%20(2160%20x%201080%20px)%20(87)_edited.png)
%20(2160%20x%201080%20px)%20(89)_edited.png)
For each season of robotics, they release a new game that you have to build a bot to complete a certain game. For VexIQ, this year's game is Mix and Match, where you have to stack pins on top of each other to gain more points, while collaborating with your teammates and also a team from another school. Stacking pins of different colours gives you more points, while unifying them with a beam creates even more. Even after being in robotics for around 2 years now, there are still many unfamiliar things that I haven’t approached before, especially when games can change every single season. Each beginning might be a fresh start, but it also means re-learning what needs to be done within every single game. In a nutshell, it’s all unfamiliar ground. Which is what I was able to learn the most throughout this extracurricular activity: being able to approach things that aren’t common ground to me. Most clubs or activities I've been in have been relatively easy to grasp, or easy to understand and get into the flow of, while being able to understand just what exactly was happening at all times, but that had never been the case for me in the robotics team. Presumably, this is usually a sign to try something new, but through stubborn determination (and a bit of sunk cost fallacy), it’s turned into one of the cornerstones of the activities and relationships I have in RCHK. Needing to re-learn things and be out of my element have taught me how to function in places that I feel more uncomfortable, and be more used to social discomfort and asking for help, which have been further tested through the Robotics competitions that come with being in the club. I have been able to learn out to reach out to people and properly ask questions to understand a topic better, while also being given the opportunity to see how other schools can function for similar tasks. So even though last year I may have overstated and said the gears clicked into place, they are still technically in place, just a little bit off around some of the edges. They’ll connect soon, maybe in the next season of games.
%20(2160%20x%201080%20px)%20(88)_edited.png)
A familiar name on this site, no less one that I’m used to as well, but now, there's a tiny modification in the title that I am glad to say I can finally put next to the category of Point Blank Studios. Point Blank Studios has always been my legacy club, the one that I’ve been in since primary school (well, that's technically the Primary Film Team, but its more or less held under the same few people), and the one that I ultimately aim to continue through with until the end of my time at RC. However this year, I was offered an opportunity to become part of their core leadership team, and ultimately pass down the torch to future students. Partially due to the service credit, and partially because of a sense of responsibility and strange attachment to the club, I accepted their offer and promptly started to deal with the management aspects of the team. Although technically, I (alongside 2 others) should be the head of the club, the current leaders aren't ready to let go yet, which is why there is still some that I need to learn. Things like emailing and contacting clubs, responding to requests and finding opportunities to allow the club members to present themselves and figuring out just how to recruit more people. But one thing I do already have in the bag is being able to present to groups of people (yet another benefit of public speaking). But, even though I’ve fully expected to ‘plan for the worst’, a lot of things have gone in a strange direction this year. With me falling ill on the day of athletics carnival, college fair and swim gala being rescheduled, and a myriad of other unfortunate coincidences that affected how we would be able to process. As much of a "valuable learning experience” it was, it was also, admittedly, very disorienting and confusing. The good news is, hopefully whatever life throws at me and the rest of the leadership team will be similar, in a way where we can combat it with the knowledge that we've gained from this year, or alternatively avoid it with the knowledge that we clearly lacked this year. Throughout being in this club, although it’s still the same old same old, I’ve been able to explore how a leadership team truly works from within, and understand the different parts that make up the whole of what an ‘organisation’ would look like, as well as interact with different systems and people that used to just be left for upper management. As much as I’m presenting this as if it was a job, it’s still technically just a school club. But at least until world of work, or maybe when I actually have to get employed post graduation, it’s still taught me about (roughly) what it may be like in the future. I am sure that any meetings we have will be far less entertaining though.
%20(2160%20x%201080%20px)%20(90)_edited.png)
The best way to describe an event such as this one, is awkward and humbling. Alongside 2 others, I’ve already competed in the world scholars cup, while barely hitting the age ceiling for being in the junior division, and we did (all things considered) very well for our first year going. But, aging hits like a truck when it comes to competitions too apparently. In comparison to last year, my team and I studied a lot more, which can be attributed to a final binder we made that frankly could’ve been published as a book. With our previous knowledge and ‘wisdom’ I honestly thought we might be able to top our scores from last year. (spoiler alert, we didn't). But as competitions work, you’d never really win if you were only ever in it for the prizes. Throughout the competition preparations, a key thing I learned was how to divide and conquer. For WSC, we have to study a total of 15 topics, each with quite a few concepts that need to be memorised in order to maximise your final score for all the events. But in the end, each topic required around 20 pages worth of research to get the level of debt that we were supposed to achieve. So even though the experience of the competition wasn’t much different from last year, it was a shock seeing just how much preparation could go behind each of the tasks that we were given. In the end, our final result frankly wasn’t as bad as we had hoped. Although we didn't get the glory of hauling a few trophies again, I was able to place in around the top 20-30 for all events and placed 15th overall, which was far better than anticipated after the first day, so our expectations were probably a bit skewed. But, honesty is a virtue, and to be honest we didn’t plan out our working time properly with this competition either. In the end we put it out until the very last week, as procrastination does to a person. But being able to still get it done is also part of what really showed how much time and effort needs to be spent. We definitely could’ve studied the curriculum better given more time that wasn’t all crammed together within the last 5 days. This was especially evident when we sat down for the scholars challenge and individually all realised we were not as well versed as we thought we were, and even more clear when we all sat back together for the event known as the scholars bowl, and realised that not a single one of us was as well versed as we thought we were. The best lessons are (unfortunately) learnt through failure and hardship, so even though it’s not as mighty of a learning experience as I would have personally hoped for, it still was one nonetheless. So if everything goes to schedule and plan (which I’m sure it won’t, but we will strive for it anyway) hopefully, the mistakes that we made this time will pay off by the time we get to the global round. But if it takes yet another round of hardship, then I’m sure we’ll figure it out by year 11.
