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I rushed to our classroom. As usual, my classmates greeted me good morning and asked me if I was done with our math assignment. As usual, I answered, “No.” I pulled out my math notebook and ran to my classmates, who are good at mathematics. Running out of breath, I told them to please hurry and kindly help me with the assignment; math was the first subject of the day. They just smiled and gave me their notebooks. Looking through the problem, I saw that both of them had arrived at the same conclusion, but one had a longer solution.

“Hey guys, can someone explain these solutions? Please?”

I tried to listen to their explanations, but their ideas conflicted. I looked at the time. There were only four minutes left before class. I was panicking. I grabbed the notebook of my classmate who had a shorter solution and copied it, finishing “my” homework after about two minutes, and said “thank you.”

During those times, since I was a second-year high school student, I was always happy and comfortable when I finished my math assignments. Out of our four to six assignments each day, I found everything easy except math. For me, mathematics is a subject you cannot just browse through with books. It’s not something you just read and memorize or browse through on the Internet.

I borrowed books from our library about math, and tried to solve the problems myself, but I just couldn’t! I had always gotten straight A’s in elementary school math. But now, out of four assignments per week, I could only solve two or three. For the rest, I just consulted with my classmates. I know it’s very bad to copy others’ work—it’s like stealing. But every time I asked them to explain the solution to me, they always said, “Sorry Mira, I’m too lazy to explain it to you. Just hurry and copy it.” Or other times—most of the time—their ideas conflicted, so I ended up copying it without even understanding it.

My Turning Point

We consulted our teacher to see if it was okay to ask for help from our classmates when we didn’t know how to solve the math problems. And she told us: “Sure. It’s okay to ask for help, as long as you can understand it.” After hearing that, I said to myself, “Well then, it’s okay to copy, Mira, just try to understand it.”

After four months of doing this, I was really comfortable that my math grade would be pretty high, but when I received my grade, I was shocked! Because for the first three grading periods, I got three B-minuses! When I examined my grades, I realized that I got B-minuses because I was just relying on my assignments. But my quizzes were bad, my exams, my unit tests, everything else was low. My dad saw my card and was disappointed. My friends’ and seatmates’ grades were higher than mine! I was really shy about my grade, and I was really shocked to know that I got the fourth-lowest grade in the class.

When our fourth grading period came, I promised to myself that this final grading, I would make my math grade high without asking help from my classmates. During that time, I promised not to rely on my friends or my classmates—only God and myself.

Lesson

Every day, I read my math notes. More than ever, I listened carefully to my teacher. I copied additional information during every lecture and studied it in the evening. On my four weekly assignments, there were times when I didn’t know the answers. But I didn’t ask my classmates, because I knew that they would just let me copy their answers.

I worked on my own instead. And after a month full of assignments, quizzes, unit tests and an exam, I raised my grade to 86 percent! I reached a solid B! No more B-minuses! I was so happy that I even jumped in front of my classmates (something I rarely do)!

Besides the math principles, the main lesson I learned was to always rely on God. I also learned to not steal the work of others. A B is an average grade for my classmates. It’s not that high, I know. But it is something I am proud of.