Helping a Chromebook Find its Owner

Lin Yi Xian (Secondary 2, Orchis-6, 2022)

If any of us would stumble upon a person in need, not all of us would lend a helping hand. We prefer to avoid inconveniencing ourselves as it wastes our time and effort. This was not the case for one of our Secondary 2 students, Lin Yi Xian from Orchis 6. Our kind and humble Samaritan willingly decided to go above and beyond to help out a fellow student.

Our young Samaritan was on her way home on a bus. When she reached the upper deck of the bus, she found herself in a rather difficult situation!

She chanced upon a Chromebook sitting all alone. Perhaps a student must’ve forgotten about his learning device and left it on the seat. Aware that the owner must’ve been terribly worried about the Chromebook’s whereabouts, Yi Xian couldn’t bring herself to leave it abandoned. Thinking that this Chromebook belonged to a fellow Orchidian, she readily lugged it back home along her with her heavy school bag. For such a petite and dainty girl, having to bear the heavy weight of her own Chromebook and the lost Chromebook was definitely an arduous trip back home.

The next day, our humble Samaritan left the Chromebook with the General Office in the early morning without even leaving her name. After thorough back-end checking by the school, it was concluded the Chromebook did not belong to any of our students.

When the school managed to uncover the identity of the student who returned the chromebook, Yi Xian was told that she had to report this incident at a Police Station. Despite having to make another tiresome trip, she did so and went to the Police Station after school to report her finding of the lost Chromebook.

After this incident, she shared that the trip took up a lengthy 1.5 hours of her time. Truthfully, she admitted that a part of her wished she didn’t come across the Chromebook on the bus. Nevertheless, the larger part of her believed that she had to do the right thing and return the Chromebook to its rightful owner. No matter how much inconvenience this encounter brought to her, she put herself in the shoes of the worried student who had lost the Chromebook.

What Yi Xian has done is truly commendable that the majority of us could not do the same - to go the extra mile.

Written by: Trisha Ann Boo (Vanda-5, 2022)