Pressure

Pressure. I am sure many of you out there are familiar with this word, especially those in Singapore. In Singapore, it is very competitive. So the pressure that you face to achieve, to do well, is immense.
It all starts in school. If you do not do well in school, it will be very hard to get a good job during your adult life. Your parents know this, and they place pressure on you to get these good grades, and to get into the prestigious schools, and to eventually get that P.H.D, which will almost certainly guarantee you a high-paying job. Just think, how many times have your parents told you to study hard and do well so that you can get a good job in the future?
I myself face this kind of pressure. Furthermore, I study in one of the best schools in Singapore, so the pressure on my to do well is magnified. And this is not only pressure to do well in tests or exams, it is also pressure to do well in my Co-Curricular Activity.
My CCA is Gymnastics. My event is trampolining. In Hwa Chong, Gym is one of the elite CCAs, which means that we have been one of the better-achieving CCAs. In trampolining, we have been the champions for 2 straight years already. These year, it is up to me and my teammates to make sure that we continue to wear that mantle of champions for the third straight year. Since we are the favorites to win again, more pressure is naturally placed on us to live up to that expectation. And that fact has been showing in our training sessions. Ever since the November-December holidays, we have been required to report to training five days a week, four weeks a month. We are constantly reminded to work hard and to crush this year's competition. And in the March holidays, we will have training from 9 in the morning to 6 in the evening.
The pressure on our shoulders is huge. And I can see some of my teammates cracking under the strain of that pressure. For example, whenever we are tested by our coach, where we have to treat this like the competition and he will give us our points based on how well or otherwise we did, some of my teammates, and sometimes me, will not do as well as when they train normally. This is due to the pressure placed on us by our coach to treat it like a competition and to do as we would in a competition.
From these tests, I am able to get an insight into how I respond to pressure. Sometimes, I do exceptionally well, and sometimes, I fail horribly. This tells me that I can either thrive under pressure, or get squashed by its weight. Hopefully when I compete, the former is the one that happens.