%20(2160%20x%201080%20px)%20(91)_edited.png)
They really weren’t kidding when they said that year 10 was the year to step up. If it wasn’t evident, debate and public speaking is a massive part of my identity and personal passions. A driving factor in how I can present myself and express my opinions (because let’s be honest, writing is not my strongest suit). But in the community of RCHK, debate is not a very well represented subject. Even though we do have a debate team, it’s senior team is more or less non-existent, nor is there a school club hosted by students that actually promotes it. The reason why had always been a mystery to me, since its counterpart MUN always had a skyrocketing amount of people who signed up for it. But like everyone always says, there's one point where you need to make the change you wish to see. This year, we had planned to host the first ever iteration of the P.E.E Debate cup (which stands for Provocative Explorative Enlightening) as a way to not only try to promote debate into the culture of our school and year level, but also to try and create a legacy project that we could run on for longer. In theory, it was simple, all we had to do was find some motions, find teams, then find judges. But alas, it was not that easy. Not even close. One thing that no one tells you, is how hard it is to find a judge for a competition that is new and just started out, especially if you want to host it during school times. Most teachers have their own stuff to do and places to be (understandably so), and most professionals in the field also have work to do and more things to do (also understandably so). And yet, the show must go on, which is where our first substitution came in. Instead of trying to find enough teacher judges, we lessened the amount, created shifts and also introduced student judges to judge some of the younger year levels. Shockingly, after that we came into little issues before the day of the competition, where most things somehow managed to run relatively smoothly. The one issue we had was releasing that using physical copies and then trying to re-digitalise them fast enough ended up being a lot more difficult than expected. But still, throughout this experience I was able to not only experience what it was like to host and actually contact others in order to organise things, but also how to work as a team to create a final project in a tight timeline, as well as the very important and often overlooked skill of being able to create communications and contact others when in need of help. Even though it’s a common phrase that “you can always ask for help when you need it”, I was able to learn the valuable skill of knowing exactly where to look, and how to ask properly, which will certainly (well, hopefully) help remove the amount of time-wastage spent trying to figure out what date the meeting we set up really is supposed to be.
%20(2160%20x%201080%20px)%20(92)_edited.png)
My speech will begin in 3, 2, 1 To my fellow students as well as the honourable judges, this passage is no surprise at all. As one of the biggest debate competitions in Hong Kong, it's generally something that people spend weeks prepping. Months even, depending on what their coach believes is fit for them. But apparently the senior RCHK community has the bare minimum interest in debate, meaning there was no senior debate club for the academic year of 2025-2026. Certainly not the best start to this experience at all, but no big deal, even though it would be preferable to have a coach there are plenty of people I can reach out to and ask for help with, right? That would’ve been the case if we didn’t receive our motions and confirmations a week before the competition actually began. However the world doesn't stop spinning at our convenience, so even with our setbacks, my team and I still continued onwards. A part of it was from the pressure, and a part of it was purely for enjoyment, but for that one week, we somehow managed to pull together a case that we could actually present. We did need help from the seniors in year 13 (who so kindly lended us some of their time even during the final stretch of their IB experience), as well as the debate coach who would’ve taught the senior team of debate. And for better or worse, this was the year that I actually won the most rounds of debate in the competition, ever. It really was only 2 rounds (which is technically 50% of all the rounds), but that was still more than I had done before, and far more than I expected, especially with so little time, and far less support than usual. But apart from finding out what the longest amount of time I can physically spend prepping a case is (spoilers, its 4 hours), what did I really learn from this experience? Shockingly, it wasn’t time management, nor was it being able to find help, but instead being able to work as a team. Properly this time. Debate is one of those things where there really is no I in team (cheesy analogy, but shockingly very true). Even though my teammates were already my friends, it was still difficult to be able to work together without distractions, and actually be in sync throughout the competition. Since even though in that week of prep time we were able to prepare and create speeches/points, we still weren’t able to mimic exactly how a debate would go, and how synergies would work between us. But still, being able to pull it off and win 2 of the debates was an achievement for me, and also hopefully a sign that we’ll be able to do better next year, in the Senior debating competition. Where we definitely, SURELY will not push everything to the last week again.
