How to win an Essay Contest (Day 23)

Guess what I did today. Go on, guess.

I talked about the skills fair yesterday in my blog, but I shall refresh your memory.

Today I got out of school to go to Virginia College to write an essay because I, along with my senior friend Brittany, were chosen from our school to participate in the English portion (there were a lot of different skills, we sent representatives for art, math, physics, and industrial arts but there was also office managing skills, early childhood development, speech, and many more)

We get there, look around, and it’s mostly seniors. This is to be expected because this is a representation of our school in academics, and seniors tend to be the most educated of the smart class.

Most of us are there just to get out of class, though. So we aren’t really worried. I mean really, Carlton, winning something? This is highly unlikely.

But today the gods have seemed to be smiling down on us.

We were taken on buses after orientation to different parts of the college and other buildings surrounding the town. From there we were corralled into our tense little rooms with a supervisor who was supposed to watch us and make sure we had enough paper (which he did poorly)

Again, I wasn’t really nervous about the writing, I wasn’t expecting anything out of it, I was a filler seat after all, put in place because the Knowledge Bowl team had gone to state that day, leaving the rest of us to fend for ourselves at this competition.

the catch here is, we only have 50 minutes.

The buses were late so we had 50 minutes to write a 3-4 paragraph essay on the topic:
Pick an adult who has been very influential and memorable in your life who isn’t a parent.
This would preferably be a teacher or instructor (but I read this as NOT a teach or instructor, which may have put me behind a little)
Make it as detailed as possible and write a conclusion about how this person affects your life today.

I was pulling a blank.

No one older that I could think of has really affected my life in any way.
I mean obviously everyone we meet has an affect on our lives, but not enough to write about.

I thought maybe I’d write about John Green, because he’s been pretty influencial in my life, but I don’t personally know him, so I thought they wouldn’t like the complication I would need to get into it.

This is when it occurred to me, I’m going to have to make someone up.

The one name that popped into my head was Maggy.
Apparently, Maggy is my mom’s best friend, the only person who is always there for me, listens to what I have to say, and shares all of her ideas on life with me.
Maggy doesn’t teach tolerance, but equality.
She also finds the positive side to everything, and sometime acts as the moral compass in my head.
She can be described as witty, intelligent, understanding, and almost omnicent.

I wish Maggy was real. She sounds extremely cool.

So basically, I believe I deserve extra points because not only did I find a topic, create a rough draft, and create a final draft all in fifty minutes, but I also made up a person.

So suck on that Nashwalk-Weewatin!

I was the last one to finish in the room, you know how making up fictional characters can slow you down, and I was really shaking when I left the room.

I went up to Brittany and told her about how I had made up a person. She found it super hilarious, but said she would be completely pissed if my fictional person beat her heartfelt essay.

Then we were bused back to the main building where the awards were being given out.

Carlton, being the last to put in our door prize slips, cleaned out! It was amazing, only 1 out of the 8 of us who actually threw in a sheet won something.

I myself got a free flashdrive.

Then came the awards. There were metals for first through third place. The art kids and I were standing around discussing what they had to work with for their drawings when English came up. Third place had gone by, the only place I thought I could get, so I turned around to start heading into the lunch room when from behind me I hear… “and first prize in the English essay contest is A-lish-a Lundquist.

NO FREAKING WAY!

I didn’t even believe it but everyone was telling me to go up there, apparently they had heard it too. It wasn’t just my imagination running away on me.

The moral of this story is, ‘when in doubt, make someone up.’

When I got back to school apparently my guidance councilor had announced it over several intercoms while she was looking for me (I was NOT going back to Health, I was under the pretense that I wasn’t technically at school that day)

So I received a lot of congratulations from my friends, who all know that I hadn’t written an essay since the end of ninth grade, in which I took 4 hours. So they were quite impressed. After they learned I made someone up they were even more impressed.

This is a blog of hope to all of you. When faced against seniors in college lit classes, just make something up.

The goal is to write the best essay, not the most truthful.