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Best Essay Writing Contests in 2024

Showing 48 contests that match your search.

Annual Student Essay Contest

Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum

Genres: Essay and Non-fiction

For this year’s Essay Contest, we are asking students to think about why the story of the Oklahoma City bombing is important today.

📅 Deadline: March 04, 2024 (Expired)

NOWW 26th International Writing Contest

Northwestern Ontario Writers Workshop (NOWW)

Genres: Essay, Fiction, Non-fiction, Poetry, and Short Story

Open to all writers in four categories: poetry, short fiction, creative nonfiction, and critical writing.

Additional prizes:

2nd: $100 | 3rd: $50

💰 Entry fee: $7

📅 Deadline: February 29, 2024 (Expired)

International Essay Competition 2023/24

Avernus Education

Genres: Essay

Welcome to our prestigious International Essay Competition. At Avernus Education, we are thrilled to provide a platform for young minds to showcase their prowess in Medicine, Engineering, Law, Economics, Psychology, History and Politics. These varied subject categories underscore the importance of interdisciplinary study, a crucial foundation for future leaders in our increasingly interconnected world. Winners receive an exclusive Avernus Education Scholarship worth over £5000 - granting them free entrance to our exclusive summer camp at Oxford University! Outstanding Runners Up receive 5 hours worth of Credits for Avernus Education courses, conferences and tutoring services.

Partial scholarship

📅 Deadline: February 19, 2024 (Expired)

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Brink Literary Journal Award for Hybrid Writing

Genres: Essay, Fantasy, Fiction, Humor, Memoir, Non-fiction, Poetry, Science Writing, and Short Story

The Brink Literary Journal Award for Hybrid Writing will be administered to the winner of a literary contest designed to champion innovative hybrid and cross-genre work.

Publication

💰 Entry fee: $22

📅 Deadline: February 16, 2024 (Expired)

The Letter Review Prize for Books

The Letter Review

Genres: Crime, Essay, Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Humor, Memoir, Mystery, Non-fiction, Novella, Poetry, Romance, Science Fiction, Science Writing, Short Story, Thriller, and Young Adult

The Letter Review Prize for Books is open to writers from anywhere in the world. Seeking most unpublished (we accept some self/indie published) novels, novellas, story collections, nonfiction, poetry etc. 20 entries are longlisted.

💰 Entry fee: $25

📅 Deadline: October 31, 2023 (Expired)

Share Your Story

FanStory.com Inc.

Genres: Essay and Memoir

Write about an event in your life. Everyone has a memoir. Not an autobiography. Too much concern about fact and convention. A memoir gives us the ability to write about our life with the option to create and fabricate and to make sense of a life, or part of that life.

💰 Entry fee: $10

📅 Deadline: September 15, 2022 (Expired)

Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award

Killer Nashville

Genres: Crime, Essay, Fantasy, Fiction, Humor, Memoir, Mystery, Non-fiction, Novel, Poetry, Science Fiction, Script Writing, Short Story, and Thriller

The Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award is committed to discovering new writers, as well as superlative books by established authors and, upon discovery, sharing those writers and their works with new readers. There are a large number of both fiction and non-fiction categories you can enter.

💰 Entry fee: $79

📅 Deadline: June 15, 2024

Tusculum Review Nonfiction Chapbook Prize

The Tusculum Review

A prize of $1,000, publication of the essay in The Tusculum Review’s 20th Anniversary Issue (2024), and creation of a limited edition stand-alone chapbook with original art is awarded. Editors of The Tusculum Review and contest judge Mary Cappello will determine the winner of the 2024 prize.

💰 Entry fee: $20

Literary and Photographic Contest 2023-2024

Hispanic Culture Review

Genres: Essay, Fiction, Memoir, Non-fiction, and Poetry

As we move forward we carry our culture wherever we go. It keeps us alive. This is why we propose the theme to be “¡Hacia delante!”. A phrase that means to move forward. This year we ask that you think about the following questions: What keeps you moving forward? What do you carry with you going into the future? How do you celebrate your successes, your dreams, and your culture?

Publication in magazine

📅 Deadline: February 07, 2024 (Expired)

National Essay Contest

U.S. Institute of Peace

This year, AFSA celebrates the 100th anniversary of the United States Foreign Service. Over the last century, our diplomats and development professionals have been involved in groundbreaking events in history – decisions on war and peace, supporting human rights and freedom, creating joint prosperity, reacting to natural disasters and pandemics and much more. As AFSA looks back on this century-long history, we invite you to join us in also looking ahead to the future. This year students are asked to explore how diplomats can continue to evolve their craft to meet the needs of an ever-changing world that brings fresh challenges and opportunities to the global community and America’s place in it.

Runner-up: $1,250

📅 Deadline: April 01, 2024 (Expired)

Young Sports Journalist 2024

The Young Sports Journalist Competition, 2024, seeks well-argued articles from aspiring journalists aged 14-21. Winning entries will be published online and printed in the Summer Issue of Pitch. Critiqued by our panel of accomplished judges, winners will also receive a £50 cash prize and offered work experience here at PITCH HQ. The competition runs from 7 February 2024 to 5 April 2024. And winners will be announced in May.

Publication in magazine and online

📅 Deadline: April 05, 2024 (Expired)

Creative Nonfiction Prize

Indiana Review

Genres: Essay, Fiction, and Non-fiction

Send us one creative nonfiction piece, up to 5000 words, for a chance at $1000 + publication. This year's contest will be judged by Lars Horn.

📅 Deadline: March 31, 2024 (Expired)

The Letter Review Prize for Nonfiction

Genres: Essay, Memoir, Non-fiction, Crime, Humor, and Science Writing

2-4 Winners are published. We Shortlist 10-20 writers. Seeking Nonfiction 0-5000 words. Judges’ feedback available. Open to writers from anywhere in the world, with no theme or genre restrictions. Judged blind. All entries considered for publication + submission to Pushcart.

Publication by The Letter Review

💰 Entry fee: $2

📅 Deadline: April 30, 2024

Indignor Play House Annual Short Story Competition

Indignor House Publishing

Genres: Fiction, Flash Fiction, Short Story, Crime, Essay, Fantasy, Horror, Humor, Memoir, Mystery, Non-fiction, Novella, Poetry, Romance, Science Fiction, Thriller, and Young Adult

Indignor House Publishing is proud to announce that our annual writing competition (INDIGNOR PLAYHOUSE Short Story Annual Competition) is officially open with expected publication in the fall of 2024. Up to 25 submissions will be accepted for inclusion in the annual anthology.

2nd: $250 | 3rd: $150

📅 Deadline: March 01, 2024 (Expired)

The Hudson Prize

Black Lawrence Press

Each year Black Lawrence Press will award The Hudson Prize for an unpublished collection of poems or prose. The prize is open to new, emerging, and established writers.

💰 Entry fee: $28

Artificial Intelligence Competition

New Beginnings

Genres: Essay, Non-fiction, Science Fiction, Science Writing, and Short Story

There is no topic relating to technology that brings more discussion than artificial intelligence. Some people think it does wonders. Others see it as trouble. Let us know your opinion about AI in this competition. Include experiences you have had with AI. 300-word limit. Winners will be selected January 1, 2024. Open to anyone, anywhere.

💰 Entry fee: $5

📅 Deadline: December 15, 2023 (Expired)

World Historian Student Essay Competition

World History Association

Genres: Children's and Essay

The World Historian Student Essay Competition is an international competition open to students enrolled in grades K–12 in public, private, and parochial schools, and those in home-study programs. Membership in the World History Association is not a requirement for submission. Past winners may not compete in the same category again.

📅 Deadline: May 01, 2024

WOW! Women On Writing Quarterly Creative Nonfiction Essay Contest

WOW! Women On Writing

Genres: Non-fiction and Essay

Seeking creative nonfiction essays on any topic (1000 words or less) and in any style--from personal essay and memoir to lyric essay and hybrid, and more! The mission of this contest is to reward bravery in real-life storytelling and create an understanding of our world through thoughtful, engaging narratives. Electronic submissions via e-mail only; reprints/previously published okay; simultaneous submissions okay; multiple submissions are okay as long as they are submitted in their own individual e-mail. Open internationally.

