On Saturday, I went to help judge a high school writing competition called Power of the Pen.\u00a0 Schools from around the area sent teams of contestants, who competed on both an individual and team basis, in three rounds of 40-minute compositions.\u00a0 For the Eighth Grade, of which I was one of the judges for Best of Round, there were three prompts for the compositions.<\/p>\n
Round 1:\u00a0 Show what it takes to start all over again. The essays were inventive and personal, and full of adolescent angst.\u00a0 Bullying, cliques, cutting, and medical traumas were all prevalent, but so were historical fictions, war stories, mafia, competitive swimming and horseback riding.\u00a0 Some of my favorites were nature stories, and although we were warned not to reward stories of personification, I like the Round 1 response of floating in limbo-land, until finally the chrysalis hatched and our protagonist discovered his wings.\u00a0 There were also great stories of peer pressure, cliques, bullying, procrastination and test anxiety that made me remember what it felt like to be in eighth grade.\u00a0 I am so very glad that I am no longer in eighth grade!<\/p>\n All in all, an entertaining and enlivening way to spend a Saturday afternoon, and inspiring to see so many different interpretations to the same question.\u00a0 Long live the Power of the Pen!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On Saturday, I went to help judge a high school writing competition called Power of the Pen.\u00a0 Schools from around the area sent teams of contestants, who competed on both an individual and team basis, in three rounds of 40-minute … Continue reading
\nRound 2:\u00a0 Write about somewhere you’d rather be.
\nRound 3:\u00a0 Use the pronoun them<\/em> as the central theme of your story.<\/p>\n