I am Skyler Wong from Edgefield Secondary School. I am fifteen years old currently, turning
sixteen this year. I take part in Taekwondo in my regular school curriculum. In Taekwondo we
learn various kicks, blocks, punches and stances that can be used for self defense. At first, I
wasn’t very interested in Taekwondo but after trying it out for a while I actually found it quite fun
and interesting to do. I became interested in it due to the multiple kicks and blocks that were
being taught to me .

Throughout the training process, I have learned to be disciplined and to be more respectful.
Everytime before going into the hall we must bow first and we must bow to the instructors each
lesson. In each grading, we also have to bow to the instructor before doing our pattern. Finally,
before sparing an opponent, we must both bow to each other before beginning. This helped me
to understand the importance of respect and to be disciplined enough to bow each time when
needed. My favorite parts of training are when we get to partner up with peers to practice
together and spar because I feel that it is more fun to do Taekwondo together than doing it
alone. On the other hand, my least favorite part of training would be practicing doing the
pattern for each grading. This is because it is very repetitive and new patterns are always hard
to memorise when you do it for the first time, but it is helpful as it helped me to improve my
discipline through the multiple times of repeating the pattern and getting each move correctly. It
also helped me to be more resilient as I had to fix any mistakes I had to do well for the gradings.

Continuing to take Taekwondo as a part of my curriculum in upper secondary makes me have
less time than others to spend on studying since I would also have to allocate some of my free
time to be used on practicing Taekwondo. Despite this, I still can cope with my studies since I
passed all my subjects overall last year due to careful planning on how I should use my limited
time. For leadership and community engagement, I was the leader of my Values ​​​​​​​​​​in Action (VIA )
group. My group planned to raise money to donate to beneficiary organizations that help the
needy in Singapore. I led my group to develop a plan that involved the selling of clothes that
people do not wear anymore to the public at a school event to raise money for the donation. In
at the end, we raised a few hundred dollars for charity.

My future goal is to take my experiences and lessons that I have learned from doing Taekwondo
to be a better person overall. To never give up during hard times and to be disciplined to
complete what I have to do.