I was excited and happy; I was among the four students who had been selected from my class for the Annual English Quiz. We went to the library and studied for hours, taking pains to remember each word, phrase, pronunciation and so on. We were satisfied that we had learned enough and that we may come first or second.
After the break, all the students gathered inside the auditorium, while we sat on the stage with the other contestants, nervously twiddling our fingers.
Soon, the quiz began and they gave us a sheet of questions. I, after discussing with my teammates confidently wrote down the answers. But then, when they displayed the correct answers on the screen, I realised that most of mine were wrong.
Then, everything began to go haywire. I was tongue tied; I was not able to answer most of the questions. We came second last in the quiz. We glumly trudged back to class, feeling bad. Our class teacher tried to cheer us up by saying, that on a positive note, we came second from last.
Later, when I went home I was still feeling miserable and dejected.
I narrated all that had happened to my parents. They told me that this happens all the time in competitions you win some, you lose some.
But, every time something like this happened, you should always look on the bright side. My mother told that when Edison was making the light bulb, he failed many times. But when people asked him how he felt about that, he said, “I learnt a thousand ways how not to build a light bulb”. I reflected on this for some time, and when my mother asked me how I was feeling, I said, though I lost today, but on the bright side…I learnt a way of how not to win an English quiz…
Bhavita Varma, VIII, St, Xaviers School, Jaipur
