Bertalan Szegi
Our story begins on a rainy Sunday afternoon. Most of the people are just relaxing and enjoying the last few hours of the weekend, watching tv, playing video games, or simply sleeping.
But a guy whose name is Josh is sitting at his desk and trying to understand the math homework. His math teacher said that if they solve it and get a good solution they will be awarded a good grade. Some of Josh’s classmates have already solved it, and they are happy, because everyone got the same answer, but Josh didn’t want to get any sort of help. He is a strange guy, someone who would rather get a bad grade, or do something wrong, than let other people help him. In other words he is aloof and obstinate.
Josh had been working on his math homework the whole weekend. Fortunately he was able to start it, and following his method he could get a good solution, but he made a mistake while trying to rearrange the equation and didn’t realise it afterwards. Now just as he was about to get a result for the homework, he started to realise that something had gone wrong when he arrived at a negative number for the time. He was so upset, because he had thought that his solution would be perfect. While searching for his mistake, he didn’t even realize that it was almost 8 p.m. The next day he had to go to school early in the morning, because he had a 0th lesson, but he wanted to get a good solution before going to sleep. The other people in the class got a solution, but Josh would never ask them for help; he decided not to sleep until he got the good solution. But as the hours went by, he became very tired, and totally forgot about the next day. Approximately at 3 a.m. Josh fell asleep at his desk, and slept until 12 o’clock. When he woke up, he was so angry, because he was late for school, and not able to do the homework. His parents were so angry, because they thought that he didn’t want to go to school. And all of his work was in vain.
This situation wouldn’t have happened if Josh had asked for help. He had overcomplicated a simple exercise. Also, it’s bad to ask for help right at the beginning, before trying to solve the problem yourself, but Josh went to the other extreme by putting all of his energy into it.