A Memoir: What the Heck??
Heyyy guys,
So I wrote this little memoir for my Creative Writing class in school, and I just wanted to share it with you to hopefully pass on little bit of wisdom that I learned this past year.
The prompt was to write about a moment of awesomeness in your life. Let's go :)
It's hard to pick just one moment of awesomeness from my life, but the one I feel compelled to write about is what I would consider bittersweet, both positive and negative. It started out completely positive for me and those who knew about it, but just recently, I learned something about it that shattered the proud feelings I had gotten from it. Let me explain.
Last robotics season, I was put in charge of writing an essay for a prestigious award that crowned a leader as one other leaders should strive to be like. This award is called the Woodie Flowers Award. I chose my school's head mentor, Randy. In the past, one of my friends and I had written a different essay about Randy, and he won mentor of the year because of it. Anyway, I spent a lot of time gathering information about him and recording quotes from my other team members about why Randy is so special and important, and from that data, I constructed a heartfelt essay that I'd have to say was pretty darn good. However, I soon discovered that my essay was 2,000 characters over the required length, so I had a lot of editing to do. After a lot of reworking to get my essay back under the limit, I showed it to another one of the mentors (stay tuned for more about her later) and one of my friends on the team who helped me edit further and polish the essay. As I pushed the blue "submit" button, I felt happy about what I had written and really, truly believed that the mentor I had written the essay about had a chance at winning.
Now, let's flash forward a few months. We were at the state robotics competition where my essay was against all other essays to finalize a winner who would move on to be the World Championship's Woodie Flowers nominee for our state. It was time. They began to introduce the award, saying stuff like "this mentor has been working with the FIRST organization for over 20 years.... this mentor.... this mentor...." and listing many other achievements... My heart was in my throat. That sounded familiar..... They quoted my essay! "The winner of the Woodie Flowers Award who will move on to represent our state at the World Championship is Randy ----- from FIRST Team 10218!" Let's just say lots of hugs and high fives were shared at that time, and I was super proud of what I had achieved. So did I win the award? No, not really. Randy and his actions won, with the help of me and my essay. You are probably wondering how my essay did at Worlds, and unfortunately Randy did not win there, but everyone agreed that winning state was awesome too. For real though, how many people can say that an essay they wrote won an award at the state level??? This felt awesome.
Now, if I stop the story there, you will probably wonder why this is also negative. I'm getting to that. A couple of weeks ago, I was talking with my brother's best friend who I consider a second brother, and he told something that made him mad and really hurt me. It was at the World Competition that he overheard the mentor that had taken part in helping me edit the piece say to other people when asked if I had written it, "Well she had help," in a really snotty tone of voice, implying that she was the one who the credit should really go to for the win. Wow, hearing this hurt a lot. It's not like she went out saying that she wrote the article herself... but by saying what she did, she basically discredited my hard work and took the credit for putting it all together when really all she did was help me edit and submit it on the website. Understandably, that made me really upset. I felt that the award was pretty much all I worked on and contributed to the team, and that she was trying to take that away from me.
I hope what I've written here has correctly portrayed my emotions towards the subject and that you as a reader can understand why I can't ever feel completely happy about my accomplishment again. So, please, whoever reads this.... Never try to take credit for somebody else's work. It will only end up hurting your relationship with them. Just let people have their moments of awesomeness! Even if you did help in some way on their road to accomplishing whatever it is they accomplish, remember, it's their time in the light. Don't wreck it. Let it stay awesome.
*names and team #'s are fake for privacy reasons*
Anyway, I just wanted to share that little piece with you today. If you would like to see more of my creative writing work (in other genres) let me know by commenting down below! And also let me know what one of your greatest moments of awesomeness has been.
Mischeif Managed,
July
So I wrote this little memoir for my Creative Writing class in school, and I just wanted to share it with you to hopefully pass on little bit of wisdom that I learned this past year.
The prompt was to write about a moment of awesomeness in your life. Let's go :)
It's hard to pick just one moment of awesomeness from my life, but the one I feel compelled to write about is what I would consider bittersweet, both positive and negative. It started out completely positive for me and those who knew about it, but just recently, I learned something about it that shattered the proud feelings I had gotten from it. Let me explain.
Last robotics season, I was put in charge of writing an essay for a prestigious award that crowned a leader as one other leaders should strive to be like. This award is called the Woodie Flowers Award. I chose my school's head mentor, Randy. In the past, one of my friends and I had written a different essay about Randy, and he won mentor of the year because of it. Anyway, I spent a lot of time gathering information about him and recording quotes from my other team members about why Randy is so special and important, and from that data, I constructed a heartfelt essay that I'd have to say was pretty darn good. However, I soon discovered that my essay was 2,000 characters over the required length, so I had a lot of editing to do. After a lot of reworking to get my essay back under the limit, I showed it to another one of the mentors (stay tuned for more about her later) and one of my friends on the team who helped me edit further and polish the essay. As I pushed the blue "submit" button, I felt happy about what I had written and really, truly believed that the mentor I had written the essay about had a chance at winning.
Now, let's flash forward a few months. We were at the state robotics competition where my essay was against all other essays to finalize a winner who would move on to be the World Championship's Woodie Flowers nominee for our state. It was time. They began to introduce the award, saying stuff like "this mentor has been working with the FIRST organization for over 20 years.... this mentor.... this mentor...." and listing many other achievements... My heart was in my throat. That sounded familiar..... They quoted my essay! "The winner of the Woodie Flowers Award who will move on to represent our state at the World Championship is Randy ----- from FIRST Team 10218!" Let's just say lots of hugs and high fives were shared at that time, and I was super proud of what I had achieved. So did I win the award? No, not really. Randy and his actions won, with the help of me and my essay. You are probably wondering how my essay did at Worlds, and unfortunately Randy did not win there, but everyone agreed that winning state was awesome too. For real though, how many people can say that an essay they wrote won an award at the state level??? This felt awesome.
Now, if I stop the story there, you will probably wonder why this is also negative. I'm getting to that. A couple of weeks ago, I was talking with my brother's best friend who I consider a second brother, and he told something that made him mad and really hurt me. It was at the World Competition that he overheard the mentor that had taken part in helping me edit the piece say to other people when asked if I had written it, "Well she had help," in a really snotty tone of voice, implying that she was the one who the credit should really go to for the win. Wow, hearing this hurt a lot. It's not like she went out saying that she wrote the article herself... but by saying what she did, she basically discredited my hard work and took the credit for putting it all together when really all she did was help me edit and submit it on the website. Understandably, that made me really upset. I felt that the award was pretty much all I worked on and contributed to the team, and that she was trying to take that away from me.
I hope what I've written here has correctly portrayed my emotions towards the subject and that you as a reader can understand why I can't ever feel completely happy about my accomplishment again. So, please, whoever reads this.... Never try to take credit for somebody else's work. It will only end up hurting your relationship with them. Just let people have their moments of awesomeness! Even if you did help in some way on their road to accomplishing whatever it is they accomplish, remember, it's their time in the light. Don't wreck it. Let it stay awesome.
*names and team #'s are fake for privacy reasons*
Anyway, I just wanted to share that little piece with you today. If you would like to see more of my creative writing work (in other genres) let me know by commenting down below! And also let me know what one of your greatest moments of awesomeness has been.
Mischeif Managed,
July
What a great piece. It can really hurt when something like that happens; I'm so sorry, although I hope you can still be happy in what you achieved! No matter what others say, you have your own pride and your own knowledge of the truth.
ReplyDeleteWell done for winning at state level!
Aww, you're the best!! Thank you :)
Delete