2nd: $300 | 3rd: $200 | 7 runner-ups: $25 Amazon Gift Cards

💰 Entry fee: $12

Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize

Gotham Writers Workshop

Genres: Crime, Essay, Fantasy, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Horror, Humor, Memoir, Mystery, Non-fiction, Romance, Science Fiction, Short Story, Thriller, and Young Adult

The Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize is a writing competition sponsored by the stage and radio series Selected Shorts. Selected Shorts is recorded for Public Radio and heard nationally on both the radio and its weekly podcast. This years entries will be judged by Carmen Maria Machado (In the Dream House, Her Body and Other Parties).

Great American Think-Off

New York Mills Regional Cultural Center

The Great American Think-Off is an exhibition of civil disagreement between powerful ideas that connect to your life at the gut level. The Cultural Center, located in the rural farm and manufacturing town of New York Mills, sponsors this annual philosophy contest.

Annual Contest Submissions

So To Speak

Genres: Essay, Fiction, Flash Fiction, LGBTQ, Non-fiction, and Poetry

So To Speak is seeking submissions for poetry, fiction, and non-fiction with an intersectional feminist lens! It is no secret that the literary canon and literary journals are largely comprised of heteronormative, patriarchal, cisgender, able-bodied white men. So to Speak seeks work by writers, poets, and artists who want to challenge and change the identity of the “canonical” writer.

💰 Entry fee: $4

📅 Deadline: March 15, 2024 (Expired)

Irene Adler Prize

Lucas Ackroyd

Genres: Essay, Non-fiction, and Travel

I’ve traveled the world from Sweden to South Africa, from the Golden Globes to the Olympic women’s hockey finals. I’ve photographed a mother polar bear and her cubs and profiled stars like ABBA, Jennifer Garner and Katarina Witt. And I couldn’t have done it without women. I’ve been very fortunate, and it’s time for me to give back. With the Irene Adler Prize, I’m awarding a $1,000 scholarship to a woman pursuing a degree in journalism, creative writing, or literature at a recognized post-secondary institution.

2x honorable mentions: $250

📅 Deadline: May 30, 2024

Military Anthology: Partnerships, the Untold Story

Armed Services Arts Partnership

Genres: Essay, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Humor, Memoir, Non-fiction, Poetry, and Short Story

Partners are an integral aspect of military life, at home and afar, during deployment and after homecoming. Partnerships drive military action and extend beyond being a battle buddy, wingman, or crew member. Some are planned while others arise entirely unexpectedly. Spouses, family, old or new friends, community, faith leaders, and medical specialists all support the military community. Despite their importance, the stories of these partnerships often go untold. This anthology aims to correct that: We will highlight the nuances, surprises, joy, sorrow, heroism, tears, healing power, and ache of partnerships. We invite you to submit the story about partnerships from your journey, so we can help tell it.

$250 for each genre category (prose, poetry, visual art)

Solas Awards

Best Travel Writing

Extraordinary stories about travel and the human spirit have been the cornerstones of our books since 1993. With the Solas Awards we honor writers whose work inspires others to explore. We’re looking for the best stories about travel and the world. Funny, illuminating, adventurous, uplifting, scary, inspiring, poignant stories that reflect the unique alchemy that occurs when you enter unfamiliar territory and begin to see the world differently as a result. We hope these awards will be a catalyst for those who love to leave home and tell others about it.

📅 Deadline: September 21, 2024

International Voices in Creative Nonfiction Competition

Vine Leaves Press

Genres: Essay, Memoir, Non-fiction, and Novel

Small presses have potential for significant impact, and at Vine Leaves Press, we take this responsibility quite seriously. It is our responsibility to give marginalized groups the opportunity to establish literary legacies that feel rich and vast. Why? To sustain hope for the world to become a more loving, tolerable, and open space. It always begins with art. That is why we have launched this writing competition.

Book publication

📅 Deadline: July 01, 2024

Rigel 2024: $500 for Prose, Poetry, Art, or Graphic Novel

Sunspot Literary Journal

Genres: Essay, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Memoir, Non-fiction, Novel, Novella, Poetry, Script Writing, and Short Story

Literary or genre works accepted. Winner receives $500 plus publication, while runners-up and finalists are offered publication. No restrictions on theme or category. Closes: February 29. Entry fee: $12.50. Enter as many times as you like through Submittable or Duotrope

Runners-up and finalists are offered publication

Vocal Challenges

Genres: Essay, Fiction, Memoir, Non-fiction, and Short Story

Enter themed storytelling contests to put your creativity to the test and be in with a chance of winning cash prizes and more. To submit, you'll need to sign up for a monthly fee of $9.99, or $4.99/month for 3 months.

💰 Entry fee: $15

📅 Deadline: March 07, 2024 (Expired)

Hispanic Culture Review Contest 2022-2023

Genres: Essay, Fiction, Non-fiction, Poetry, Short Story, and Flash Fiction

As the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano once said, "the best that the world has is in the many worlds that the world contains." Therefore, this year we invite you to reflect on the following questions: How do you or your community celebrate these connections? How do you value those experiences with those people who leave a mark on your life? 1 work will be awarded in each category: 1) photography & visual arts, 2) poetry, and 3) narrative/essay/academic investigation.

💰 Entry fee: $0

📅 Deadline: February 01, 2023 (Expired)

Aurora Polaris Creative Nonfiction Award

Trio House Press

Genres: Essay, Memoir, and Non-fiction

We seek un-agented full-length creative nonfiction manuscripts including memoir, essay collections, etc. 50,000 - 80,000 words.

📅 Deadline: May 15, 2024

Environmental Writing 2024

Write the World

The writer and activist Bill McKibben describes Environmental Writing as "the collision between people and the rest of the world." This month, peer closely at that intersection: How do humans interact with their environment? Given your inheritance of this earth, the world needs your voices now more than ever.

Runner up: $50 | Best peer review: $50

📅 Deadline: April 22, 2024

African Diaspora Awards 2024

Kinsman Avenue Publishing, Inc

Genres: Essay, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Non-fiction, Poetry, and Short Story

Up to $1000 in cash prizes for the African Diaspora Award 2024. African-themed prose and poetry wanted. Top finalists are published in Kinsman Quarterly’s magazine and the anthology, “Black Butterfly: Voices of the African Diaspora.”

Publication in anthology, "Black Butterfly: Voices of the African Diaspora" and print and digital magazine

📅 Deadline: June 30, 2024

Journalism Competition 2024

What are the most important issues taking place close to home? Perhaps a rare bird sighting near your town? Or a band of young people in your province fighting for access to higher education? This month, immerse yourself in a newsworthy event inside the borders of your own country, and invite us there through your written reporting.

📅 Deadline: July 22, 2024

100 Word Writing Contest

Tadpole Press

Genres: Essay, Fantasy, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Humor, Memoir, Mystery, Non-fiction, Science Fiction, Science Writing, Thriller, Young Adult, Children's, Poetry, Romance, Short Story, Suspense, and Travel

Can you write a story using 100 words or less? Pieces will be judged on creativity, uniqueness, and how the story captures a new angle, breaks through stereotypes, and expands our beliefs about what's possible or unexpectedly delights us. In addition, we are looking for writing that is clever or unique, inspires us, and crafts a compelling and complete story. The first-place prize has doubled to $2,000 USD.

2nd: writing coach package

Lazuli Literary Group Writing Contest

Lazuli Literary Group

Genres: Essay, Fiction, Poetry, Short Story, Flash Fiction, Non-fiction, Novella, and Script Writing

We are not concerned with genre distinctions. Send us the best you have; we want only for it to be thoughtful, intelligent, and beautiful. We want art that grows in complexity upon each visitation; we enjoy ornate, cerebral, and voluptuous phrases executed with thematic intent.

Publication in "AZURE: A Journal of Literary Thought"

📅 Deadline: March 24, 2024 (Expired)

Askew's Word on the Lake Writing Contest

Shuswap Association of Writers

Genres: Fiction, Non-fiction, Poetry, Essay, Memoir, and Short Story

Whether you’re an established or emerging writer, the Askew’s Word on the Lake Writing Contest has a place for you. Part of the Word on the Lake Writers’ Festival in Salmon Arm, BC, the contest is open to submissions in short fiction (up to 2,000 words), nonfiction (up to 2,000 words), and poetry (up to three one-page poems).

