朱慧欣：东南大学选手，第16届21世纪杯全国英语演讲比赛二等奖获奖者。

个人简介：本人来自东南大学外国语学院英语系，目前就读大二，性格开朗，头脑灵活，具有出色的组织能力和领导才能，对世界、时事和各种事物都具有一番独特见解。

演讲稿：

I have a friend that I have known for over 10 years. Basketball was his whole life.He hadfaith that through great efforts, he would become an excellent basketball player one day. Every day after school, Iwould get home at 5p.m; but my friend would never leave school before 8 o’clock in the eveningbecause he kept playing basketball with different people leaving and joining until everyone wasexhausted but him. However, my friend was still far from being one of the best basketball players at our school, let alone being good enough for the NBA. The coach of the school team had suggested more than once that my friend quit basketball because he wasdragging downthe whole team. Watching him make little progress in spite of training like an iron man, Icouldn’thelp wondering, will keeping the faith and working hard definitely lead us to the destination we dream of? Can we always achieve what we believe through great efforts?

 One day, another friend of ours invited us to her father’s newly opened golf driving range. We were all excited to play golf for the first time. As we got ready and began to swing, most of us looked like idiots that were doing nothing related to golf. Ifinally gave up and walked over to my friend, expecting to make fun of him; however, he was playing like a natural golf player, swinging the club skillfully and the balls fell right into the hole almost every time. Ijoked: “Maybe you are more like Tiger Woods than MichaelJordan.”

 After a week, Irealizedthat he actually took my joke seriously, because he became crazy about golf and began to train hard for it. This time, he showed a great talent and could much improve with only half theeffort needed by other people. After a year, he began to travel around the country and took part in various golf competitions. Now my friend has just finished his 4-year study in the most famous golf school in America, and became the fourth Chinese person to play golf in the NCAA in America.

 Seeing him achieve such success in golf, Isometimes recall that he once hadthe faith to be a brilliant basketball player. Irealizedthat maybe sometimes we cannot achieve what we want no matter how hard we try; but when we turn a corner, we can find something that can unfold our maximum potential,and we can achieve something we never expected. Faith is what encourages us to demand the best from ourselves and realize our value.In order to let faith work, sometimes we need to make some changes and adjust our purpose and direction, instead of fighting forward blindly.

 It reminds me of a story about a farmer who had a faith to become a writer. He insisted on writing every day and sent his work to many publishing housesbut his work wasnever published. One day, he got a reply from an editor. It said: “Ican see that you work really hard on writing, but Iam sorry to say that it has not improved in so many years. However Ifind your handwritingmore and more beautiful. Maybe you can be a calligrapher.”Because of this letter, the farmer began to practice hard nib calligraphy,and now he is a famous calligrapher in China. Ihave startedto understand that faith needs persistence and flexibility. Keeping faith doesn’tmean we run forward and never change the path. Sometimes the original road we choose may not be the best path for us. Just like my friendsaid, “maybe Iwould also realizemy basketball dream after many years if Ididn’tgive that up. ButI would never have known how amazing golfingis and that there is actually another way more suitable for me.”