The Creative Writing Competition
In a 2017 interview for the Rolling Stone magazine, the world’s richest man revealed that he was “raised by books”.
Elon Musk, the innovator, known for Tesla and SpaceX, would read for over 10 hours a day as a child. He was hooked on science fiction and non-fiction.
Reading
Studies have shown that a commonality among the most highly successful people is that they read. A 2016 study on high-school students concluded that “students take the skills they have honed through reading into adulthood and, in turn, into the workforce and society.”
At Dulwich Zhuhai, reading for pleasure is highly regarded and encouraged. In celebration of the World Book Day, the Library and the English Department collaborated to come up with initiatives to encourage our students to view reading as fun and interesting, rather than a chore.
Some of the booklist recommendation from different academic departments
One of the initiatives was the Creative Writing Competition to showcase our very own writers – who best to engage the students than students themselves?
Entries were varied and ranged from poetry to articles and creative non-fiction. Congratulations to the winners!
1st place - Jessica Z, Y12
2nd place - Kyra S, Y13
3rd place - Jessica L, Y10
Jessica Z’s piece was on mental illness. She wrote about a friend who had suffered from bipolar disorder, and the difficulties she had faced in getting the right support.
It is true that the best writers inspire something in their readers, and Jessica is no different. “I hope that those with empathy and moral boundaries will dispel some of the misconceptions about mental illness. I also hope that people in a similar predicament can be inspired.” Jessica studies Mathematics, Biology, Chemistry and Music for A-level, and hopes to study Biology at university. With such a broad repertoire of talents, she certainly is a model of the well-rounded student that we strive to nurture here at Dulwich Zhuhai.
The runner-up, Kyra S from Y13, who will be going on to study Biotechnology at university, offered a series of poems that showed a movement through human civilisation telling of false happiness through social media, of globalisation, environmentalism, carelessness of human actions, and, finally, hope.
Jessica L is a Y10 student who hopes to pursue a career in finance and administration, wrote a piece entitled Getting Old Is Not Entirely Bad, an article inspired by the complaints of her grandfather about youth today and the difficulties with aging. Her desire is to show her readers (and her grandfather) that even though something may not seem good on the surface, it may actually turn out to be very positive.
These gifted students have wonderfully demonstrated how writing and reading can be influential and bring knowledge and inspiration. No matter what field of study or career development one may hope to pursue, reading will have a significant impact on one’s achievement – both at school and in later life. We hope all Dulwich Zhuhai students enjoy the fun and be inspired in reading on their way to Graduate Worldwise, and may the young writers motivate positive impact to their readers.
