Encounters with a Student of the Third Kind

When you are a panda studying in a Shaolin Temple- like school for humans, sometimes things can be extra-challenging.

Because ordinarily, humans are smarter than pandas, a panda must exert extra-effort to learn.

Sometimes though, it awes the panda to see extra-ordinary-super-smart students. Sometimes, the panda thinks they are not humans at all, but (probably) an extra-terrestrial being from  far advance planets. The panda calls them "students of the third kind."

An example of this kind is Miss Student X who once sat beside panda. On one occasion, the panda noticed something very different, very extra-ordinary about her.

While if you could look at panda's books, they are full of multi-colored highlighted words, illustrations, examples, underlines, mnemonics, memory aids and devices to help him remember the lesson, Miss Student X's books (in contrast) had nothing written on it.

Mind you, not even a small check mark to indicate the very importance of a provision or a doctrine. She carries no notes, nor a pen; she is a working student;  you seldom even see her reading,  yet she is the best in recitations and the highest in the exams.

In the same occasion, panda couldn't help asking Miss Student X why her book was very clean.

Miss Student X's short and sweet answer was, "I feel sorry for my book..."

"And you Mr. Panda, aren't you sorry for your book? She looked at panda's book and smiled.

The poor panda doesn't know whether he should laugh or cry. On one hand, he is happy that his study habits, although laborious and time consuming,  works for him at the very least. He doesn't how he could have done it any better.

On the other hand, the poor panda feels sorry for himself. His intelligence is not at par with Miss Student X, nor he sees things the same way as her.

Miss Student X was really something else. She is not normal. She is a super-smart-student. Extra-ordinary photographic digital terabyte memory retention and cognition, if you can call it as that.

The panda looks at himself and realizes he is not normal either, he is just a poor panda; and he cannot think of anything else that could change that fact.