Life Lessons - Kindergarten

I was working on an assignment and I felt pretty good about all of the answers except one.  Ryan Van Ham was sitting next to me so I figured I’d see what he answered for that question.  Ultimately, I ended up going with his answer.  In hindsight, Van Ham was perhaps a less than ideal candidate to borrow answers from, but who you should copy off of isn’t exactly defined at this point in one’s scholastic career.  We get the papers back and wouldn’t you know it, I only missed one question.   Guess which one?  Making it sting a little more, the answer I WANTED to go with was the correct one.  I learned a few things from this experience.  Cheating is inherently wrong and this was the universe’s way of punishing me.  OK, maybe I didn’t possess the profound view of the universe that I have today, but this helped cement some good morals in me.  I’d play the academic game straight up and do the best that I could with my own abilities.  The second piece of this lesson is that I should trust my gut instinct.  My mom always liked to remind me that the first answer you think about guessing is most likely the correct one.  Actually, Mom, logic would dictate the correct answer is most likely the correct one, but I think the takeaway is that you shouldn’t try to out-think yourself.  Finally, I began to form an opinion of myself that I was smarter than most people.  I’m not saying I’m smarter than you but…well, I can’t think of a truthful way to finish that sentence.  Armed with that opinion, copying off others going forward became a less desirable option anyway because my answer must be just as good as theirs, if not better.