Ken's Writing Challenge

[Anna B.]

I know that it's been a year, but could people still send you submissions? I am currently working on one for school, but I saw this thread and was wondering if I could still submit my essay.
-Anna

[Steve W]

Even if you can't submit it, it would be great to hear(read) your story. Write away!

[JaneYoung]

Originally Posted by Annette B.

I know that it's been a year, but could people still send you submissions? I am currently working on one for school, but I saw this thread and was wondering if I could still submit my essay.
-Anna

Anna,
First of all, thank you for finding this thread and showing interest. Ken's challenge was beautiful. I watched for more posted submissions for a long time but never saw any.

Secondly, I agree with Steve, write away.

[Ken Leung]

Yup yup yup.

It turns out I was too overwhelmed last year to handle this properly, but I am very interested in giving this another go. With one modification though: folks can post their writing in this thread anytime.

I realized this should be a community effort, and as such, we should all come together and help each other be better at writing, whether by offering ideas on possible topics, offering constructive criticism when an essay is posted, or by support the writer's effort by simply spending the time to read it.

Instead of me putting forward this challenge to the community, it should be all of us coming together and use this idea to challenge and support each other.

Sounds good? Good! The original challenge is edited to reflect this change.

Let's roll!

[Anna B.]

I originally was going to post the essay I wrote for school, but it turned out really boring. Instead, you’ll get the version I wrote in my head while having a MRI that took about an hour and a half (Two studies, one on each leg, and five scans for each leg). Please feel free to comment with suggestions; I’m always looking to improve my writing.

How I found myself and in the process defied all expectations
A. Brill

To explain how I found who I was I need to tell a slightly embarrassing story. You see, at the beginning of the 2008 season I was just this painfully shy eighth grader that knew barely anything about herself, let alone the world. I had experienced FLL before and it was something I really enjoyed, and so I decided to join the high school robotics team. I was so self-conscious that I barely talked all the way up to the last week of build season 2008. That’s almost five whole months! Anyway, it was the last week of build season, and our team had set up shop in WPI’s robotics lab/shop. The kids on the team were always trying to get me to talk (It was kind of a game with them) and this one kid decided that a nickname would be the best idea to get me out of my shell. So when he wanted me to do a job for me one day, he called me over by saying “Hey, little Annie!” Now, I hate nicknames. Call me Anna, or Annette, but nothing else. When he said this I kind of lost it and yelled at him “It’s ANNA”. This was probably the first time I had said more than one word at a time, let alone yell at another student, so I felt pretty bad. Everyone else on the team thought it was great that I yelled at this kid (He was 6’ 2”, and when I yelled he jumped at least 6”). I felt so bad that I actually left the room. On the way back, one of my mentors cornered me. I kind of broke down and started crying, and so my mentor took me on a walk around the building. During that walk we talked about being the quiet kid, and lots of other stuff I don’t remember now. All I know is that when I came back from that walk, I understood that people cared about me, and that what I did really wasn’t that awful.

You might be wondering, how exactly that leads to me finding myself. Well, I began to realize, from that talk with my mentor, that other people really cared about me (A lot of kids I knew would try and take advantage of my intelligence and kindness) and that lead to me having more confidence which lead me to be able to stand up to those kids who tried to take advantage of me, which then lead to being able to stand up to people who say girls can’t do engineering and what’s an eighth grader doing here. That simple talk has led me on a journey to well, I don’t know where, all I know is that I’m going somewhere and on the way, I’m going to do great things. FIRST is just one of those many things.

After that experience I became more active in the team and I learned so many things. A very important thing that I learned is how to think, not what to think. This is a very important point, because I’ve come across people and organizations that want to tell you what to think, instead of letting you think for yourself. I think this is a really great part of FIRST because it prepares you for the real world where you will have to think for yourself and form your own opinions about what people say or think. And from this I’ve learned to question. I don’t take anything anyone says like it’s written in stone. Instead, I write long-winded emails asking lots of questions, and my teachers have started to get annoyed at how many questions I’ve asked and it’s only the fifth week of school. I’ve learned a lot about mechanics and engineering from robotics too, it’s even what I plan to do in college and maybe the Real World. But for now I’m content to enjoy my first year of high school, and build robots.

FIRST has helped me find myself and defy expectations. I’m no longer that shy girl sitting a corner, but I am the girl who took part in putting together our 2008 robot. I look at that robot and think to myself, I helped build that, I helped program it. I poured my blood, sweat and tears into it, even though people told me I couldn’t, that girls have no place in engineering, that eighth graders shouldn’t mix with high schoolers. Despite all this, I did do it, and it’s how I found myself.


btw, the kid who called me "little Annie" apologized profusely and now we're pretty good friends.