Rihla #23

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My Secret Weapon



I believe in writing and the effect it has on others.

Ever since I was young I was always fascinated with words, what they sounded like, how they were spelled, and how they were expressed. Even though this did intrigue me, I didn't start communicating with people until after a trip to Cancun, Mexico. I came back with a gift I'll never take for granted and use it as my secret weapon. My power is written communication.



I really started to understand my writing in third grade and my teachers understood it as well and entered me in my very first writing competition for the city. I had to write an essay about Jean Baptiste Pointe Du Sable and his journey of discovering Chicago. This was something I was not interested in doing because I never liked writing due to the fact of how naive I was about my gift and it never occurred to me, until later on in my life, that I was picked out of 800 students to write for a city wide competition. I unfortunately did not get placed, but I was always the student in school whose work got looked at first, in an good way. I think, at least that is what my teachers told me.



As I got older and wiser, I started to experiment with me secret weapon by entering more writing competitions to see what I am capable of achieving. At age 9 I won second place in a writing competition writing an essay about my grandmother whom I never got to meet due to cancer. The judges said that it was a really heart felt essay and that I should never stop writing. This motivated me because I already knew I had a gift, but I didn't believe other people saw it until what the judges told me. At 13, I won second place once again for an essay on Dr. King. I was disappointed, but I knew in my heart I won first place because everyone in the audience gave me a standing ovation, not the first place winner. By the time I got to high school, I had my skills down pat, so when we were assigned to write a poem about the book The Things They Carried, I was very excited to use my secret weapon. When I read it in class, I blew my teacher away so much that he was speechless when he heard it. He also told me that I needed to enter it in a city wide competition, so I did. I never heard back from them, but I wasn't upset. Everything happens for a reason.



Just recently I re-entered the Dr. King essay competition again and can you guess which place I won? Second place all over again. It is cool to get the recognition, but hard to watch the other person take what you think you earned. Though out my writing years, I have been acknowledged in my church, school, and family to never give up writing.



After all my years of writing, I still dislike doing it in school, but it do like it when those A's come back.



I believe in written communication, it is my secret weapon. What's yours?

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