ESSAY OZ DETEKSI COMPETITION

Here's our essay when we were following Oz Deteksi Competition by Jawa Pos in our second grade of highschool, that brought us to the next selection... alhamdulillah :)

SMA NEGERI 17

SURABAYA

THE BEGINNING OF A CHALLENGING JOURNEY OF SELF DISCOVERY

By :

Atika Nazhara Husna and Aninda Nurry . M

In today's climate of education reform, many questions about potential education and development remain to be answered. We are sure that there are many fields or areas that provide us to develop our talents and potentials, but only few of them really focus and care on the processes of developing potentials. We can see that Oz Deteksi Challenge is different. It expands the opportunity for the students to perform their potentials at higher level of accomplishment. Besides, it also exhibits high performance capability in intelligence, creativity, leadership, responsibility and artistic areas.

It is a big honor for us that we can represent our school, SMAN 17 Surabaya in this competition. Here, we want to prove SMAN 17 Surabaya’s credibility and existence. In addition, we want to show and improve our own-competence.

OZ Deteksi Challenge, in which the biggest part is English, makes us more enthusiastic to follow this competition. English is part of our life. We experienced English not only in a formal place, but also in the informal place. Technology plays such a key role in fulfilling and improving our English skills. It provides us a wide area not only to practice our English ability directly, but also inform the latest news and issues from all over the world. We get English directly from the expert and professional teachers in SMAN 17 Surabaya and our teachers in EF English First. 

We feel that our talent is here. However, we know that talent does not flourish on its own. If those talents are not developed, we are not going to mean anything and we will be left behind. That is why we are enthusiastic to follow every activity and competition that can cultivate our talents and potentials. Although we know that we are expert in some areas, we need to examine our talents. We prove it by winning Speech and Debate Competition in our school two years in a row, winning long jump competition at KONI Surabaya, got the top 16 selection in story telling competition in GERBANGKERTASUSILA, got the top 35 from 400 registers of AFS intercultural program, represented our school at math and physics olympiad and actively took part in organization like ‘MATRIKS’ school magazine, neighboorhood youth organization and queue organization which helps us a lot in our leadership building.

For us, taking part in competition is not only to satisfy and pursue our desire to win but also to discover and develop more about ourselves and our identities. We are sure that with the proper environment, proper education and right development, we can increase our skills and abilities. With the right improvement in study skills, opportunities, and experiences, it has paid a big diffidence in ourselves. Success in any fields creates a positive feedback loop that increases confidence, motivation and performance to reach a brighter future, which encourages more success in our life. It also supports us managing ambitions and more appreciate strategic growth, corporative values, and friendship.

Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of ourselves helps us a lot to define the way we need to compete in the world. There are two kinds of people in this world. First, people who look for a secure. Second, people who look for a freedom and adventure. We are people who look for a freedom and adventure. Being too save and comfortable can be the riskiest thing what people can do. We are sure that sometimes we must take the risk; experience the frustation and the difficulties. We do not want fear takes control of our life. We are never scared to make mistake. We believe that the way we learn is by making mistake. Then, we can learn from all mistakes we have done. In that way, we can learn faster than people who pretend not to make mistakes in their life and of course, we can more appreciate success. All mistakes we had done, have built us to be a better and unbreakable person.

We know that life will always be challenging and sometimes we must take the risk. We will never give up. We always remember that success does not come easily, ‘no pain no gain.’ We always take every problem as a challenge and not blame each other. We acknowledge that positive thinking has a big power in decision-making. Positive thinking helps us a lot to handle our own fear and helps us to make other people able to handle their fear too. We believe that every cloud has a silver lining. That is why we are always positive in solving problems.

Dreams, wishes, family and friends also keep and direct us into a wonderful life. For us dreams and wishes are like a light in the darkness. It always keeps and directs us to get what kind of life we want, as a parameter of what kind of ideal life we want, and helps us to see our vision in the future. Family and friends are like wings of a bird. They will not let us down, support us from the back, entertain us and be with us , not only when we are happy, but also when we are sad. It makes us really appreciate familial values and friendship.

Life is competitive. We must make changes or we will not survive in this world. Everyday is about making decision, what kind of life we want, what kind of option we want to take. We realize that quality of life is directly connected with the commitment to make changes. We are sure that the situation will not change before we change ourselves first. We have trained ourselves to be persistence, discipline, independent and we also have committed to ourselves to do a constant improvement. We learn from experiences to be responsible for our own life and it makes us can do every things well under pressure.

We always look for an inspiring environment. For us, Inspiration gives us a big motivation in our life. One of our motivators is our belief. Belief has given us big inspirations and peace for us, bigger than our confusion and our fear. Belief helps us to get self-confidence and definitely, leads us to reach success.

When we are ready to follow this competition, we are also ready to be a loser. However, that is not the main reason. The main reason is our responsibility for doing the best, to show up all talents, all potentials we have and never be scared to fail. We will never show the excellency of our selves, because we know that boast is the biggest discovered enemy we have. We are just a human being and nobody is perfect in this world, including us. We really understand that success is not based on position, possessions, power or prestige, but on process doing something. We are not only pursuing to be the winner, but it is more about a challenging journey for us to find the right way to reveal our discovered talents.

We feel that this is the right time for us to prove, to develop and to expand our talents and potentials. We are confident and optimistic that we can do better than other participants can do in this competition because of our previous experiences. Finally, God the only thing we ask and we are looking forward to having further opportunities you will give in this competition.