexter Patrick S. Baltazar College: Agriculture
Student No.: 2014-09287 Section: V

Hopeless desperation. I felt hurt when Teacher Wei started to ask every man who wears eye glasses just to know if that’s the station manager for her to place an ad to the national television about his lost student, Zhang Huike. Given the intensity of sunlight that day, it was impossible for a person to last for at least 20 minutes but she managed to endure it for a day and a half. Who would intent such thing? Ironically, there were a lot of office workers who wore eye glasses that day and she checked one by one, she even chased one riding in a bicycle but she’s declined. It felt hard for me to look at it because it is just so unfair for her. It is unfair for people like her compared to people like the woman in the front desk of the building that has more of life to enjoy and to guarantee with but act in such imprudent and arrogant way. After what she had done in the heat, I realized that there are really these people who would do anything just for one thing although choosing such would prefix them to shame, trouble, and embarrassment. Before Teacher Wei Minzhi entered the city and had her tight mishaps, I was thinking that she might be aiming to get Zhang just to have the promised 50 yuan from Teacher Gao. But as she made plans that included moving a thousand bricks with her students, collecting their money in class and sneaking for a ride in the bus made me grasp that it was not the money that she’s frantic to get, it was really her student, it was really for the sake of her one student that she’d used all of her money to write ads on sheets of paper. I really admired Wei for having such intention. I mean, they’re living in a remotely destitute rural area having to work in blood battles for them to earn income and eat. These things almost carved selfishness unto themselves but she managed to think that a student of hers, even though not very respectful, still does not deserve to be a laborer at such young age. At that moment, for me, she was better than a lot of people that time. She was not just a substitute who only graduated elementary because what she had done was mere impossibility for a teenager to do so. “I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what. - Atticus Finch” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

Courage, as it is, was implicitly written as a single character on the board with a colored chalk. Teacher Wei took every single chance to rectify things and place it in order whilst proved that some things are worth taking a leap of faith.