💰 Entry fee: $11

📅 Deadline: January 31, 2024 (Expired)

Discover the finest writing contests of 2024 for fiction and non-fiction authors — including short story competitions, essay writing competitions, poetry contests, and many more. Updated weekly, these contests are vetted by Reedsy to weed out the scammers and time-wasters. If you’re looking to stick to free writing contests, simply use our filters as you browse.

Why you should submit to writing contests

Submitting to poetry competitions and free writing contests in 2024 is absolutely worth your while as an aspiring author: just as your qualifications matter when you apply for a new job, a writing portfolio that boasts published works and award-winning pieces is a great way to give your writing career a boost. And not to mention the bonus of cash prizes!

That being said, we understand that taking part in writing contests can be tough for emerging writers. First, there’s the same affliction all writers face: lack of time or inspiration. Entering writing contests is a time commitment, and many people decide to forego this endeavor in order to work on their larger projects instead — like a full-length book. Second, for many writers, the chance of rejection is enough to steer them clear of writing contests. 

But we’re here to tell you that two of the great benefits of entering writing contests happen to be the same as those two reasons to avoid them.

When it comes to the time commitment: yes, you will need to expend time and effort in order to submit a quality piece of writing to competitions. That being said, having a hard deadline to meet is a great motivator for developing a solid writing routine.

Think of entering contests as a training session to become a writer who will need to meet deadlines in order to have a successful career. If there’s a contest you have your eye on, and the deadline is in one month, sit down and realistically plan how many words you’ll need to write per day in order to meet that due date — and don’t forget to also factor in the time you’ll need to edit your story!

For tips on setting up a realistic writing plan, check out this free, ten-day course: How to Build a Rock-Solid Writing Routine.

In regards to the fear of rejection, the truth is that any writer aspiring to become a published author needs to develop relatively thick skin. If one of your goals is to have a book traditionally published, you will absolutely need to learn how to deal with rejection, as traditional book deals are notoriously hard to score. If you’re an indie author, you will need to adopt the hardy determination required to slowly build up a readership.

The good news is that there’s a fairly simple trick for learning to deal with rejection: use it as a chance to explore how you might be able to improve your writing.

In an ideal world, each rejection from a publisher or contest would come with a detailed letter, offering construction feedback and pointing out specific tips for improvement. And while this is sometimes the case, it’s the exception and not the rule.

Still, you can use the writing contests you don’t win as a chance to provide yourself with this feedback. Take a look at the winning and shortlisted stories and highlight their strong suits: do they have fully realized characters, a knack for showing instead of telling, a well-developed but subtly conveyed theme, a particularly satisfying denouement?

The idea isn’t to replicate what makes those stories tick in your own writing. But most examples of excellent writing share a number of basic craft principles. Try and see if there are ways for you to translate those stories’ strong points into your own unique writing.

Finally, there are the more obvious benefits of entering writing contests: prize and publication. Not to mention the potential to build up your readership, connect with editors, and gain exposure.

Resources to help you win writing competitions in 2024

Every writing contest has its own set of submission rules. Whether those rules are dense or sparing, ensure that you follow them to a T. Disregarding the guidelines will not sway the judges’ opinion in your favor — and might disqualify you from the contest altogether. 

Aside from ensuring you follow the rules, here are a few resources that will help you perfect your submissions.

Free online courses

On Writing:

How to Craft a Killer Short Story

The Non-Sexy Business of Writing Non-Fiction

How to Write a Novel

Understanding Point of View

Developing Characters That Your Readers Will Love

Writing Dialogue That Develops Plot and Character

Stop Procrastinating! Build a Solid Writing Routine

On Editing:

Story Editing for Authors

How to Self-Edit Like a Pro

Novel Revision: Practical Tips for Rewrites

How to Write a Short Story in 7 Steps

How to Write a Novel in 15 Steps

Literary Devices and Terms — 35+ Definitions With Examples

10 Essential Fiction Writing Tips to Improve Your Craft

How to Write Dialogue: 8 Simple Rules and Exercises

8 Character Development Exercises to Help You Nail Your Character

Bonus resources

200+ Short Story Ideas

600+ Writing Prompts to Inspire You

100+ Creative Writing Exercises for Fiction Authors

Story Title Generator

Pen Name Generator

Character Name Generator

After you submit to a writing competition in 2024

It’s exciting to send a piece of writing off to a contest. However, once the initial excitement wears off, you may be left waiting for a while. Some writing contests will contact all entrants after the judging period — whether or not they’ve won. Other writing competitions will only contact the winners. 

Here are a few things to keep in mind after you submit:

Many writing competitions don’t have time to respond to each entrant with feedback on their story. However, it never hurts to ask! Feel free to politely reach out requesting feedback — but wait until after the selection period is over.

If you’ve submitted the same work to more than one writing competition or literary magazine, remember to withdraw your submission if it ends up winning elsewhere.

After you send a submission, don’t follow it up with a rewritten or revised version. Instead, ensure that your first version is thoroughly proofread and edited. If not, wait until the next edition of the contest or submit the revised version to other writing contests.

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Contests and Opportunities

SPEECH AND DEBATE ORGANIZATIONS

• NCFCA CHRISTIAN SPEECH & DEBATE LEAGUE ncfca.org
• STOA CHRISTIAN HOMESCHOOL SPEECH AND DEBATE stoausa.org
• NSDA NATIONAL SPEECH AND DEBATE ASSOCIATION  speechanddebate.org

This page will be updated as we learn of new opportunities. If you know of a writing or speaking contest, please let us know so we can include it on this page.

Please note: While IEW believes these contests to be legitimate, writing contest scams do exist, and it is wise to check into a contest carefully before entering, especially if there is a fee to enter.

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Character.org Announces Results of 2023 Laws of Life Essay Contest For Students

Jun 7, 2023

Washington, D.C. (May 24, 2023) – Character.org is pleased to announce the results of its 2023 Laws of Life essay contest. The Laws of Life essay contest encourages elementary, middle school and high school students to reflect and write about a core value that means the most to them – and why. It provides students the opportunity to write from the heart to explain their thinking to others.

This is the second year Character.org has managed this contest, having expanded the contest previously run by the Connecticut-based School for Ethical Education, whose grant to Character.org makes the Laws of Life program possible. The School for Ethical Education managed the contest in Connecticut for several years. The original Laws of Life contest began in 1997 under the management of the John Templeton Foundation.

Students from the United States and nine other countries in grades 4 – 12 participated during the 2022-2023 school year, submitting a total of 1,139 essays from 98 schools. Pennsylvania and New Jersey students submitted the majority of the U.S. essays, with 63 U.S. schools participating in the 2023 contest. Romania and Brazil accounted for 70% of the essays submitted from outside the United States, from a total of 35 schools.

All student participants will receive recognition from Character.org. Six students are being honored for writing essays which were evaluated by a team of judges and deemed “Most Compelling” Worldwide, based upon content, structure, grammar and spelling. An additional twenty students, ten each from the United States and countries outside the U.S., are being recognized for writing exemplary essays in the high school and elementary/middle school age groups. Additionally, Character.org is recognizing the work of one student from each school that participated. (A list of these honorees is attached.)

More information about the Laws of Life essay contest and this year’s student honorees is available at Character.org’s website at https://character.org/laws-of-life-contest/ . Character.org is a worldwide network that empowers people of all ages to practice and model the core values that shape our hearts, minds, and choices. Since 1993, we have created and shared character-inspired resources for families, schools, and organizations across the world. Every year we also recognize and celebrate thousands of people who are champions for character.

List of 2023 Laws Of Life Honorees  

Recent News

• Do Our Kids Need A Jolt of Responsibility?
• Helping Young People Develop an “Above and Beyond” Mindset
• The Power of Networks to Cultivate Character
• The Unspoken Rules That Place Boys In A Box
• Are Compassion and Empathy Key To Our Survival?
• How Can Schools Create A Culture of Dignity?
• Who Coined The Term Ethical Fitness?
• Character E-Portfolios For All Students…Why Not?
• Exploring Character Formation: Challenges, Questions, and Insights
• Character.org Recognizes 87 State-Level Schools Of Character and 1 District of Character

Consistency

It’s easy to post a list of core values on the refrigerator. It’s much more difficult for parents to be consistent. Consistency lets children know what to expect and what is expected of them. Of course, children will push boundaries  but inconsistency from parents confuses children. 

