“JH English Monthly Writing Competitions – Jessica Zheng

 

Huili JH English Department are continuing to hold their monthly writing competitions. Our second competition was a personal narrative writing competition titled ‘Oops,’ where students had to write about a mistake they made and what they learned from it. Please listen to Jessica Zhang from G9A have a brief interview with Ms. Taylor and share her fantastic story which earned her second place.

 

Second Place Article Below;

 

Oops by Jessica Zheng

We always make mistakes that we are ashamed to talk about. It could be something very awkward, like mistaking someone random on the street as your friend. It also could be something causing your unhappiness, like in the test when you correct an answer on your test paper, afterwards you find out the answer you rubbed out is the correct one. We always make mistakes. And in this article, I’m going to talk about a mistake I made that I can’t forget away.

It was a long period of time ago, I was studying in primary school for year one. I was new to the school, and I was obviously very little, so I am very unfamiliar with the school that I only studied for a few days. It was the cleaning day that morning, where we all needs to bring a small duster to wipe our table and chair. I was following everyone to the toilet to get some water, by the way our sink was installed apart outside of the toilet. I went there and I saw a bunch of people lining up squeezing to the sink. I felt I should be squeezed into a pancake if I really get in there, so I didn’t squeeze in like others did. While I was waiting in the corridor, I saw another bar of sink where there’s no one there, I felt strange but my time is pushing me hard, so I went straight towards it.

After a few seconds, there is a boy who went next to me, also washing his duster. Something is there that I didn’t felt quite right until a boy next to me spoke “Jessica?” he said, “why are you in the boy’s toilet?” After that, a few more boys starts to go along with him. I felt my face are going extremely hot and red in a numinous rate, my heart started to bump loud as if I could hear them. I try to calm my self down, and said to them “there’s no more sinks left in the girl’s toilet to let me use.” I finished washing the duster as fast as I can in my life and pretend to walk like there’s nothing ever happened or I never care. I took a glance as I walked off, the sign outside is the boy’s cartoon image. I guess that’s why I felt so strange of, how can there be two bars of sink in the girl’s toilet!

Although many years had flowed by from when the incident has happened, but I could still feel the awkwardness that I faced at that time when  I was writing this article. Nothing seems embarrassing enough in my primary school life compared to this, though I still made a lot of mistakes. The one thing that I learned from this experience, is maybe to always look clear before you decide to do something, especially toilet signs. Mistakes are never scary, it helps us to grow, and help us to learn more and more.

 

You could be on featured on Dukebox in the future too if you participate in our writing competitions! Our competition this month is “Celebrating Spring Festival Through Poetry”

 

---

DukeCast ChinaEnglishInterviews