Final Draft

Note: This is the improved version of the first draft, some grammatical errors are amended and more settings will be put into the story.

I walk into the darkness, my heart was trembling, I received the paper anxiously. The dire questions in the paper seemingly could not be solved, I was stunned. Then the invigilator started the exam, his terrifying voice startled me badly, I move my heavy hand and grabbed a pen to start writing, would I get good result or would I returned in shame? I turned and rolled my head continuously, tried to solve the questions. An annoying mosquito flew around, tried to distract me, but this motivated me to pay more attentions to the questions....

Since primary 2, I join the Olympiad Mathematics Training. My talent in Mathematics was noticed by an experienced Mathematics teacher, Mr. Lim. I often get good result in Mathematics Test. This also changed my life as I would be studying in Malaysia if I did not join the team. Mr. Lim nurtured me and other teammates to participate in the Olympiad Mathematics, it was rather different than the normal Mathematics questions as it required additional working and formulae as well as logic.

Before I joined, Mr. Lim sent me an letter to invite me. I took out the white piece of paper with only some illegible fonts. At first I thought it was a letter of reminder to pay the bills, but soon I noticed the purpose of the letter. Although I was invited, I refused to join at first, my mother also did not want me to join since the fee was costly and it was unnecessary to me. My mother always told me that tuition would not fix your hole so called weakness but it would make it bigger because some of the tuition teachers did not even teach properly, the most common way of “guiding” the students to get an A for result was to recognize and memorize the entire essay, and then pasted in their essay test such as English test and Chinese test.

But Mr. Lim seemed to be able to read both my parents' minds and mine. I also found out that he always tried to seek a chance to acquaint my mother. His effort continued until one day, whilst my mother was reading a newspaper, she suddenly shouted, “Oh my God, I can’t believe this!” In the newspaper, there was a big headline wrote “Talented Malaysian Gets Scholarship to Study in Singapore“. After reading the report, my mother encouraged me immediately to go to the Olympiad Mathematics Training so that I could also get the scholarship to decrease her burden very much since I was a burden to her too. Studying at no cost was great for parents because they could save a lot in their children's expenditure. I was shocked because I did not anticipated this moment. From that day onward, my life was covered with dark endless orb.

Knowing the fact that I would join the training, Mr. Lim was much obliged. I learned very hard to strive for the incoming Asian Pacific Mathematics Olympiad for Primary School. Although I wanted to reject, but for the sake of my future, I had to bear it. I also did not want to disappoint my mother who had high expectations to me. At first I tried to skip the training lesson, but my mother advised me to think of the next generation as the currency of Singapore Dollar was much bigger than Ringgit Malaysia, which meant that Singapore’s economy was better than Malaysia’s economy, and I could have better standard of life in Singapore.

To be honest, my mother transferred her burden to me. I felt stressful after a few orientations of the training, every time I heard the explanations of the answers of the questions by Mr. Lim, they were like thousands of piercing razor stabbed fatally into my heart, I carried the burden alone, it was too heavy for me to carry, I would be squashed to death. Sometimes I thought myself: Should I gave up, yielded, surrendered to the God of Fate? I did not want to continue this type of life, I wanted a life that was full of freedom and no restriction or stress. My life was getting boring and uninteresting. My mother always tried to assure me, it was Mr. Lim who gave me an analogy of studying in Malaysia and studying in Singapore, I thought for a whole day every time Mr. Lim advised me and assured me.

Finally, I decided to continue this stressful life because I would feel the hardship for only this short reading period, but I would be successful after this period as I learned more things than other classmates and therefore got higher opportunities compared to other students when I became grown-up. The competition arrived at last; I was chosen to be one of the competitors because I did well in the primary round, I felt quite exciting when my result was announced, one of the reasons was because I did not visit Singapore before, the other reason was I did not fail to meet my parents' expectation. Some of my chosen teammates and I went to Singapore by bus for the secondary and final round. This competition would judge my future fate and destiny, hence I became quite nervous.

I passed the second round successfully, and I would enter final round. If I did well then I might get the scholarship to study in Singapore. I walk into the darkness, my heart was trembling, I received the paper anxiously. The dire questions in the paper seemingly could not be solved, I was stunned. Then the invigilator started the exam, his terrifying voice startled me badly, I move my heavy hand and grabbed a pen to start writing, would I get good result or would I returned in shame? I turned and rolled my head continuously, tried to solve the question. An annoying mosquito flew around, tried to distract me, but this motivated me to pay more attentions to the questions...

Guess what? Now I am studying in Hwa Chong Instituition, it was very obvious that I did very well in the final round to get this scholarship to study in Singapore.