Everyone involved in your child’s development are critical to modeling and upholding core values. Parents need to work with these important role models to foster the importance of doing the right thing, at the right time, in the right way, and for the right reasons.

Parents need to commit to model and reinforce to their children the core values and character strengths that mean the most to them. They also need to be creative and offer meaningful experiences that illuminate how important these character strengths are to the family’s core values. 

Conversations

We know “We need to talk” freaks kids out, but too often parents avoid having conversations about character, especially as children get older. While it may not be easy to talk sometimes, we know from the research that parents who avoid talking to their children about serious matters quickly lose trust and connection.

Celebration

Parents need to find ways for their children to be active participants in their own character growth. Optimal character development occurs when children begin to make self-motivated commitments to consistently practice a core value (e.g. “I want to be the kind of person who is always honest and shows up on time.”) Parents need to celebrate these moments to shape and define individual character. 

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Discourse, debate, and analysis

Cambridge re:think essay competition 2024.

Competition Opens: 15th January, 2024

Essay Submission Deadline: 10th May, 2024 Result Announcement: 20th June, 2024 Award Ceremony and Dinner at the University of Cambridge: 30th July, 2024

We welcome talented high school students from diverse educational settings worldwide to contribute their unique perspectives to the competition.

Entry to the competition is free.

About the Competition

The spirit of the Re:think essay competition is to encourage critical thinking and exploration of a wide range of thought-provoking and often controversial topics. The competition covers a diverse array of subjects, from historical and present issues to speculative future scenarios. Participants are invited to engage deeply with these topics, critically analysing their various facets and implications. It promotes intellectual exploration and encourages participants to challenge established norms and beliefs, presenting opportunities to envision alternative futures, consider the consequences of new technologies, and reevaluate longstanding traditions. 

Ultimately, our aim is to create a platform for students and scholars to share their perspectives on pressing issues of the past and future, with the hope of broadening our collective understanding and generating innovative solutions to contemporary challenges. This year’s competition aims to underscore the importance of discourse, debate, and critical analysis in addressing complex societal issues in nine areas, including:

Religion and Politics

Political science and law, linguistics, environment, sociology and philosophy, business and investment, public health and sustainability, biotechonology.

Artificial Intelligence 

Neuroengineering

2024 essay prompts.

This year, the essay prompts are contributed by distinguished professors from Harvard, Brown, UC Berkeley, Cambridge, Oxford, and MIT.

Essay Guidelines and Judging Criteria

Review general guidelines, format guidelines, eligibility, judging criteria.

Awards and Award Ceremony

Award winners will be invited to attend the Award Ceremony and Dinner hosted at the King’s College, University of Cambridge. The Dinner is free of charge for select award recipients.

Registration and Submission

Register a participant account today and submit your essay before the deadline.

Advisory Committee and Judging Panel

The Cambridge Re:think Essay Competition is guided by an esteemed Advisory Committee comprising distinguished academics and experts from elite universities worldwide. These committee members, drawn from prestigious institutions, such as Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford, and MIT, bring diverse expertise in various disciplines.

They play a pivotal role in shaping the competition, contributing their insights to curate the themes and framework. Their collective knowledge and scholarly guidance ensure the competition’s relevance, academic rigour, and intellectual depth, setting the stage for aspiring minds to engage with thought-provoking topics and ideas.

We are honoured to invite the following distinguished professors to contribute to this year’s competition.

The judging panel of the competition comprises leading researchers and professors from Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Cambridge, and Oxford, engaging in a strictly double blind review process.

Keynote Speeches by 10 Nobel Laureates

We are beyond excited to announce that multiple Nobel laureates have confirmed to attend and speak at this year’s ceremony on 30th July, 2024 .

They will each be delivering a keynote speech to the attendees. Some of them distinguished speakers will speak virtually, while others will attend and present in person and attend the Reception at Cambridge.

Why has religion remained a force in a secular world? 

Professor Commentary:

Arguably, the developed world has become more secular in the last century or so. The influence of Christianity, e.g. has diminished and people’s life worlds are less shaped by faith and allegiance to Churches. Conversely, arguments have persisted that hold that we live in a post-secular world. After all, religion – be it in terms of faith, transcendence, or meaning – may be seen as an alternative to a disenchanted world ruled by entirely profane criteria such as economic rationality, progressivism, or science. Is the revival of religion a pale reminder of a by-gone past or does it provide sources of hope for the future?

‘Religion in the Public Sphere’ by Jürgen Habermas (European Journal of Philosophy, 2006)

In this paper, philosopher Jürgen Habermas discusses the limits of church-state separation, emphasizing the significant contribution of religion to public discourse when translated into publicly accessible reasons.

‘Public Religions in the Modern World’ by José Casanova (University Of Chicago Press, 1994)

Sociologist José Casanova explores the global emergence of public religion, analyzing case studies from Catholicism and Protestantism in Spain, Poland, Brazil, and the USA, challenging traditional theories of secularization.

‘The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere’ by Judith Butler, Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, and Cornel West (Edited by Eduardo Mendieta and Jonathan VanAntwerpen, Columbia University Press, 2011)

This collection features dialogues by prominent intellectuals on the role of religion in the public sphere, examining various approaches and their impacts on cultural, social, and political debates.

‘Rethinking Secularism’ by Craig Calhoun, Mark Juergensmeyer, and Jonathan VanAntwerpen (Oxford University Press, 2011)

An interdisciplinary examination of secularism, this book challenges traditional views, highlighting the complex relationship between religion and secularism in contemporary global politics.

‘God is Back: How the Global Rise of Faith is Changing the World’ by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge (Penguin, 2010)

Micklethwait and Wooldridge argue for the coexistence of religion and modernity, suggesting that religious beliefs can contribute to a more open, tolerant, and peaceful modern world.

‘Multiculturalism’ by Tariq Modood (Polity Press, 2013)

Sociologist Tariq Modood emphasizes the importance of multiculturalism in integrating diverse identities, particularly in post-immigration contexts, and its role in shaping democratic citizenship.

‘God’s Agents: Biblical Publicity in Contemporary England’ by Matthew Engelke (University of California Press, 2013)

In this ethnographic study, Matthew Engelke explores how a group in England seeks to expand the role of religion in the public sphere, challenging perceptions of religion in post-secular England.

Gene therapy is a medical approach that treats or prevents disease by correcting the underlying genetic problem. Is gene therapy better than traditional medicines? What are the pros and cons of using gene therapy as a medicine? Is gene therapy justifiable?

Especially after Covid-19 mRNA vaccines, gene therapy is getting more and more interesting approach to cure. That’s why that could be interesting to think about. I believe that students will enjoy and learn a lot while they are investigating this topic.

The Hall at King’s College, Cambridge

The Hall was designed by William Wilkins in the 1820s and is considered one of the most magnificent halls of its era. The first High Table dinner in the Hall was held in February 1828, and ever since then, the splendid Hall has been where members of the college eat and where formal dinners have been held for centuries.

The Award Ceremony and Dinner will be held in the Hall in the evening of  30th July, 2024.

Stretching out down to the River Cam, the Back Lawn has one of the most iconic backdrop of King’s College Chapel. 

The early evening reception will be hosted on the Back Lawn with the iconic Chapel in the background (weather permitting). 

King’s College Chapel

With construction started in 1446 by Henry VI and took over a century to build, King’s College Chapel is one of the most iconic buildings in the world, and is a splendid example of late Gothic architecture. 

Attendees are also granted complimentary access to the King’s College Chapel before and during the event. 

Confirmed Nobel Laureates

Dr Thomas R. Cech

The nobel prize in chemistry 1989 , for the discovery of catalytic properties of rna.

Thomas Robert Cech is an American chemist who shared the 1989 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Sidney Altman, for their discovery of the catalytic properties of RNA. Cech discovered that RNA could itself cut strands of RNA, suggesting that life might have started as RNA. He found that RNA can not only transmit instructions, but also that it can speed up the necessary reactions.

He also studied telomeres, and his lab discovered an enzyme, TERT (telomerase reverse transcriptase), which is part of the process of restoring telomeres after they are shortened during cell division.

As president of Howard Hughes Medical Institute, he promoted science education, and he teaches an undergraduate chemistry course at the University of Colorado

Sir Richard J. Roberts

The nobel prize in medicine 1993 .

