SHAH ALAM: The desire to win is in all living things.
Even trees strive to be taller than others in the jungle to get the most sunlight, while birds in courtship compete to win the interest of the best mates.
But in humanity, the competitive spirit is sometimes seen as having a dark side. Some view the competitive streak as confrontational, marred by rivalry, a desire to “make the other party lose”.
The Star spoke to several students of UOW Malaysia KDU, part of the University of Wollongong Australia Global Network, who have entered competitions – and won – to discover what went through their minds when they pitted themselves against other competitors.
Vanessa Ong, 21, is an artist. For her tertiary studies, she picked UOW Malaysia KDU’s Bachelor of Game Development (Hons) in which she focuses on the graphics element of game development, which should provide a lucrative career in an area that she enjoys.
Last year, she and her team joined the Sintok International Games and Gamification (SIGG) challenge and won the gold award.
“We developed a computer game called Lost Child. It is about a child lost in a museum who is haunted by a pontianak, ” she said.
When Ong and her team built the game, there was no notion of competing.
Vanessa Ong’s computer game Lost Child, about a child lost in a museum haunted by a pontianak.
“We built the game as part of our studies. It was our first time building a game and we wanted to do our best.”
When SIGG’s call for entries was announced, their lecturer encouraged them to take part.
“We thought, okay. If we get something, we can add it into our resumé. We never thought we would win a gold award.”
Unlike Ong, entering a competition was nerve-wracking for Mabel Oo, 23.
With her team, Oo joined the Youth Entrepreneurship Challenge in Penang last year and they won the top prize of RM15,000 cash.
The final-year student, who will soon earn her Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in New Media and Advertising, labelled the experience as stressful.
“We were a small team of three. Other teams had five members. It was a challenge to build the business proposal and prepare marketing materials while building the product prototype.”
Part of her confidence, she said, lay with the fact that her team believed in their business proposal, which was to develop an app to help businesses navigate the jungle of advertising channels and pick the ones most suited to them.
In the case of Khairul Amin Amir, 20, losing was not an issue so there was no fear.
“Losing is a natural part of self-development. When we lose, we know where we stand and what to improve, ” he philosophised.
Mabel Oo and other UOW Malaysia KDU students who dominated the Youth Entrepreneurship Challenge 2020.
Khairul Amin, a Cambridge ‘A’ Levels student at UOW Malaysia KDU, joined Bank Negara’s Kijang Economics Competition last year and bagged the gold award.
He said without competitions, “we will become complacent and end up in a bubble.”
“When we get complacent, we won’t know if our growth is sufficient, ” he added.
Among the many UOW Malaysia KDU students who earned bragging rights, few had a more intense experience than Wilson Kong, 21, and his team.
They joined the Capsim Foundation Global Challenge 2020, a virtual, real-time, toe-to-toe business game played among university students worldwide.
“We led on the first day, but on the second day, a team from Poland recovered their losses and beat us, ” he said.
Kong’s team became first runner-up.
UOW Malaysia KDU deputy vice-chancellor Assoc Prof Dr Brian Imrie said there was a culture among lecturers to encourage students to enter competitions.
“On average over 800 students from our Malaysian campuses join competitions annually. But it is less about moulding students who want to win and more about teaching them to dare to fail.
“To be champs, we must first overcome our imagined fears and doubts. We try to instil this at UOW Malaysia KDU, to be a university of champions, ” he said.
For more information, visit https://www.uowmkdu.edu.my/
