A couple days ago, on the 23rd of May, I participated in an Essay and Speaking Contest for the 8th grade here in my town. I had previously written an essay, which got chosen as one of 6 essays in my school to be presented orally at a competition. My essay, which was required to be personal, was about my winning the Statewide Spelling Bee in the 6th grade. I wrote about my experience before and after the event, including all the hard work and practice necessary in order to succeed. In addition to writing a good essay, I had to practice my verbal presentation of the paper within a mere two weeks. I wanted to be able to do well in the contest, and so a lot of work was required. I was making changes to the tonal qualities and volume levels of my voice throughout parts of the essay up until the final night. On the day of, I was nervous beyond comprehension, but I managed to survive the day. At 7:00, I was ready for another huge moment in my life. When I went up to the podium, I had already seen some of the others go, and I was slightly less nervous. Even so, my hands were shaking so much, I couldn't even see the words on the paper at certain parts of the speech. It also didn't help that the podium was high enough to make me have to stand on my tip-toes throughout the entire thing! I did pretty well throughout the entire thing, until I got about 3/4 of the way down, when the staring eyes of the audience were becoming slightly overwhelming. I mixed a sentence that went along the lines of "the gears in our brains" and instead said "the brains of our gears." My face became redder than a ripe tomato, but I fixed the error and moved on, hoping the judges wouldn't notice. At the end of the competition, when the judges' verdict was about to be released, the only thought running through my head was "Did they reduce my score because of that mistake??" It was nerve-wracking. They must not have, because 5 minutes and a lot of anxiety later, I received my award for 1st place school wide, and 2nd place town wide (out of a total of 18 kids). I was obviously disappointed about the second place, but I was still happy to have gotten any award at all. Turns out, the next day in school, my English teacher, who was present at the competition, called me over and told me that the student who received the first place award had an essay that was about 4 pages long. She said that the rules required the essay to be below 2 pages. My essay had originally started out as 4 1/2 pages, but I had to shorten it to adhere to the rules. My teacher had explained to the judges that this was not fair, and that the other student should not have received first place. The final decision has not been made, but technically, I won. So, overall, it was a success, and I am proud to say that I hold the title of first place.
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