F or the discovery of split genes

During 1969–1972, Sir Richard J. Roberts did postdoctoral research at Harvard University before moving to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was hired by James Dewey Watson, a co-discoverer of the structure of DNA and a fellow Nobel laureate. In this period he also visited the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology for the first time, working alongside Fred Sanger. In 1977, he published his discovery of RNA splicing. In 1992, he moved to New England Biolabs. The following year, he shared a Nobel Prize with his former colleague at Cold Spring Harbor Phillip Allen Sharp.

His discovery of the alternative splicing of genes, in particular, has had a profound impact on the study and applications of molecular biology. The realisation that individual genes could exist as separate, disconnected segments within longer strands of DNA first arose in his 1977 study of adenovirus, one of the viruses responsible for causing the common cold. Robert’s research in this field resulted in a fundamental shift in our understanding of genetics, and has led to the discovery of split genes in higher organisms, including human beings.

Dr Aaron Ciechanover

The nobel prize in chemistry 2004 .

F or the discovery of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation

Aaron Ciechanover is one of Israel’s first Nobel Laureates in science, earning his Nobel Prize in 2004 for his work in ubiquitination. He is honored for playing a central role in the history of Israel and in the history of the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology.

Dr Ciechanover is currently a Technion Distinguished Research Professor in the Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine and Research Institute at the Technion. He is a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, the Russian Academy of Sciences and is a foreign associate of the United States National Academy of Sciences. In 2008, he was a visiting Distinguished Chair Professor at NCKU, Taiwan. As part of Shenzhen’s 13th Five-Year Plan funding research in emerging technologies and opening “Nobel laureate research labs”, in 2018 he opened the Ciechanover Institute of Precision and Regenerative Medicine at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen campus.

Dr Robert Lefkowitz

The nobel prize in chemistry 2012 .

F or the discovery of G protein-coupled receptors

Robert Joseph Lefkowitz is an American physician (internist and cardiologist) and biochemist. He is best known for his discoveries that reveal the inner workings of an important family G protein-coupled receptors, for which he was awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with Brian Kobilka. He is currently an Investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute as well as a James B. Duke Professor of Medicine and Professor of Biochemistry and Chemistry at Duke University.

Dr Lefkowitz made a remarkable contribution in the mid-1980s when he and his colleagues cloned the gene first for the β-adrenergic receptor, and then rapidly thereafter, for a total of 8 adrenergic receptors (receptors for adrenaline and noradrenaline). This led to the seminal discovery that all GPCRs (which include the β-adrenergic receptor) have a very similar molecular structure. The structure is defined by an amino acid sequence which weaves its way back and forth across the plasma membrane seven times. Today we know that about 1,000 receptors in the human body belong to this same family. The importance of this is that all of these receptors use the same basic mechanisms so that pharmaceutical researchers now understand how to effectively target the largest receptor family in the human body. Today, as many as 30 to 50 percent of all prescription drugs are designed to “fit” like keys into the similarly structured locks of Dr Lefkowitz’ receptors—everything from anti-histamines to ulcer drugs to beta blockers that help relieve hypertension, angina and coronary disease.

Dr Lefkowitz is among the most highly cited researchers in the fields of biology, biochemistry, pharmacology, toxicology, and clinical medicine according to Thomson-ISI.

Dr Joachim Frank

The nobel prize in chemistry 2017 .

F or developing cryo-electron microscopy

Joachim Frank is a German-American biophysicist at Columbia University and a Nobel laureate. He is regarded as the founder of single-particle cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM), for which he shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2017 with Jacques Dubochet and Richard Henderson. He also made significant contributions to structure and function of the ribosome from bacteria and eukaryotes.

In 1975, Dr Frank was offered a position of senior research scientist in the Division of Laboratories and Research (now Wadsworth Center), New York State Department of Health,where he started working on single-particle approaches in electron microscopy. In 1985 he was appointed associate and then (1986) full professor at the newly formed Department of Biomedical Sciences of the University at Albany, State University of New York. In 1987 and 1994, he went on sabbaticals in Europe, one to work with Richard Henderson, Laboratory of Molecular Biology Medical Research Council in Cambridge and the other as a Humboldt Research Award winner with Kenneth C. Holmes, Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg. In 1998, Dr Frank was appointed investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). Since 2003 he was also lecturer at Columbia University, and he joined Columbia University in 2008 as professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics and of biological sciences.

Dr Barry C. Barish

The nobel prize in physics 2017 .

For the decisive contributions to the detection of gravitational waves

Dr Barry Clark Barish is an American experimental physicist and Nobel Laureate. He is a Linde Professor of Physics, emeritus at California Institute of Technology and a leading expert on gravitational waves.

In 2017, Barish was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics along with Rainer Weiss and Kip Thorne “for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves”. He said, “I didn’t know if I would succeed. I was afraid I would fail, but because I tried, I had a breakthrough.”

In 2018, he joined the faculty at University of California, Riverside, becoming the university’s second Nobel Prize winner on the faculty.

In the fall of 2023, he joined Stony Brook University as the inaugural President’s Distinguished Endowed Chair in Physics.

In 2023, Dr Barish was awarded the National Medal of Science by President Biden in a White House ceremony.

Dr Harvey J. Alter

The nobel prize in medicine 2020 .

For the discovery of Hepatitis C virus

Dr Harvey J. Alter is an American medical researcher, virologist, physician and Nobel Prize laureate, who is best known for his work that led to the discovery of the hepatitis C virus. Alter is the former chief of the infectious disease section and the associate director for research of the Department of Transfusion Medicine at the Warren Grant Magnuson Clinical Center in the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland. In the mid-1970s, Alter and his research team demonstrated that most post-transfusion hepatitis cases were not due to hepatitis A or hepatitis B viruses. Working independently, Alter and Edward Tabor, a scientist at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, proved through transmission studies in chimpanzees that a new form of hepatitis, initially called “non-A, non-B hepatitis” caused the infections, and that the causative agent was probably a virus. This work eventually led to the discovery of the hepatitis C virus in 1988, for which he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2020 along with Michael Houghton and Charles M. Rice.

Dr Alter has received recognition for the research leading to the discovery of the virus that causes hepatitis C. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal, the highest award conferred to civilians in United States government public health service, and the 2000 Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research.

Dr Ardem Patapoutian

The nobel prize in medicine 2021 .

For discovering how pressure is translated into nerve impulses

Dr Ardem Patapoutian is an Lebanese-American molecular biologist, neuroscientist, and Nobel Prize laureate of Armenian descent. He is known for his work in characterising the PIEZO1, PIEZO2, and TRPM8 receptors that detect pressure, menthol, and temperature. Dr Patapoutian is a neuroscience professor and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California. In 2021, he won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with David Julius.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why should I participate in the Re:think essay competition? 

The Re:think Essay competition is meant to serve as fertile ground for honing writing skills, fostering critical thinking, and refining communication abilities. Winning or participating in reputable contests can lead to recognition, awards, scholarships, or even publication opportunities, elevating your academic profile for college applications and future endeavours. Moreover, these competitions facilitate intellectual growth by encouraging exploration of diverse topics, while also providing networking opportunities and exposure to peers, educators, and professionals. Beyond accolades, they instil confidence, prepare for higher education demands, and often allow you to contribute meaningfully to societal conversations or causes, making an impact with your ideas.

Who is eligible to enter the Re:think essay competition?  

As long as you’re currently attending high school, regardless of your location or background, you’re eligible to participate. We welcome students from diverse educational settings worldwide to contribute their unique perspectives to the competition.

Is there any entry fee for the competition? 

There is no entry fee for the competition. Waiving the entry fee for our essay competition demonstrates CCIR’s dedication to equity. CCIR believes everyone should have an equal chance to participate and showcase their talents, regardless of financial circumstances. Removing this barrier ensures a diverse pool of participants and emphasises merit and creativity over economic capacity, fostering a fair and inclusive environment for all contributors.

Subscribe for Competition Updates

If you are interested to receive latest information and updates of this year’s competition, please sign up here.

