Chairman's Award Question

[RoboLee1629]

Hey, to all the awards teams out there: What is the best point of view to write a Chairman's award in? In the rough draft, we started out using we, our ect. but sort of feel that it may be better to go with a third person point of view. Any advice?

[AllenGregoryIV]

The best advice I can give you is to read other teams' entries. They will give you a lot of ideas. I have seen many first person and many third person essays it really just depends on what your team feels is appropriate.

Here is a collection of 2013 Chairman's Entries.

[dag0620]

You can use either point of view. This comes down to what works better with the feel and theme of the content in your essay, as well as what works best for your team. There is not a blanket answer, it comes down to what you think and feel sounds and works better.

So in your case, if you like the sound of writing your essay in third person, then I would go ahead and stick with that.

Hope this helps.

[Jacob Bendicksen]

Kinda depends. We often use 'we' and 'Team 1540' interchangeably in our submission depending how it sounds, space, and context. 'We' tends to work better for the Executive Summary because it's shorter; team names/numbers are better in the essay because you have more wiggle room (but still not nearly enough).

[MechEng83]

PSA: Do not start nearly every sentence in your essay with "We..."

[cadandcookies]

Also, please don't use "they" when referring to your own team (you wrote your essay, not an impartial observer).

As for "Team XXXX" versus (or in addition to) "we," I think it's fine to use them interchangeably-- do try to throw some variety in there. Like Mech said, "We..." or "Team XXXX..." gets really old really fast. You don't want to irritate the people reading your Chairman's Essay.

If all else fails, just try reading it aloud. If it sounds weird, change it.