And The Winner Is….
Choosing 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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July 3rd, 2008 at 1:38 pm
I didn’t figure that we would win, but I think that you didn’t chose a winner in accordance to your guidelines. I thought you wanted essays to be creative and the story that you chose was not very creative.
“4) Essays will be critiqued by us and us alone, and the criteria will be the level of creativity.”
I still think your generosity in giving out tickets was amazing, it would just be easier to swallow not winning if the winner had been a creative entry like you asked for.
July 3rd, 2008 at 1:45 pm
Charity might be the highest form of creativity.
July 3rd, 2008 at 3:57 pm
How do you choose what is true unless you already knew this story or person over another that you said may not be true?? Just wondering how you have the knowledge of which story is true or false over a creative one??
July 3rd, 2008 at 11:48 pm
I think you chose a wonderful winner! Although I really, really would have loved those tickets for our kids, you can’t always get what you want and I think you chose a wonderful recipient. Will you post any more about the winner and their reaction to the tickets? I’d love to hear “the rest of the story”!!
July 8th, 2008 at 12:16 am
will we see a picture of the winner at the concert?!!
- http://www.ultimatefanjewelry.com/2008/06/miley-cyrus.html