Berggruen Prize Essay Competition

The Berggruen Prize Essay Competition seeks to stimulate new thinking and innovative concepts while embracing cross-cultural perspectives across fields, disciplines, and geographies. By posing fundamental philosophical questions of significance for both contemporary life and for the future, the competition will serve as a complement to the Berggruen Prize for Philosophy & Culture, which recognizes major lifetime achievements in advancing ideas that have shaped the world.

The inspiration for the competition originates from the role essays have played in the past, including the essay contest held by the Académie de Dijon. In 1750, Jean-Jacques Rousseau's essay Discourse on the Arts and Sciences , also known as The First Discourse , won and notably marked the onset of his prominence as a profoundly influential thinker. Similarly, our competition aspires to create a platform for groundbreaking ideas and intellectual innovation.

The annual Berggruen Prize Essay Competition will accept submissions in two languages: Chinese and English. Each language category will have a prize of $25,000 USD and intends to recognize one winner, though there may be multiple winners in any given year.

The Berggruen Institute will host an award ceremony and convene the authors of the winning essays in dialogue with established scholars and thinkers at one of our global centers. We plan to publish the winning essays in our award-winning English-language magazine Noema and Chinese-language magazine Cuiling , giving readers insight into perspectives of both East and West.

We are inviting essays that follow in the tradition of renowned thinkers such as Rousseau, Michel de Montaigne, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Submissions should present novel ideas and be clearly argued in compelling ways for intellectually serious readers. We are not seeking peer-reviewed academic work. Below is a selection of exemplary essays that epitomize the genre and style we look for. While some of these pieces are authored by already distinguished thinkers, we have chosen them primarily for their exceptional embodiment of genre and style.

• Chomsky, N. (1967). The responsibility of intellectuals. The New York Review of Books .
• Frankfurt, H. G. (1971). Freedom of the will and the concept of a person. Journal of Philosophy , 68(1), 5-20.
• Fukuyama, F. (1989). The end of history? The National Interest , 16, 3–18.
• Huntington, S. P. (1993). The clash of civilizations? Foreign Affairs , 72(3), 22-49.
• Nagel, T. (1974). What is it like to be a bat? The Philosophical Review , 83(4), 435-450.
• Sontag, S. (1966). Against interpretation. In Against Interpretation and Other Essays (pp. 3-14). Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
• Walker, S. (2023). AI is life. Noema Magazine .
• Zadeh, J. (2021). The tyranny of time. Noema Magazine .

Eligibility Criteria

Submission requirements, code of conduct, terms & conditions.

Required fields are marked with *

Advisory Panel

• Lucas Angioni
• Arjun Appadurai
• Julian Baggini
• Tongdong Bai
• Rajeev Bhargava
• Annabel Brett
• Craig Calhoun
• Dipesh Chakrabarty
• Lesong Cheng
• Weiwen Duan
• Robyn Eckersley
• Sam Fleischacker
• Christia Fotini
• Gan Chunsong
• Rebecca Newberger Goldstein
• Asher Jiang
• Michèle Lamont
• Meira Levinson
• Chenyang Li
• Qiaoying Lu
• Jianhua Mei
• Pankaj Mishra
• Viren Murthy
• Thierry Ngosso
• Mathias Risse
• Emma Ruttkamp-Bloem
• Vladimir Safatle
• Allison Simmons
• Smita Sirker
• Xiangchen Sun
• Sigridur Thorgeirsdottir
• Samantha Vice
• Robin R. Wang
• Dingxin Zhao
• Zhao Tingyang

Essay Contest 

Collegiate laws of life essay contest.

The Collegiate Laws of Life Essay Contest asks Penn State students to explore ethical values and intercultural issues, and their talent for expressing their views in writing. For our eleventh annual competition, students should respond to this prompt: 

A number of recent events have thrown into crisis the notion that the rule of law is equally applicable to all U.S. citizens. These events have exposed laws that appear to operate so differently across demographic groups as to suggest that different people live under different legal systems. In your essay, reflect on at least one of the following:

• the merits of the ideal of equality under the law
• how the ideal of equality under the law is endangered
• whether there are successor concepts that might supplant the ideal of equality under the law

Essays should be no longer than 800 words and will be judged on originality, relevance, and creativity. The contest is open to all full-time undergraduate students enrolled at any Penn State campus during the fall 2023 or spring 2024 semesters.

First Place: $500 | Second Place: $400 | Third Place: $300

Submission deadline: friday, january 26 at 11:59 p.m. est, questions  email   [email protected] ., 2024 winning essays, first place —“a tale of lions and oxen”, veronika miskowiec | ’26 international politics | paterno fellow and schreyer scholar.

It is hard to talk about equality in the eyes of the United States when the country itself never agreed on what it was. At one point, it gave one group of people complete ownership over another—that was called equality. When we were past that, it still meant the complete superiority and dominance of one race over another—that was called equality. Even beyond that, it meant the prioritization of men over women, rich over poor, educated over the uneducated—somehow, that is still equality? But how can we say that one group is greater than another when this “lesser” group is not given a fair chance?

Yes, people argue that equality is present. Black people can vote. Women can join the workforce. A lower-class individual can take out a loan and go to college. Of course, that ignores the many facets of a problem that is as prevalent as ever; voter restriction laws are still being passed, women still make 82 cents for every dollar a man makes, and the private loan providers that keep people who strive for higher education in debt for years are making millions.

I can keep going in circles and arguing that equality still exists. I can think about how it endangered, but was it truly ever safe? It is hard to admit that in a century that is defined by its progress, the people who were always on the perimeter remain in it. That being said, the institutions that were in place aiming to equal the playing field, like Affirmative Action, are being targeted (and, in the case of Affirmative Action, actually being called unconstitutional). If that is the precedent being set, what is stopping us from sliding down the daunting mountain of fairness for all that we have been trying to climb up?

Aristotle once said that “The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.” To me, this quote encompasses the problem the United States faces today: We are too caught up in trying to make everyone seem the same to realize that we are all different. The reality is we each grew up facing different circumstances, pressures, and obstacles.

As romantic poet William Blake wrote, “One law for the lion and for the ox is indeed oppression.” It is easy to paint a picture using a quote that critiques this universal law system that the United States has in place.  Say we are a country populated by lions and oxen. If the governing body of this country says, “Yes, we recognize that you two have different diets and have different needs, so you are free to eat what you must in order to survive.” Great. The oxen can eat the grass they need, and the lions can butcher the oxen that they need to eat in order to survive. Obviously, the oxen are being slaughtered. The government recognizes this, so they say, “Okay, from now on everyone can only eat grass.” Great. The oxen are safe to eat their grass and thrive, but now the lions eventually starve.

The truth is we do live in a society of lions and oxen.

We live in a society that says if you get arrested you can post bail to get out. For a middle- or upper-class individual with money to spare, that is not an issue. For a lower-class individual without that money, they get to stay in jail.

We live in a society that says you can take the SAT as many times as you would like. Of course, that does not account for the access to test preparation materials, tutors, and school-funded study programs that tend to be present in wealthier areas in contrast to impoverished areas that often do not even provide their students with an SAT preparation course. That is not even taking into account the fact that it costs money—that many do not have—to take the exam itself.

We live in a society that tells us that we are free to apply to any university in order to set ourselves up for the future we would like to have. Of course, how does that bear in mind the fact that wealthier areas tend to have better school districts with, again, more resources, and wealthier people have more money to spend on college applications themselves?

The truth is inequality is still prevalent, and maybe we have not climbed as far up the mountain of fairness as we thought. Maybe the laws we have in place simply conceal the inequality better than they ever have. The tale of lions and oxen should be one of caution when enacting laws that seemingly position the members of society in an unjust situation disguising it as one of equality.

Second Place —“Paradox of Then, Vigor of Now”

Creighton mitchell | ’24 economics.

The year is 1968, two years after the March on Washington and Martin Luther King Jr.’s iconic “I Have a Dream” speech. America finds itself grappling with the tumultuous currents of civil rights movements, challenges to suffrage, and anti-Vietnam War protests. The nation is on the brink, facing unprecedented levels of public discourse and diminishing morale within its borders. Scenes of African American café sit-ins and bus boycotts have become a pillar in American politics, while women are fervently seeking admission to Yale, Princeton, and Harvard. Amidst this backdrop, crosses burn in front yards, fire hoses, and K9 units are unleashed on the innocent and the esoteric ball of equality is being hit across the country. Echoing the pursuit of this enigmatic goal.

