Falling in love with swimming in NTHU

清華記憶，大家一起寫校史

[編輯] Falling in Love with Swimming in NTHU

The day of my first swimming competition in life finally came. After warming up, I jumped lithely into the water, waiting for the game to start. As I heard a loud voice saying, “Ready,” I gently touched the pool wall with the bottom of my feet. The whistle blew, and I made a strong kick against the wall. Off I went, smoothly, totally engrossed in each move I made, feeling as if I was part of the body of water.

But my romance with water did not start off all that smoothly. “Don’t get me wet!” “How can people put their heads in the water without dying?” They are the two things I often thought about when forced to play with other kids in the swimming pool. So I hated parties, especially when it was held at someone’s place where it had a pool.
One summer, when I was five, my mom signed me up for a short-term swimming class, which made me cross, and of course, extremely scared. I cried and made up so many excuses for not being able to take the lesson, hoping that she would somehow relent. But unfortunately, she didn’t. The day finally came, and around the pool, you could see kids yelling excitedly and waving to their parents as if they couldn’t wait a minute longer to leap into the pool, except for me. As you can imagine, when our swimming lesson ended, while most of the kids were promoted to the second level, I was still a beginner.
There didn’t seem to be any improvement until one day when I lost my balance on a kickboard but then realized that I’m still alive…. I started to like swimming, and meanwhile built up my confidence in this aspect.

When I was a freshman in National Tsing-Hua University, I was asked to take part in an inter-school swimming contest, which I was quite afraid for I had never thought of myself being qualified for a competition like this. What if I’m the last one to reach the pool edge? “It will be extremely embarrassing,” I thought. But then I decided to give it a try at last. With weeks and weeks of practices, I was in full vigor and my physical strength was in good condition. But, my nerves didn’t seem to fade away.
During the competition, I could hear some dull screaming, but couldn’t recognize if they were cheering for me. Fifty meters seemed so long that day. Finally, I reached the pool edge with my breath going fast. I stood up at once and saw only one person beside me. “Am I the second? No, it can’t be!” But when I saw the other competitors still swimming toward here, I knew, unbelievably, I won a place. “I did it! Yes, I did it!” I shouted with excitement. It was then that I was sure, without doubt, making efforts does pay off.


The pool from them on had become a retreat for me. Feeling that I’m part of the water, I can move gently around. Down in the water, I can’t hear, I won’t think. There is no more noise, no more rush, and no more pretentious world. All I can see is a roll of film painted in sky blue, beyond the sky-line. It seems that time has come to a standstill, and it pauses only because of me.
It was Tsing-Hua that gave me the stage to perform; it was Tsing-Hua that built up my self-confidence in the field; it was because of Tsing-Hua that I knew, I AM a good swimmer; it was Tsing-Hua that fulfilled parts of my memories, and I was Tsing-Hua that made me fell in love with swimming.