It's been a while, and this is random, but....

Okay, so if you didn't know, I participate in Governor's Cup Writing Composition every year. I have made it to State for three of the last four years. Today was Regionals, which required placing in the top 5 in at Disricts, and I was 5th. However, I just received my Districts composition with the scorers' grades, and I must say, I'm kind of angry.

First of all, the prompt was terrible. Absolutely the most awful, un-debatable prompt they've EVER had. You had to write an editorial for a school newspaper about whether or not teens should have plastic surgery. Honestly, who's gonna write saying that teens should have plastic surgery?

On the other hand, I didn't plan on writing a feel-good "You should love your body" piece of crap, so I decided to take the decidedly libertarian viewpoint of "Who cares? It's your body."

Apparently the scorers didn't like that too well. I was penalized in content and idea development for seemingly no other reason than they disagreed with my opinion. And my score in content carried over to the structure and conventions scores.

I mean, I don't wanna toot my own horn here, but I'm pretty much a grammar expert. I got a 35 on the English portion of the ACT. I know grammar. I know sentence structure. I've pored over my paper and I can't find any grammatical errors whatsoever.

It's just annoying to me that I was penalized for not having the opinion that the judges harbored. Not to mention one of the judges was a teacher from my school who doesn't know what passive voice is. And somehow she can give me a low grade in conventions. Ha.

Anyway, here's to hoping that I get a good score on the Regionals prompt and make it to State, sticking it to all those who would have me shot down because they don't like my opinion. Cheers.