April 4th, 1968: CBS Anchor Walter Cronkite delivers a somber announcement on the evening news: “Dr. Martin Luther King, the apostle of non-violence in the civil rights movement, has been shot to death in Memphis, Tennessee.” Meanwhile, Ira Mitchell Sr. just wrapped up instrument tests at the TWA airplane hangar in Tuskegee, Oklahoma. The fading sunlight filters through the expansive garage doors. Ira, two janitors, and an assistant flight controls mechanic are gathered, drawn by the noise emanating from the offices in the back of the hangar. This diverse group shared one common feature—their melanin-rich, mahogany-colored skin. As Walter Cronkite’s resonant words echoed through the air, the mechanic uttered, “Dr. King is dead.” Ira gazed down at the ground in disbelief, his leathery, worn hands fumbling a greased cloth. A long-exhausted sigh escapes his mouth. He exits the hangar, bound for the forty-minute bus ride home to his wife and seven children. At the bus stop sits a boy, pocket watch in hand, waiting for his father to arrive. The workday is over.

April 4th, 1968: Larry Braby arrives home after teaching Biology at Pocahontas High School in rural Iowa, surrounded by the vast prairies and cornfields of what some call “God’s Country.” He parks his 1960 Ford pickup in the garage, taking a moment of ominous silence between the final high school bell and the ensuing chaos of suburban Midwest life. It is in these fleeting moments, that the weight of the 1960s subtly lingers on his mind, vivid reels surge of friends and classmates entangled in the contentious Vietnam War.

As Larry sits in his pickup, plunging further into a disquieting euphoria, the distant bark of a dog fractures the state of detachment. Three toddlers excitedly rush out, and Larry is welcomed by his wife and daughters. Yet, the ethereal weight of the era persists. Entering the house, he hears the transistor radio near the pantry cabinet, broadcasting Walter Cronkite’s words that perforate throughout. Conversation softens to a whisper, as if the world had paused, leaving only the echo of silence. There are no words. Amidst this tranquil lull, one of the young girls diverts her gaze, meeting Larry’s eyes. “Who is Martin Luther King?” she asks. Breaching the stillness, he invites her, “Come sit with me, I’ll tell you all about him.”

August 22nd, 2023: I find myself in a stale, yet sweltering classroom populated by an ocean of peers. It is the first day of Labor Economics. The professor forges ahead, initiating the routine first-day introductions with the familiar prompt, “Introduce yourself, where you are from, and share your favorite food.”  The class begins to list locations spanning the entire globe: “Seoul, South Korea; New Delhi, India; Toronto, Canada.” The spotlight brings me into focus, it is my turn. Hands damp with perspiration, I declare, “Des Moines, Iowa.” The professor dispels the anxious tension of the first day, shattering the atmosphere with a statement that captures the class and kicks open the door to the first day. “I counted 12 different nationalities amongst this class, the highest I have had in a semester.” I glance at the color of my hands, flipping them over and back, discovering subtleties I had never noticed before. A seemingly flawless blend, uniting the deepest onyx hues found in Oklahoma with the radiant glow from the expanse of stars adorning rural Iowa. I peer at the seats in front and behind me, they seem to be in similar astonishment. This is the world Larry Braby and Ira Mitchell envisioned. Class begins.

Third Place —“The Garden”

Katherine joyce | ’25 english | schreyer scholar.

Picture a garden.

Not the prim, proper, prissy type: a spilling-over, four-leaf clover, blossom takeover, idle-Sunday rover kind of place where no two flowers are the same. Roses painted the palest pinks and the cleanest whites and the brightest yellows climb up trellises hand-in-hand, leaf-in-leaf, thorn-in-thorn—their own personal Everest to conquer by summer’s end. Herbs blush under too much attention and wilt if left alone. Ivy vines silhouette the white picket fence like a scalloped edge on a lacy wedding veil. The daisies and violets and primroses, darling little innocents, rustle cheerfully with the warm breeze, glad to beautify their home in their own tiny way. Bluebirds sing jazz and opera as the sunset casts its golden spotlight through the trees. Near the pond, the proud sprigs of lavender dance to the music of croaking frogs and barking dogs. The magnolias sway and the violets play and the chrysanthemums pray and the little dandelion puffs stray, and all is lovely and well as the sun sinks and the garden falls asleep.

Can you see it now?

This is the beauty of our nation. I am a tulip, and you a cherry blossom, and your friend a zinnia, and your mother a lily. The law stretches over us like the endless summer sky, bathing us all in sunlight. Under the big blue, we flourish as we please. Despite our differences, we are one garden.

But sometimes, the sky cannot protect everyone—not even in the garden.

The flowers know when the storms are gathering, but what can they do? Shake and shiver and shimmy and shuffle as they wait for the inevitable? Not everyone is hardy. The tulips just stare at the gathering clouds, tracing their beloved petals one last time. They are delicate, never meant to last … there is no hope for them in thunder. The roses cling tightly to the trellis, and to each other, as the winds begin to howl.

And then there are the bare feet that trample the innocents—the daisies, the violets, the sweet baby primroses. Perhaps the blunder becomes a regret, or perhaps that foot finds something powerful in crushing someone so small. The forget-me-nots lower their little blue heads in mourning. They will remember, and they will cry.

And when the gardener falls in love, what then? He walks down the mossy cobblestones, humming the tune that once caused his parents to sway among the daffodils at twilight, eyes peeled for the most perfect of blooms. He cuts a few fresh roses—pale as a young woman’s blush—and vows to get rid of those pesky dandelions someday. Those aren’t real flowers, he mumbles to himself, just weeds. And he goes away humming, and the dandelions cower and hate themselves.

The environment is not one-size-fits-all, and neither is the law. Nor, I would argue, should it be. The Fourteenth Amendment of the United States of America declares that “nor shall any state … deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The law is there, but we as Americans have failed in carrying it out. In short, our humanity is lacking. The fault is ours.

What if the ivy wrapped itself around the tulips when the fierce winds blew? What if the bluebirds chirped until the gardener looked away from the roses and towards those that are often forgotten? What if the snapdragons hissed when predators neared the lilies? What if the gardener taught his guests to look before they step?

What if, instead of depending on the government to build walls and write legislation, we simply looked out for each other? If I am a tulip and you are a cherry blossom, you must accept that I come from the ground, and I must accept that you come from a tree. Look at the roses! The pink blossoms do not attempt to strangle the yellow ones if they reach the top of the trellis first. Their vines twist, and they become one. And someone needs to protect the innocents, for the humblest flowers are just as beautiful as the showy ones. Protect them, please.

America is a garden. Tend it.

Winning Essay Archives

“a client and his discontents”.

Michael Mitole   ’23 Finance (Schreyer Scholar)

I glance at the card in my palm—Dr. Carl Rogers, Ph.D., 1150 Silverado Street, La Jolla, California. Drawing in a breath from the cool air around me, I return even less warmth: “This better not be a waste of my time.” I arrive to his study and sit on a coarse Persian tapestry that conceals a chair well-worn and pleading to be retired. Let me put my watch on, I think to myself, because the first rule of therapy is that the first session always goes over time. Looking around, I wonder how a Milton novel, a textbook on scientific agriculture, a King James Bible, and a bust of Kierkegaard happened onto the same shelf together, but, being raised with manners, I know not to say anything.

As I begin to talk, I convince myself that Rogers will be genuinely interested in what I am going to tell him – as we often do with people in our lives, if we’re honest enough to admit it – and that my stories of figuring out who I was, loving someone for the first time, and a failed attempt at the Rhodes Scholarship will yield enough material to make the session worth our while. Michael, you’re rambling on again – maybe you should pause so he can interpret your problems back to you. And, what time is it, anyway? Have I talked for the entire session? Pausing in the middle of my soliloquy, I peer at Rogers and wait for a response. Oh no, he hasn’t even written anything down yet.

“Michael, it seems to me that you are living, subjectively, a phase of your problems, knowingly and acceptingly,” he replies. I give an empty expression. I’m sorry, but what am I supposed to do with that? Rogers lets his words hang in the air, knowing they have stirred an internal response.

Well — maybe we need to be told truths that are jarring enough to make us let go of our own conclusions. He continues: “Many people I see in my practice aren’t used to being told that. It was an idea I published in my book On Becoming a Person, after many years observing how people responded to problems.”

