And The Winner Is….
Thursday, July 3rd, 2008Choosing an essay was hard. I honestly had a nightmare last night because of the stress. I realized that there are several main groups of essays, the ones where you claimed to be Miley’s biggest fan (and many were extremely convincing!), several where a very tragic thing had happened and where the tickets might do some real good to soothe some pain, and a handful of brilliant, clever, and creative essays.
I Chose Theresa’s essay “Dan the Man.” Her idea of giving the tickets to a family on her block that was unconditionally welcoming to her was inspiring to me. The problem I faced was that there were probably a lot of truthful essays about tragedy and pain, but also a fair share of untruthful ones, and there was no way for me to know which one was which. Also, it was difficult to empirically say which young person was really Miley’s biggest fan. Some of the creative ones almost won, but again, there was a dead tie on a lot of them.
Theresa’s essay on giving the tickets to this family wasn’t exaggerated or fantastical, but truly seemed to follow a principal that America can use more of. She wanted to give the tickets to a family who so warmly welcomed her family to a community. It is this story of ordinary people thinking not of themselves but of others first that touched me. There wasn’t any false patriotism or religiosity in the essay, just simple good will.
Thank you so much, everyone who participated in this contest. Hopefully, even if you didn’t win, the contest made you reflect a bit about life and the things that matter, I know it did for me.
The winning essay is directly below this post. Happy Independence Day to all.
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