NewsAcademics
Student essay wins top honor in writing contest
Apr 2, 2009 12:00 AM
By Tannika King - Faculty
Senior Jackie Pober's essay, "Persistence," was selected as one of high merit in the Creative Communication's Young Writer's Contest, Spring 2009, and was chosen for publication in the 2009 hardbound anthology, "Celebrating What is Important to Me." An excerpt of the essay follows.
Those who live on the water know. Any of them will tell you. They watch their porches get flooded. They find their furniture floating among stray evergreen branches. They see their docks float away. But when the storm dies down, there they are, picking up the pieces, rebuilding their wharfs, one more time. They know things will get knocked down by the wind, again, swept away by the surf, again, lost and broken, again. Just as sure, they know they will be back, clearing debris from their yards and living rooms, again, building something up, again, fixing something broken, again.
There is nothing comparable to going through a hurricane. The anxious anticipation, the terrible storm, and the aftermath where the sun comes up and you see total strangers gathering from all directions to pull a tree off a neighbor’s roof, or help clear debris from a driveway down the street. As a witness and survivor of three Gulf Coast hurricanes, living through these storms has helped shape me as a person. How could it not? Hurricanes have taught me more about teamwork than any soccer team I have ever been on, trained me to manage time with more precision than any standardized test, and instilled in me a strength more powerful than any I could have gained if I ran a thousand miles and didn’t stop. Most of all, hurricanes taught me that persistence against all obstacles is so much more than just a character trait, it is a way of life.
Those who live on the water know. Any of them will tell you. They watch their porches get flooded. They find their furniture floating among stray evergreen branches. They see their docks float away. But when the storm dies down, there they are, picking up the pieces, rebuilding their wharfs, one more time. They know things will get knocked down by the wind, again, swept away by the surf, again, lost and broken, again. Just as sure, they know they will be back, clearing debris from their yards and living rooms, again, building something up, again, fixing something broken, again.
There is nothing comparable to going through a hurricane. The anxious anticipation, the terrible storm, and the aftermath where the sun comes up and you see total strangers gathering from all directions to pull a tree off a neighbor’s roof, or help clear debris from a driveway down the street. As a witness and survivor of three Gulf Coast hurricanes, living through these storms has helped shape me as a person. How could it not? Hurricanes have taught me more about teamwork than any soccer team I have ever been on, trained me to manage time with more precision than any standardized test, and instilled in me a strength more powerful than any I could have gained if I ran a thousand miles and didn’t stop. Most of all, hurricanes taught me that persistence against all obstacles is so much more than just a character trait, it is a way of life.
