It was the morning before the class I despised at 7:30 am. I drove up the block dreading going to my first class. This class I dreaded was a class titled “World Language and Culture” and it was necessary for me to take in order to graduate in the spring. I pulled up to the school and breathed in a breath of the salty air and stepped into school walking straight up the stairs and into the class just as the bell rang. I’d rather be serving another detention than going to this class so early in the morning. I sat down next to my friends Paul and Brian who informed me that the teacher was late, as usual. I sighed and turned to them and said “just a few more months until we graduate, not too much longer”. Brian, who was a tall kid with blonde hair and permanent mischievous smirk on his face was always a trouble maker. He was never a big fan of school, so to him this class was absolute torture. Paul, a quiet kid from Korea who always wore his bangs over his eyes, hated the class too, but not because it was boring, because English was his third language after Korean and Chinese. We all found the class equally terrible in our own ways. The class was heavily based on writing, a subject I was never bad at, but a subject I never really found myself enjoying doing. The assignment of a paper to me was tedious and annoying and something I would always dread from the moment it was assigned. To me writing was just irritating due to the years and years of essays and papers I had been forced to write from scientific write-ups to state testing narratives.

About five minutes later the teacher entered the room more excited and animated than normal. She was a shorter women with one of those voices that were always extremely cheerful, she had beach blonde hair and always made an effort to maintain serious eye contact with you. She walked in and announced that we would be taking a different approach to learning about other cultures by joining an essay contest set in India. Despite my initial dismay of the writing assignment, I was intrigued, but also confused as I turned to Brian and said “Essay contest in India? How did she even find this”. I have always been somewhat interested in entering an essay contest just to see how well I would do, but an international one seemed competitive and out of my league. My instructor explained that there was no prize for winning and no second or third place, only first. The topic was “Women’s Rights and Representation in Government”.  I had always been a strong supporter of equal representation so I was excited to get my opinion out, even though there was no real prize if I won.

Paul and Brian were not as unusually eager as I was so they spent their three days to write the paper so they passed the time by playing games on their laptops and texting discreetly under the desk. For some reason I was more excited to take part in an this international essay contest than I was for anything else I had done this year. I spent a lot of my time making sure I had enough research done in an effort to avoid writing a paper that poorly informed. I got into writing the paper and made the statement that equality in opportunity is one of the most important parts of freedom, and that what people represent and embody is more expressive of them than their gender. The paper was not allowed to be very long so condensing all of the things I wished to say into one page was a big challenge since I could have written a ten page paper on it. Once my paper supporting women’s rights and representation was complete, it was time to wait for the results.

I was eager to know the results for the first two weeks after completing the paper, but after they passed I realized that I probably just did not win. I kept my eagerness to myself as my friends thought I was crazy. I clearly remember Paul leaning over to me while writing the paper and saying “you are actually doing this? I’m gonna write it last minute cause there isn’t a grade”. I didn’t really care about what they thought, usually I agreed with my friends about their opinions on this class, but not this opinion. I just responded with “Yeah why not, you never know man” trying to divert the topic so I could continue writing my paper. For some reason it was different this time and eagerness for writing was a new feeling that I had never really felt before. Then one day I walked into class and my teacher ran over to me with a large grin on her face and she announced that I had won the essay contest and the holders of the competition wished to meet me over Skype. Not only was I shocked that my essay was considered, but they praised my ability to express my own opinion and feelings in a way they claimed was not evident in the other papers. This was by far my greatest writing achievement yet.

Winning an essay contest set in another country helped prove to me that not only had my writing abilities improved throughout the years, but that writing was a way for me to be able to express my ideas and share them with people throughout the world and communicate with those who agree with me. This experience taught me to give writing a chance, and to not just instantly get upset when I find out I have a writing assignment due. I found a passion for assignments that allowed me to express my side of thought for important events. The experience was eye opening for me and I no longer find myself rolling my eyes when I know I have to write a paper. Even today, when I am told that part of my grade will rely on writing a paper, I think back to the essay contest, a time writing made me happy, and remember that it isn’t a nuisance, but a chance for me to express myself.