WCS
~~~
I went out to get the mail today, and the envelope on top piqued my curiosity. It was addressed to me, but had no identifying marks on its outside. The return address was some place in Pennsylvania that I had never heard of. I wasn't expecting anything in the mail, and so I wondered who it could possibly be from.
Suddenly, it struck me. Several months ago, I had submitted four of my Targum columns (Forsaking the Final Frontier, The Quality of Mercy, Major Malfunction, and A Tale of Two Universities) to the "Tenth Annual College Columnist Scholarship Contest of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists". Since then, I had heard nothing back from them. And though they had never released the list of finalists or winners on the website, I nearly forgot about the whole thing.
But then I remembered that the person I had mailed my materials to was a Penn State professor, and it came to me. The National Society of Newspaper Columnists would logically have its headquarters also located somewhere in Pennsylvania, and they must be informing me how I did! There was no other explanation as to why someone in Pennsylvania would be mailing me.
As I eagerly started to open the envelope, I thought about what it might contain. I entertained fantasies of myself winning the top prize; traveling to the national columnist convention in June as an invited guest; putting it on my resume - "Winner of the Tenth Annual College Columnist Contest of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists."; having it on the website. "This year's winner is GrandInquisitor from Rutgers University..."
Part of the breathless anticipation came from the fact that I haven't really won anything major since getting my essay entered into Dialogues@RU and winning a Distinguished Essay prize several months ago for an essay that I detested. Before that, you'd have to go all the way back to my last year in high school, when I was both admitted to Governor's School and also won first place in New Jersey for the United States Institute of Peace National Peace Essay Contest (only to see, at the 2004 D.C. awards week, my roommate take the national second prize and my friend to take first, while I could only sit and applaud). Since then I've never earned any major distinctions to be really proud of, and experienced crushing blow after crushing blow. I thought to myself, it would be awesome if I finally managed to break this slump by winning this scholarship.
Then I remonstrated myself. I was being too cocky. After all, there are a lot of other great college newspaper writers in the country, some of which you've even read yourself and admired greatly; what makes you think you can compete with all of them? I had re-read a couple of my other columns lately and was positively aghast at what I had been proud to call my own; what made me think that such stylistic tone-deafness wouldn't carry over to the columns I did submit? Besides, the envelope was a thin one - lessons learned from college admissions indicated it seemed unlikely something so small would contain such a joyful announcement.
Still, I figured, it's nice to think about winning. My columns aren't that bad - so maybe I didn't win first prize, or maybe I wasn't a finalist either, but maybe I still got something. Probably I was an honorable mention, at the very least. That would still be nice, wouldn't it?
But the more I thought about it, "honorable mention" sounded worse and worse. To my ears, it reeked of failure. Maybe it was the latent hyper-competitive drive inside me, the relentless Asian pursuit of perfection speaking, but I honestly wouldn't have been too happy being labeled "honorable mention". My columns is something I take great pride in - indeed, one of things I am proudest of in my life - and I've always yearned for some kind of official recognition for them. Yet if I were an "honorable mention", by listing that accomplishment, I would have to admit to the world that while the judges recognized that I had some talent, they still judged the work of others to be far superior than my own. That's a painful notion for me to swallow, and it felt hardly better than not listing anything in the first place. It certainly wasn't something I could smoothly and comfortably brag about any more.
And yet anyone who knows me well might wonder as to whether I really am that competitive. Lord knows I don't experience a similar intense pressure to succeed in my classes; why doesn't that same inferiority complex drive me to excel GPA-wise? Is it a disillusionment with being at Rutgers, a feeling that grades don't matter, a lack of interest in the subject matter, or just a smug arrogance considering myself already intellectually superior to almost everyone in my classes, with no need to prove it? I have no idea, but it speaks to some of the weaknesses of my character. I am fiercely competitive in so many things that don't matter in the grand scheme, and dangerously indifferent to many things that do.
All of these thoughts meandered through my mind as I struggled to get the envelope open. Finally, after what seemed an eternity, I managed to get the letter out, and I descended upon its contents, eagerly wondering what the National Society of Newspaper Columnists thought about my columns:
Dear Edward,
Congratulations! I am very proud to inform you that you have been Pre-Approved for a --
Congratulations! I am very proud to inform you that you have been Pre-Approved for a --
Disgusted, I tore the letter to shreds and threw it out. So much for that.
