It was hard to make a decision on what to do, this was a confusing position but I still chose to push the pawn forward and just after I pressed the clock, my opponent immediately moved his knight to the outpost on c3, forking my rook and my queen. I had trapped my own Queen. I stood up and shook hands with the opponent who said “GG…”
This was what was going on in my mind during the Semi-Finals round of the RV PESA. (River Valley High Speech Competition) The impromptu speech was not exactly something I had prepared for and sh*t I knew I screwed up.
Well, I had signed up for this competition without actually understanding it’s competitiveness until it started. For the first round, we were asked to record us saying a speech, which would ultimately decide who would successfully enter the semi-finals of the competition. Technically, we had to write a speech, memorise it and record ourselves saying it out. The topic was on Appreciation and it seemed like the fact that we had to memorise the speech well was inevitable. I thought, how hard could it be? It turns out to be extremely hard. The draft for the speech took so long to complete and the recording. WORSE! The speech was considerably long.
To see the script, click here
It took more than a 100 recordings for me to actually do everything correctly. I stayed up past 12 o’clock midnight the day before the submission date and on the morning of the submission date around 5 a.m. I continued to ask my mum to record me as I had only gotten one perfect recording so far. (but there were some stopping) I knew that there was a slim chance I was going to actually win but still, I persevered despite knowing that we could cheat by looking at the script while recording and finally we got our second recording that was near perfect. I was feeling quite unwell and I felt like fainting, probably due to the lack of sleep. I still went to school that day with my dad as he drove me to school and I submitted my video to the teacher in charge. After a few days, I had already forgotten about the whole ordeal and as the whole class were in a physics lab with all the lights turned off to ensure efficiency of a particular light experiment, I took out my handphone to use it as a torchlight so that I could see what I was actually doing. Rose, who also joined the competition, told me near the end of the science lesson that she was messages by teh English teacher, which said that she had successfully entered the semi-finals. I also noticed a WhatsApp notification from my English teacher and being curious about whether it was about being rejected or advancing to teh semi-finals, I opened the conversation and it turned out that she was informing me that I had successfully gotten into the semi-finals of RV PESA 2021! I was beyond elated, so I told my then lab mate sand best friend, Kilian who rejoiced and congratulated me and we happily continued with the experiment. After science lesson was lunch and on the way to the canteen, I told Rose that I had also advanced to the semi-finals and we congratulated each other.
The semi-finals were two days later, which was on 29 April 2021. There was not much time to prepare but still, Rose and I did try quite hard to ensure that both of us could memorise our own speech. Other than having to recite our own speech without a script, we had to draft an impromptu speech based on a random topic in our own heads in only about 3-5 minutes. On the semi-finals day itself, Rose and I got a lot of time to prepare as our time slots were quite late. I was the last and when I entered the room, there were three teachers. Saying out my original speech went relatively well but the impromptu topic I picked myself (I could not see the pieces of paper it was just 1 2 3 4) was a fish out of water and it went horribly. Although I managed to say past the time limit, I knew I screwed up the impromptu but nevertheless, the weight on my shoulder was taken off as I finished off with thanking the judges (Teachers).
After some time I was informed that I didn’t make it to the finals but at least Rose did and it was great that we had people to represent our class for this competition, although we did not win anything. Anyways, I was thinking about joining RV PESA 2022 if there will even be one this year.
That’s it for this post!
Cheers,
Da Good Writer
Credits to:
D&KB Writing ™️ 2022
Recounting RV PESA 2021 (Determination v.s. Preparation) ©
Da Good Writer (Team Master Writers)
Inspiration/Idea
Real Life Experiences (River Valley High Plain English Speaking Awards Speech Competition)
Achievements:
Partcipant
RV PESA 2021 Semi-finalist
Thanks to:
GODELMO (Kilian)
Rose
ZZX
Class 1G’21
and Everyone who supported me through the competition
Photo Credits:
D&KB Writing
PicCollage
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