Competitions are events when people compete fairly against each other over something. There are mainly three kinds of competition, academic, aesthetic and sports-wise competitions. Competitions are very everywhere, in public, in schools, at home. These have both good and bad effects for students.
Firstly, there are good effects by taking part in competitions. One example will be the help in shaping the students' character. Through competitions, especially sports-wise competitions, students learn to have sportsmanship. Sometimes, the losers like to beat up the winners as they won instead of them. Once they learnt to have sportsmanship, they will accept defeat gracefully and leave a good impression for everyone. Another good effect of taking part in competitions is that students learn to have better time management. Before competitions, students will have to train very hard and therefore they have less time to study. After competitions, students tend to relax while they are supposed to catch up with their school work. By having better time management, students will learn to catch up with their work faster and learn that work comes before play.
However, there are also bad effects. One example will be that students will miss classes due to the competitions. Sometimes the students cannot catch up with lessons after their competitions and it affects their test results. This was what happened to my friend. He went for competition for three days straight and when he came back he was lost about what we were learning then. Some parents are worried for their child's studies too and even contact their child's teacher to know what the teacher is teaching then. Another bad effect will be that students will be very stressed, both before and after their competitions. Before their competitions, they will have to work very hard to win the competition so as to prevent themselves from letting the school down, especially when their co-curriculum activities (CCA) are elite CCAs and the school has high expectations of them. Other than preparing for the competition they still have to manage their school work and prevent themselves from losing out.
There can be ways to solve the bad effects. A way will be to provide extra lessons for the students after they have returned from their competitions. The students can stay back after school and meet up with their teachers so that the teachers and teach them what they have missed out on. Another way will be that the students can listen to music while doing their school work and while during training for their competitions. Some kinds of music, such as classical music, can help the students calm down and distress, letting them concentrate and do better at what they are doing.
In conclusion, they are both good and bad effects regarding students taking part in competitions. However there are solutions too. In my opinion time management plays the most important role.
