The+Best+Part+of+My+Life


 * The Best Part of My Life**
 * //By Chui Jun Hao ( Form 3A1 )//**

Life is amazing! You never what you can achieve until and unless you put your mind, heart and soul to it.Reminiscing my past, the memory of that day vividly appeared in my mind. That was the day which I believe is the best part of my life so far. The start of the best part of my life began when eventually I pushed myself to summon up enough courage and took up the challenge to participate in a Chinese poem recital competition.

Initially, when I was approached by Ms Woo Yuat Meng, my Chinese teacher to participate in the competition, I was somewhat reluctant to do so. I was shy and nervous as I have never stood in front of an audience to recite anything or speak publicly. However, after much thought I finally told my teacher that I agreed to participate in the competition. She was extremely delighted to hear that as she had always believed that I had the skills and talent to do so.

While training for the competition, I learned to work as a team with my friends. We trained very hard each and every day brainstorming for ideas to work on improving our skills in our poem recital. We were only given two weeks to train for the competition. Every minute and every second count. We could not afford to waste any time during our training. We even had to train during the weekends and I had to give up on my favourite game of badminton!

On the day of the competition, as the excitement started to build up inside me, I was completely nervous and overwhelmed. I was stressed and I tried to calm myself down and relaxed When it was our turn to go on stage to recite our poem as a team, we tried our best to recite our poem with as much confidence as we can. After our performance, our teacher told us that she thought we stood a very good chance to win a prize for the competition. However, I took this remark with a pinch of salt. Then, it was time to announce the results. I could not believe my ears when the judge announced, ‘The second runner-up is the team from SMJK Poi Lam!’ We were filled with tears of joy as we did not expect to win anything at all! That made my day and thinking back I think that was the best part of my life then! Despite the odds and nervousness, we managed to conquer our fears and recited as best as we possibly could! What else could be the best part of my life then as that achievement led us to more challenges when we had to participate in more competitions.

The next big challenge for us was to take part in the 2014 Perak State Chinese Poem Recital Competition. My poem entitled ‘Secret’ which I had composed for a writing competition was chosen by my teacher for our poem recital for this competition. I felt honoured and humbled that we were using my poem for the poem recital. As usual I felt nervous and was paralysed with fear! Again, we tried our best to be as confident as we could while reciting the poem. At first when the result was announced, I was rather disappointed that we did not win any consolation prizes. We could not believe it when finally, the judge announced, ‘The champion of the 2014 Perak State Chinese Poem Recital Competition is………SMJK Poi Lam!!’ I was stunned and aghast! The hall was filled with thunderous cheers and applause from the audience. ‘Am I dreaming?’ I asked myself repeatedly at that time. We next proceeded to the stage to receive our prizes and had our photograph taken by the press. We went on to represent Perak at the national level competition which was held in Penang. Though we only managed to win a consolation prize, we were more than happy as I know we had tried our best and come a long way from where we first started with little or no confidence in ourselves.

From this experience in taking part in a poem recital competition, it dawned upon me that I can do well in anything that I do if I learn to conquer my own fear, develop my confidence and put love into whatever I do in school and in life! In turn, this has become the best part of my life as it has proven a point that if we believe in ourselves, be confident and work hard for anything in our lives, we will learn and gain much. Know the best part of your life, chase your dream and reach for the stars!