The horrible examination room, exam paper and pieces of my broken dream, turned around and around, swirling in my mind. Suddenly, I opened my eyes and sat up from the bed, sweat flowing down my back. “Tick, tick, tick…”, showed the clock 1:45 pm . Another sleepless night! Looking around my room, I fixed my eyes upon the unfolded school report card. Sadly sighed, I dragged my eyes back, and lost in deep thoughts. Pieces of my broken dream repeated in my mind. Gradually, images of my dreamt university fade out… All of a sudden, my life seemed to be trapped into a world of colorless…

Once I thought, I would have had a colorful life. During the arduous period in senior three, I always comforted myself with my dream, attending my dreamt university, which accompanied me through the most boring and difficult part of my life. But now, everything was ruined. I failed the exam and lost my dream. Life has been miserable to me ever since then. A few days later, I received an admission to another university that I had never expected before. Holding the letter, I was motionless, and speechless. Though my parents, many of my teachers and classmates persuaded me to study for one more year and try again, I refused. It seemed that not only did I lose my confidence, but also the paintbrush to color my life.

Time flied. The first semester of my college life has secretly passed by. During that time, I led a rather plain life, going between classrooms and dormitory. I had thought that it would be the only pattern of my rest college life until one day I accidentally came across a book in the library, which in a great sense, changed my attitude towards life, and therefore changed the color of my life.

The name of the book is “Burn yourself, Phoenix !” .Phoenix is a kind of magic bird that would burn itself and be reborn from the ashes after living for several hundred years to restart a new life. Reading its characters, I was struck like lightning. How hard can it be to burn oneself in order to be reborn? But phoenix manages. After experiencing the process of self-burning and being reborn, phoenix will gain a life even better than before, with its feather smoother and its wings stronger. Isn’t there something in common between the phoenix and human beings, given that self-burning to the phoenix is what failures to human beings? Failures are parts of our life, which we can hardly deny. Life just isn’t always what we want it to be. And when we think of the word “color”, our minds would come up with those warm, bright elements such as red and yellow. However, what we neglect is that it also includes black and grey, which is the same with life. Besides happiness and success, there are bitterness and failures as well. Compared with the phoenix, the process of self-burning is to them as the process of undergoing failures is to us. The only difference is that whether we are able to accept failures wisely and elegantly, making it a stepping-stone of our life, instead of a stumbling block. Actually, accepting failures elegantly and learning from it is a very important way of coloring our life. As it’s said that, “Life is like a box of chocolate, you never know what you are gonna to get”, it is of great need for us to take the ups and downs of life as they come.

Completely engaged in the book, I began to reflect on my life, and I realized that I didn’t really lose my paintbrush of life. Instead, it’s always there , waiting for me to pick it up as long as I am brave enough to “burn myself” just as the phoenix do to be reborn, and paint a colorful life!

编辑：Rebecca