My Daughter the Journalist

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The school newspaper came out today.  And my girl, my 13 year old baby, had the front page article!  Which I had not read before it came out.  And I am so impressed, because that girl can write!   My chest is all puffed out, and I am re-printing it here.  It is about School Spirit Week.

One Week a Year by Jess Waters

I originally wrote a massive article on the topic of school spirit.  It was over two pages in Microsoft Word (somewhere in the 600-700 word range) and that wasn’t even done yet.

My article was originally titled “But Isn’t This All Just Stupid Anyways?”  I wish I could say it was a cynical but controlled criticism of emotional attachment to one’s educational institution, but it was really just me whining about having to re-hang the green and yellow streamers when people tore them down between class periods.

I had a-million-and-three snide remarks, but the thing was–after reading over my own words–I noticed how clumsy and gawky they sounded.  I kept contradicting myself in my writing, not even realizing I was doing it.  Every argument I made, I refuted.  I rambled.  I couldn’t make a point.

Well, the point was that I certainly couldn’t turn this article in to my Journalism teacher and expect it to be published.  I spent days struggling to figure out how to write this article, trying to figure out why my first draft was such a failure, why I didn’t like it.  I kept promising Mrs. (Teacher) the article was “almost done” after spending an hour a night staring at a blank document.  I came this close to giving up and writing an article about extra credit, instead.  But just before I typed out that first extra credit related sentence, I had an epiphany.

Before, I had interpreted all this “spirit week stuff” as a desperate attempt to create that impossible-to-achieve intimacy with students.  I interpreted this as an opportunity to make each individual student feel special.  But I don’t think that’s what it is.  I think it’s better than that.

Spirit Week is an opportunity to create unity, to create memories.  The point is to be able to look back ten years from now at the blur of classes and crushes and extracurricular activities, and to remember what it felt like to see the homecoming game stands packed so full that the overflow meant that half the people in the opposing team’s stands were rooting for (OurSchool’sTeam) too!

The point of Spirit Week is to remember what it was like to see an English teacher busting some crazy Michael Jackson moves on the middle of the football field.  The point is to remember, in the words of student (Firstname Lastname), that “school can be fun for one week a year.”

Spirit Week is not about creating intimacy.  It’s about creating a spectacle.  It’s about having the time of your life.  It’s about having the Class of Dimes going out with a bang, and the freshman coming in with a boom, and the sophomores and juniors making a heck of a lot of noise of their own.

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