Our foreign teacher Robbert has just taught us an unforgettable lesson that I think will have a great effect on my life as well as my attitude towards reality.

At the beginning, I didn't think much of the class. Everything was as usual. Robbert just wandered in his talk and we laughed from time to time to respond to his humor. However, when he took out the copies of the "Dragonlance" novel, which he was teaching us, something happened unexpectedly.

He delivered all the copies to us but told us to tear them up. Hard to believe, isn't it? We were speechless in complete surprise. Through his explanation, the reason came out.

At first, he was filled with enthusiasm, passion and hope to teach us the book. He thought the book was great, but the teaching result turned out to be the opposite, as we had great difficulty and little interest in learning it.

Robbert noticed that, and he was then in despair. So eventually, he made that decision. He thought it was his fault, after all, one man's meat may be another man's poison, and we had the freedom not to agree to his idea.

In class he told us that he had already come out of the shadow and then wrote down a sentence on the blackboard: Things are not always what they seem. I was then buried in deep thought.

Maybe just as Robbert pointed out, there's always a gap between the dream and the reality. We always dream of something but sometimes it doesn't come true. We feel disappointed, frustrated, and we even give up all hope, but it's no use.

What we should do is to be more realistic, more optimistic. We should never bow before the difficulties. Just take it easy and let it go.

Editor: Wing