Deborah Emmanuel is a Singaporean poet and performer. She started writing at a very young age and kept a journal, where she would write her feelings in the form of poetry. However, she faced a lot of problems growing up. She felt like she didn’t fit in anywhere. Her grandparents spoke “Ncholu Manyala” (I think that’s what it’s called). Unfortunately her father and his siblings distanced themselves form that language, so when Deborah was growing up, she felt disconnected with India. She even went to jail. Writing in poetry style was a way for her to release all her feelings. Hearing all this made me realise that life may be the way it is for each of us on purpose. That we need to experience all the good and bad things that have happened in our lives to help shape who we are. During the talk, she was asked by someone what advice she would give her younger self. Her answer was, she wouldn’t give any advice. She felt like she needed to face all those tough experiences in order to evolve. To become the type of person she is. She’d tell herself that “it’s ok. It’s only not ok when we believe it isn’t.” So no matter what your going through, hearing her words made me realise that your experiences might be necessary to help shape the person you will be. It also made me realise that after every tough and hard time’s your going through, it won’t last forever. You’ll eventually get through it and everything will be ok.
Category: English
Robyne Hayes
I already knew photographs could tell stories, but I never knew how powerful those stories could be until I met Robyne Hayes. She helps local non-profit organisations over come barriers, like discrimination and poverty, and works to improve poor communities by sharing their stories through photography. The main issue she’s passionate about is Child Marriage. I learnt a lot of things form her, like their are 130 million girls not in school. Girls are most likely going out drop out of school if their married. Something else I learnt is that “In Ethiopia, 2 in every 5 girls are married before they’re 18th birthday and nearly 1 in 5 girls marries before the age of 15.” But something that really surprised and impacted me the most was a project she did in Ethiopia. She wanted to see what the girls stories were, so she gave them a camera and taught them how to use it. She told them to take a picture of what their lives were like before and after they joined the program. It turns out the girls and the women couldn’t leave their home because of all the chores they had to do. But then the men and boys started to help out with the chores. Some of them even enjoyed cooking. The girls were then able to go and play sports or learn to ride a bike. The women were also able to leave the house and relied less on the men. The community even started to value education after the program. Learning about this made me realise how easy our life is. Those girls didn’t even have any friends until they joined the program. Where as most of us have had best friends since kindergarten. We might complain how hard work is and how much we don’t like it, but we should be grateful about the lives we have. We have to remember how fortunate we are and, perhaps one day, try to give the opportunities we have to others.
Chetan Bhagat
Like Steven Dawson, Chetan Bhagat didn’t start of as an author. He worked in a bank called Goldman Sachs company in Hong Kong for 5 years. He then worked in a Bank in Singapore for another 5 years. He didn’t mind his job, but his boss wasn’t that kind to him. Chetan wanted to get his revenge on his boss by LBDN, Look Busy, Do Nothing. But he didn’t. Eventually he wrote a book called “Five Point Someone” in 2004, about misbehaving 3 college students, one of whom dated the professors daughter. This book was actually based on his life and became a best-seller. He continued to write books and quit his job in 2009 to focus on his writing. All his books are based on problems in India. However, not everyone loved his books. His response to that was “I am not the Best author, but am the Best-Selling author.” He later explains that being the Best-Selling author is better than being the Best author as his books are reaching more people about the problems in India.
Along the way to being a good author, he learnt some valuable lessons on how to get a message through, which he later shared with us.
- Connect through entertainment – If their’s entertainment, you’re going to pay more attention.
- He changes the game –
- He defined what “success” was to him – You have to define what “success” means for before you succeed. Real goals come from true accomplishment.
He also gave us some tips on “How To Achieve Big Things.” They were:
- Setting a clear goal
- Finding out what are the reasons behind the goal
- Finding the group – Having people who are going to back you up on your goal
- A detailed action plan
- Set back dealing mechanism – Get back on after your set backs. Don’t just give up.
- Have faith that hard work will get rewarded.
I have learnt a lot from Chetan Bhagat. I will never forget what he last said to us: “Be so busy improving yourself that you have no time to criticise others.”
– Brianna Kuo
Steve Dawson
I never realised how complex it was to be a journalist. I always thought of it as traveling around the world, asking questions and taking notes to try to get the full story, picking out the most important notes then present the story in an article, news paper or live on tv. That is what they do. However, it’s not that straight forward. Their are so many small details that need to be considered carefully. During his talk, I learned the “6 Tips To Get A Fabulous Story.” Tips he follows himself to have a good story and that helped him to become a journalist as he first started off as an accountant, and had no connection to journalism. The tips were to:
- Ask open-ended questions – This way it provides a challenge for your interviewee as well as gives you more information you could use in your article/newspaper/tv news instead of just “yes” or “no.”
- Set the answer free – Don’t set unnecessary parameters. The best questions asked almost always start with a “How do you feel …”
- Don’t interrupt – Let the interviewee finish making their point. Interrupting someone is disrespectful and the point they make will most likely be important.
- Be a single shooter – Don’t ask two questions in one. The interviewee will most likely answer the second question and forget about the first.
- Listen to the answer – Don’t keep the interview strictly based on your questions. If you hear something which may be important, ask more about it and eventually come back to your original questions.
- Be professional – Respect them as well as yourself. If your interviewing one of your “hero’s,” don’t turn into a “fanboy/girl.” If you approach them professionally and respectfully, you can have a great relationship with them.
I learned a lot more about journalism than I thought I would. I’ll defiantly be using these tips in future interviews.
– Brianna Kuo