The Most Memorable Event in My Life

According to my experience, the most memorable event in my life was realizing the significance of being honest. At the age of sixteen, I was not only stubborn but also naive. I always thought that I was a perfect girl who would never have any fault. Those attitudes caused some negative consequences, such as ignoring people’s suggestions, or being harsh to realize how foolish I was. I was an exchange student at Japan when I was sixteen years old. At the beginning of exchanging experience, I felt curious and excited to be in a totally new environment.
People around me spoke different languages, and majority of them had different culture and background from mine. Initially I did feel pleased to talk about my culture with new friends, but those feeling didn’t last long. After few days, I suddenly felt exhausted and embarrassed at Japan. I didn’t understand the class, and I couldn’t even ask questions. The main difficulty was expressing my ideas in understandable ways. Later, I found the textbook in Chinese version to catch up class materials.
Unfortunately, the teacher announced that the quiz would come shortly. At that moment, I was not only lost but also scared. I tried my best not to be behind, but ability of learning independently disappointed me a lot. There were misunderstanding of basic principles and concepts existed when I was studying. However, no one could help me to understand better. At the quiz day, the whole class seemed confident except me. During the quiz time, I cheated at my neighbor’s paper when she went to washroom and exam proctors caught me.

After the quiz, my counselor was shock when she knew what happened. I received the punishment from school with one-week volunteer time. At the same time, my best friend advised me to apologize to my counselor because she trusted so much. After several days, my counselor finally talked and taught me the importance of being honest in life. After long time, I still remember this experience. This made me recognize that people were not perfect, but you could make little progress every day to get closer to being perfect.