College Courage
When I was a college sophomore at Xavier University-Ateneo de Cagayan, I heard a story of courage that fascinated me no end. I believe this might have become one of the university’s urban legends by now:
A college professor conducted an exam for his social sciences class of graduating seniors. It was a crucial exam that contained only one question to spell a pass-fail mark so everyone in the class studied all their notes and books in preparation for the exam. Everyone except for Bryan that is.
Bryan who just came back from a week-long family vacation in Bali didn’t spend any time studying while he was abroad. Thoroughly unprepared, the fact just dawned on him that this exam would actually determine if he was going to pass the subject and attend the graduation rites.
He noticed that the student at his left already has a page-long answer while the one at the right side was already working on her second page. Sweating bullets and getting desperate, he looked at the question on the test paper: What is courage?
Thinking real hard it didn’t take him more than a minute to scribble his answer, hand it over to his professor, and walk out the door.
The surprised professor looked at his test paper:
Q: What is courage?
A: This is courage! (referring to his 3-word answer and his subsequent actions)
Needless to say that he passed the exam with the highest score.