%20(2160%20x%201080%20px)%20(94)_edited.png)
Cantonese is one of the less common variations of Chinese. Although its spoken in a few parts of China, with some variations spoken in Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam, as well as Macau, it still remains a less common language, and still remains one that I am not fully fluent in Which subsequently means that being invited to a prestigious global competition to deliver a speech with the aim of closing the language gap and barrier that sometimes prevents people from joining stem competitions, more or less means at least some Chinese has to be spoken. Alongside my teammate for BIEA, we were lucky enough to be able to participate twice, once winning 2nd place and winning the champion prize as well as the people’s choice award the second time, and this time we were lucky enough to be invited back to deliver a speech about our own personal experiences. Originally, we were told to make a 5-6 minute speech between the 2 of us in English, talking about our experiences within the competition and what society can do to better support students who are working towards being in stem fields. But apparently, even though we weren’t aware of this: plans changed at quite possibly the very last second. On the day of the actual speech, we found out that most speakers there only spoke Chinese, most of them actually not even speaking Cantonese but instead mandarin, where every single guest speaker would only speak in mandarin. Throwing out “hand gestures” or “eye contact” and even content, the most important part of a speech is that the person you’re delivering it to can understand what you’re saying. Oh the woes of language barriers. Because we only realised this fact literally minutes before our speech, we realised that we had serious changes to make. Both with the language we’re using and also the content of our speech, since we were only introduced to apparently share our own story about BIEA stem. In the end, we landed on having a Chinese introduction to explain who we are, what we were doing, and the fact that we would be speaking English, since we decided that our fluent English is more legible to someone who might not be as fluent, than our broken Chinese. Other than the gift bag that they generously gave us (which included a jar of XO Sauce and a Penguin tote bag), the main takeaway that I gained from here was my ability to think on my feet. Even though I’d practiced this through the debate and rebuttals, it's certainly different from being able to think critically and combat difficulties on the spot, while compromising to the best of my ability. Learning to weigh pros and cons and deciding what’s best to do in a scenario is crucial for me to be able to function in the real world, and for me to use in my own academics. The other key takeaway is that for the life of me I can't remember the word for “experience” in Cantonese, and desperately should ask my parents for the next time I may be spontaneously invited up to talk.
%20(2160%20x%201080%20px)%20(95)_edited.png)
Now strike a pose! The concept of trashion is to be able to gather scraps and put them together to create a final product that looks closer to fashion than trash, more or less re-inventing by cutting and splicing things together, to hopefully make something that a model would actually want to wear. This project has gone on for years now, and is a legacy project between students, however this is only my 2nd year doing it. And to be honest, I’m not really happy with how everything turned out in the first year. Although it was my first year, I wasn’t really focused on actually setting deadlines for myself and finding places or times to collaborate with my team, and on top of that, my technical skills really weren’t the best at all. So now, new year new me, and with the fashion design class under my belt, this year should be much better. At least in theory. From the beginning, we immediately took as many chances as we could to create as many pieces as we could, as fast as possible. Within the first month or so, we had created 2 of our 4 pieces, meaning if we kept up the pace, we should’ve been able to finish our entire collection by month 2. But, time moves on, and so do assignments, assessments, and just school in general. The balance is hard to strike when in between classes, there are extra curricular activities, and between days and dinner times, there are classes, tutoring and clubs. Which is why the only thing that didn't move on, were our trashion pieces. Learning how to actually utilise this idea of “work life balance” was crucial for this process. You could argue that creating those pieces could’ve been under the title of ‘work’ as well, but every single time we really got into making it, it never felt that way. In the end, we chose to set aside a day a week, in order for us to be able to get together and focus on creating. After school on Wednesdays, we would meet up in a design room with a teacher supervisor to work on our product, in order to meet the deadline. Whether or not it should be described as work, or just something made for leisure, didn’t really matter in the end. The only thing that matters is that being able to find the time to do something that I actually enjoyed in-between steps of doing work, or going to classes, allowed me to learn how to manage my time better and figure out how to minimise “burn out”. The second most important thing, was finally learning the proper way to hem an edge properly.
Usually for focus groups, there's a specific topic that you all discuss. But for better or for worse, that's not the case in the focus group for our school. Even though there's no specific topic, there's still an overarching theme, of being able to help and support my peers in the same year group. Having discussions about activities to host, as well as addressing any issues that may appear within our community, additionally, we would also host events/gatherings for our year group. So more or less, in a nutshell, we were essentially managing a year level, basically becoming HR. But the largest project that the focus group hosts is the annual party. Since we do have to accept payment, this usually becomes a more complicated task, where although we’re usually more spread out, this time we were given more specific roles to fulfil. Alongside 2 others, my main leadership role in this group is to create designs as well as marketing materials to promote the party. This includes creating posters and fliers to get people’s attention on the party, or creating informative slides that contain details and specific, and it even includes creating a slideshow/presentation that will be used on the day of the party. The main thing I learned from this was the concept of dependencies, where although you may be able to finish what you’re doing, some tasks are dependent on the status/completion of other ones. Even though group projects often have this included as well, it’s especially prominent when we’re all working together to create one final event. These often appear more as group projects become more complicated and interwoven, which is why learning to navigate these technical dependencies was although a slightly foreign concept, one that will be important and useful as time goes on.
%20(2160%20x%201080%20px)%20(97).png)
