“And the first position goes to... Annie Bilal!”

Muffled voices cheering “Annie! Annie!” echoed across the auditorium. Sounds of claps filled the room, and cheerful, merged hooting was all that could be heard. It was an ethereal and dream-like moment, which seemed indescribably amazing!

Suddenly, a very bright light beamed towards me and I went (almost) blind.

The cheering sounds were interrupted by a “Beep! beep! beep!” Yes! It was my alarm. The dream-like moment turned out to be an actual dream. I drowsily reached over to my bedside and smacked the alarm off.

My head was still heavy and my eyes droopy from the all-nighter I tried to pull off last night, but I had eventually dozed off at 3:00 am. Now it suddenly hit me that today was the big day I had been preparing for, for days and weeks! Today was the inter-college annual speech competition at my college, and the nerve-wracking thing was that many colleges were taking part in this competition, which meant a great deal of students and competitors.

So nothing had to go wrong — especially since I was a four-time consecutive winner in debate competitions in my school and college, and the coordinator who selected me had full faith in me to get that gold medal which had eluded the sleep of many like me.

My topic was on World Humanity Day, and I had been changing my wordings, tones and many other aspects of my speech for days, just to get that perfect style and also to meet the strict criteria set by the judges, of course.

I knew that I could not mess up. But little did I know that fate had other plans for me. I had messed up right at the start of my big day. I laid my eyes on the clock mounted right across my bed and it stared back at me as if impatiently waiting for this sloth to wake up. My eyes were blurry because of the sleep I had missed. As soon as they cleared out, I had the shock of my life. I was 40 minutes behind the time I had aimed to wake up at.

Panic and stress took over, and I was frustrated with my last-minute laziness. But then I hurriedly got out of my slumber, changed into my uniform, rushed downstairs, grabbed my sandwich and coffee (thanks to my mum) and bolted out the front door like Flash. However, unfortunately, I was just a few seconds late catching my bus, and the driver didn’t even care to look back and stop.

I already figured it was a bad day ahead, but I wasn’t going to give up so easily. I took my bicycle from my backyard, stuffed that sandwich into my mouth and started my journey.

A few minutes into my journey, I was just on my way when all of a sudden, I saw a motorcycle lying down at the roadside and three people, probably a family, sitting beside it on the ground, injured. There was also a little girl with them and her arm was bleeding. But shockingly, no one was helping them, although there were many people passing by, but nobody seemed to care. Instead, they were filming the scene of the accident and the poor injured family!

“Unbelievable!” I thought. That’s when I decided to help. But just then I thought about the really important day ahead of me, which I had been sacrificing my sleep for. I soon brushed aside the thoughts about the speech competition as right now I felt these people were my top priority as they needed help.

I helped the family up, and the man, also injured, wearily picked up his motorcycle. After calling the ambulance and ensuring that the family was now safe, I headed back to my bicycle and continued my journey to school.

Someone among the passers-by recorded this whole incident, but I wasn’t aware of it yet. I was already 15 minutes late when I resumed my journey to the school, and I realised that the event would have already started by the time I would arrive! Considering I was among the first people to deliver the speech, I started panicking. I rode as fast as I could and on reaching my college, I headed straight to the auditorium. There were a great deal of people in the auditorium, and I panicked seeing them.

Then I saw my friend standing in one corner of the hall. I rushed over to her and asked her if my turn had come. Gladly, my friend told me that my name was announced initially, but seeing that I wasn’t here, they had moved my turn to the very end of the competition. I took a sigh of relief and hurried over to the backstage room where all the participants were seated.

After seating myself, I fixed my appearance, retied my hair, dusted off my uniform and got mentally prepared. Soon, my name was called and I knew I had to give it my best. I confidently went up the stage and delivered my speech as I had practiced. After all the speeches were done, we sat in our designated area. In a little while, the result was to be announced.

Our principal came up on the stage with the paper containing the result in her hand. The third and second positions were announced, and now the real wait began. I hoped I would be the winner, so it was either this or nothing. The room was filled with silence and an air of suspense hung over everyone’s head. My heart raced and I could hear it beating so loud that I thought it would burst.

Then I heard the principal’s voice muffled from far away. I couldn’t hear her words properly as I was so nervous. But suddenly, the room filled with cheers and clapping. Everyone was applauding for the winner, but who was the winner? I was filled with confusion and terror. Was it me or was it not?

I then felt a powerful slap on my shoulder. I turned around to look and saw my best friend grinning.

“You won! You won! Go, go!” she screamed in excitement.

That’s when it struck me — I had won! I ran up the stage to receive my medal and certificate. I was filled with joy and happiness, and couldn’t take in all that was happening. As I was stepping down the stage, the principal stopped and called me back.

She spoke in the mic, “I am proud of having a student like you who selflessly stopped to help someone even when you knew you were getting late for this event. You chose to help someone on the road and stayed back, knowing you were risking this.”

I was confused about how she had found out what had happened on the way here. Then she turned to the audience and told them about the incident that had happened earlier. Someone had sent her the video, in fact, it was going viral on social media. Everyone clapped.

Then I took the mic from her and said, “Although I have already delivered my speech, I would still like to say a few words from the bottom of my heart.

“Humanity, whether towards humans, animals, insects or even plants, is not shown through words alone. It is demonstrated through small, genuine and heartfelt efforts to help one another, to understand others’ problems and help them overcome them. And also, to make sure we don’t hurt anyone. These acts may seem small or insignificant, but they will eventually come back to you in one form or another.”

Wow. I felt like this was exactly what had been missing from my speech. Feeling content, I returned to my seat, proud of what I had done today.

Published in Dawn, Young World, September 13th, 2025