Every year, many Choate students spend hours working on writing assignments, pouring their hearts into pieces that mirror their passions. For some, their efforts culminate in submitting pieces to the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, a regional and national competition for dedicated young artists and writers.
For this competition, the country is divided into many regions, each of which holds a preliminary round of judging to distinguish students who move forward to participate at the national level. A work has the potential to receive an Honorable Mention, a Silver Key, or a Gold Key. This year, twenty Choate students won awards for their submissions, earning a total of six Gold Keys and seven Silver Keys.
Their creations were as diverse as they were beautiful, inspired by many different styles of writing and sources. As Ms. Brooke Fichera, a faculty coordinator for the event, explained, “They accept almost any genre you could think of. They have poetry, personal essay/nonfiction, analytical essays, fiction, flash fiction, scripts for plays — any type of writing that has been written by students, they have a category for, pretty much.” The Scholastic Awards are meant to be an outlet for students’ creativity, rather than an event where they are compelled to conform to a specific genre of writing.
Another crucial portion of the competition is the art section, with HP Park ’21, Naomi Koo ’20 and Yuting Wang ’20 all earning awards. On her personal experience, Koo said, “I submitted most of the artwork I did over my gap year; one of my pieces was a CD cover with my favourite artist painted over it.” Wang described the Scholastic Awards as a whole: “It allowed me to see different perspectives of people’s artwork and understand their thought process.”
All students who have received a Gold Key are invited to compete nationally, for which the process is much more intense. But even winning an award at the regional level is a remarkable achievement, according to Ms. Fichera. She said, “Even a regional award basically says that, you know, you’re doing good things in the world of writing. You have something to say, and you’re saying things that haven’t been said before.”
The students who win these awards are strong writers who have the ability to utilize sophisticated language and mechanics. However, above all, the judges of the competition are looking for “somebody who has an authentic voice, who’s saying something new,” as well as someone who writes pieces that “shine a light on something interesting, whether it’s a truth about that person’s own life, or creating an interesting fictional world, or poetry that speaks to an emotion or an experience in a way that people can relate to.”
But for many of the students who submitted to the Scholastic Awards, it wasn’t just about earning the highest honors. It was more about creating a piece that meant a lot to them. Jacqueline Zou ’20 wrote a memoir titled “Utopia Beneath the Snow Mountain,” which described a Chinese city called Lijiang she once visited. To Zou, writing her memoir was about describing a place that she liked and conveying that happiness to her readers. She said, “I just feel strongly about this piece. It was the first piece of personal writing I’ve done at Choate because usually, we have to write analytical essays. I just don’t have that much of a chance to express myself.”
The Scholastic Awards were also an opportunity for Zou to increase her own confidence in her writing ability. “I just enjoy the way how, especially when you’re reading good writers’ works, their language can influence your emotions. Their language is imagery. When you read, you can actually see what they are talking about. Since I first entered Choate, I’ve been trying to polish my writing ability, to move in that direction.”
