2nd Grade Field Day

Mistakes are something everybody makes and most of the time we don’t realize something is a mistake until after the fact. I remember being in the second grade at field day at the end of the day. I was always a good student and would never be the type to get in trouble. So the mistake I was about to make was quite traumatizing for me.

I was with my field day group and we were at one of the inside activities that took place in one of the hallways. All I remember is that for the activity, you would have to share a t-shirt with your partner, run down to the other end of the hallway, do something (which I do not remember), and then run back. Another piece of information that you should know is that my mom used to volunteer her time helping out the teachers at our school so she was there helping out with this activity.

We started the activity and everything went smoothly but then the partners that went right before me and my partner, a pair of girls, decided that on their run back down the hallway, they would both stop to get a drink at the water fountain. Everybody got a kick out of it and it was a good time. Because it looked so cool, I decided I would do the same when it was my turn. So, I ran with my partrner, in our t-shirt to the other end fine, and on my way back, I stopped to get a drink from the fountain and have everyone get a kick out of me too. However, my mistake was that I did not tell my partner so I stopped, but he kept running, in our t-shirt which made him almost get hurt. I also ended up getting yelled at by the teacher running this activity and it was all in front of my mom. It was a very traumatizing and humiliating mistake that I made and I still think about it today.

The lesson I learned from this mistake is to not always do things that other people do to be cool and get a reaction because it might not work for me. More importantly however, I learned that in order for something I want to do to work, especially in a situation like this, I need to use teamwork and explain to my partner what I want to do. Had I done that, both of us could have stopped at the water fountain and everyone would have gotten a good laugh at us as well. This would have been a lot better than being humiliated in front of my classmates, my partner, and my mom, by embarrassing myself and getting yelled at by the teacher.

This traumatizing mistake really helped me to be more aware and more responsible for my actions and to think twice before doing an action, not just resolving within myself that a certain thing looked cool and that I should do it without actually making the plan to do it but just simply because I am following. Everytime I am in a situation similar to this or in a situation where this type of mistake would apply, I now think about the action I am about to take first, using the responsibilty that this mistake put in me.

Going back to what I said at the beginning of this blog, mistakes are something that everbody makes, a lot of times without even realizing it until it is done with which is exactly what happened to me with this mistake I made. However, these mistakes help us to learn from different situations and make us more responsible when faced with these situations again.

Photo by Ed Yourdon on Foter.com