“JH English Monthly Writing Competitions – Vicky Cai

 

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 Vicky Cai from G7B have a brief interview with Ms. Taylor and share her fantastic story which earned her third place.

 

Third Place Article Below;

 

My Mistake by Vicky Cai 7B

 

Everyone makes mistakes. The lure of electronic products is very strong for us, children. There are short videos that you can brush down (it doesn’t really make sense but we say it like that in Chinese). Each video takes one or two minutes. Although it’s a quick brush, it becomes an hour unknowingly！

I have my iPad on because I can search something on iPad when I don’t know something. But sometimes when I want to translate or search something, I am always attacked by some Ad Video or something like that.

Once I was doing my homework, I put my iPad in front of me because I thought it was um, convenient? I looked up. Mom was out. I was left alone to do my homework, and I thought, there’s plenty of time to watch videos first. It won’t be long, anyway. I’ll just be quick afterwards. That’s it. Then I clicked on a software that everyone is familiar to Tiktok.

Although each short video didn’t take much time, I spent a lot of time looking at it. When I went down, down, down. That was more than an hour. Mom would be back in half an hour.

I was very anxious about how to finish those bunch of homework. In half an hour, then I came up with a very good idea. I tried to search for answers on the internet and I found exact same exercise sheet. I was very excited about that, especially they also have the whole process written down. So I can copy that. It is feeling like that I found a treasure in the deep ocean. I felt as relaxed as a hot air balloon.

Ten minutes passed. I have finished all of my subject homework. That is splendid, I smiled with satisfaction, and began watching videos again.

After my mother came back, I was excited to show her my papers. I finished five papers and my mother praised me. I was so fast. I was so efficient. Great idea, I thought. That’s what I am going to do next time.

However, when I am planning what video games I am going to play next she suddenly angrily called me to come over. She YELLED AT me, “where on earth did you copy your answers!”

I couldn’t admit it. If I did. I was sure I would have to do all my papers again, and my computer would be confiscated.

She tested me some questions on the paper, and she found out that I couldn’t do any of them. I was very afraid that she would find out that I was lying. Finally, I obediently admitted to her that I had scanned the video and looked up answers online.

Mom was very angry because she thought good children should admit their mistakes at the first time.

I have learned a lesson from this mistake and learned a lot: While doing homework, we are also reviewing and consolidating the knowledge we have learned. Use this to test whether we are solid in learning and if there are loopholes. We will consolidate the problems that are impossible or that are wrong. The homework is done for self-examination, not for parents.

 

It’s not terrible to make the wrong answers, but the terrible thing is that I don’t know what went wrong. When Edison tried 99 times without success, a friend asked him: “You have failed 99 times, why continue? What a stupid person.” Edison replied, “How can this be called a failure.” What I learned was that these 99 materials were all wrong. I wouldn’t use them in subsequent experiments.” Also in our life and study, we occasionally make mistakes, but as long as we learn the lessons of failure and don’t take the same wrong way, your life path will become broad and smooth.

 

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”

 

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