When we are presented with problems – personal and otherwise – do we reach too quickly for panaceas, convenient cliches, and old schematic frames? Is this what Rogers means? I decide to vocalize my thoughts: “I see, Dr. Rogers. I tend to believe that all of my problems can be solved in some systematic way. And, to be frank, I look at a lot of the world’s grander problems this way, too — the global pandemic, the devastation of war, our beleaguered planet, and economic turmoil.”

“Right, and I am sure that your experience and what you have witnessed around you reveal that problems are hardly formulaic – some are longstanding and most are too complex to fit within the lenses we impose on the world around us,” says Rogers. “So, what does it mean to you, to live?”

Searching for a response, my eyes return to Rogers’ bookshelf, where I notice Thoreau’s Walden and an anthology of poems by Keats. How apropos of the conversation… and that Keats fellow, what was that he wrote about ‘negative capability’?

How do we live meaningfully in the face of hardships and difficulties? First, we grasp that the world is a forum of problems, where things are not as they ‘ought’ to be. But, importantly, we continue doing all the things that meaningful living requires – we continue to feel, to learn, to grow, to struggle, to change, to persevere, to act, and to be courageous.

If Camus was right that “to live is not to resign ourselves,” then our living must also be done with an unwavering purpose. There are those who feel called to dream big dreams and those who feel called to be faithful with the life already set before them. No matter what destiny holds, each of us in life will face a problem of significance that makes all the ones before it into necessary preparation. When that time comes, it will be our chance to help set the world ‘righter’ than it was before. This, we might say, is the universal purpose for which we exist, our hard-wearing meaning in life—to live in service of the ‘good,’ however that duty appears.

I reply to Rogers, “I see now that to truly live, in the face of problems, is to embody a solution that is salutary in all circumstances. But to spend my life ‘fixing’ is to live enslaved by those problems, an all too narrow and futile existence.” Rogers nods his head in tacit agreement, looking away from me.

I follow his eyes: Where is he looking? Oh goodness, the time.

“An Ode to Time, a Friend”

Arushi Grover   ’23 English (Paterno Fellow and Schreyer Scholar)

A player enters onstage. They stand, center-stage, in a spotlight. They wait.

In this moment in time, the forces of the haunting past, the tense present, and imminent future converge to the pleading question: how does one go on? We live in a time of intense political polarization, both in America and increasingly throughout the world; reaching across the aisle seems more and more like an idyllic fantasy of the past, and instead of achieving progress, it seems like our society and democracy is regressing. We live in a time of great reckoning, coming to terms with how past oppression has caused current inequalities, along lines of gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, disability, class, nationality, and more; haunted by the past, we try to learn to play the hand we’re dealt and create equality for the future…on top of what feels like a house of cards. And the future seems imminent, as climate scientists warn that we are on a trajectory that will cause global temperatures to increase, seas to rise, a surefire climate catastrophe that will harm those most vulnerable populations who have caused the least carbon emissions. Suffering defines our past, present, and future, the current moment an endless and evolving challenge.

Dare I suggest that time may be, not our foe, but our friend, in such circumstances? Regard Time, a wingèd, angelic figure that presides and brandishes a scythe. For our experience on this Earth is defined by Time: a beginning, a birth; the middle, a duration of experience; and the end, a death. She hovers, ever-present, a metronomic gaze as we haunt this world. We, as humans, may mourn the eternality that could never be due to our mortal frames, but think, perhaps, that the ephemerality of life is what makes the lows ever-so-devastating, but also the highs ever-so-pleasant. Knowing that this will end, we can experience joy and pleasure for the euphoria that they are. Ephemerality is what gives us meaning; that end is a gift that allows us to cherish the moment. For our finite experience, should the universe envy us for our feeling the operatic breadth of human emotion—the pains and devastation, the joys and pleasure?

For the challenges and hardships we face, we can find meaning in the nature of our existence; the universe may have Time, but we have experience, too. As individuals in this world, let us consider our strength to be our individuality, our unique and discrete experiences—something to take pleasure in and something to expand our understanding. Appreciating individuality means listening to individuals, not just ourselves but our communities, and especially to previously unheard and unsung voices. We must appreciate the diversity of individual experience.

The inequalities of the past mean that we have the chance to make the future better than the past, better than the present moment—a challenge, but a gratifying problem to solve for individuals and humankind. Preparing to counter the effects of climate change can seem like a daunting and unwinnable task, but we can comfort ourselves knowing that every inch of progress right now will be a mile of progress for future generations. And in a moment when political progress seems like it’s headed backwards, let us ricochet in appreciating how far we’ve come, to where we are or were, and beyond. For all the challenges that come with Time passing and repeating, we can find a silver lining and some meaning in befriending the figure of Time—both internal, personal meaning, and external, real-world reflections of validation.

Tick. Tick. Tick. Can you hear it? Flowers bloom and trees sport verdant leaves that metamorphosize to a blaze and fall in decay. Can you see it? In water, a current pulls and pulls and pulls. Can you feel it? If Time is a friend, can we not collaborate and make a meaningful relationship for us both? Maybe life is a book, and we get to control the pace, how quickly the pages turn, how soon the conflict resolves. Maybe life is a film, and we can pause the piece, rewind, and replay when things get hard. Or maybe life is a play, and we arrive with strangers to share time and space for a moment, before dissipating.

In some ways, there is cause to be optimistic for the future. And in some ways, there is no cause—not cause for pessimism, but simply an absence of cause. In these moments of reasoning, it is choice that defines our actions and mindset—both the choice to choose what we want for ourselves and the choices that affect others in a complex world and web of interdependence.

Onstage, the player bends their head, then straightens and steps off the stage. They sit in the first row of the audience. The lights dim to a blackout.

“We Exist in a Society”

Taran Samarth ’23 Philosophy, Political Science, Sociology and Mathematics (Paterno Fellow and Schreyer Scholar)

Contemporary politics dances upon one principal question: do we live in a society? Before there were absurdist Joker memes asserting “we live in a society,” there was Margaret Thatcher saying the opposite: “there is no such thing [as society].” Thatcher and Reagan’s worldview that there are only individuals and families living under markets—leaving little place for interconnection and community—once dominated Western politics. And then came the coronavirus crisis to remind us that if there was no value in redistributing wealth and power with our neighbors through the government that constitutes our collective will, at least we could redistribute some virions.

The pandemic was a reminder that, at the core of human existence, we are interlinked—that infections spread person-to-person, that our health depends on others, and that the survival of our medical facilities required all of us to do our part. Intensifying climate disasters and oppressive violence suggest the same: we live in a society where colossal, pressing crises structure our lives, and the solutions will require individuals to act in concert with others, not alone.

The urgency of these crises and the scale of their needed solutions demand that we collectively do two things: we embrace society, and we embrace taking sides. Too often, we fear staking bold claims. To demand police abolition in a world that enforces racist violence through the state is “too radical.” To seek an economic reconstruction that centers sustainability and collective, not individual, wealth is “too polarizing.” Our allergy to supporting transformative, large-scale solutions leave us emphasizing “nuance” without substance or trying to confine ourselves to “gray areas” where bold ideas are watered down into mere Band-Aids. Or, worse, we tell ourselves that crises—like some former Penn State officials said about sexual and gender-based violence—are just “vexing” and “intractable,” as if they are too complicated to merit our focused attention and effort.

The crises we face are complicated—they are massive, they are hard, and we are bound, at times, to fail. But we cannot refuse to back bold ideas while the window for action that can meaningfully prevent harm dwindles. As we stare down the barrel of existential crisis after crisis, the existentialists are a guide to making meaning in 21st-century life. Our lives are defined by our freedom to constantly choose—I choose to speak; you choose to listen (or not). How we choose to greet and meet every moment fills our world with value and our lives with meaning. Faced with myriad crises, will we let our lives be defined by paralysis? Or will we courageously choose sides and define ourselves as actors that dared to try—dared to affirm our freedom and choose?

But, as Simone de Beauvoir says in Pyrrhus and Cinéas, “[humankind] is not alone in the world.” As intensifying global polarization and authoritarianism indicate, we cannot choose sides haphazardly or without attention to the identical freedom of billions of others. These choices and our actions demand thought and care—particularly for the most marginalized and vulnerable. Whatever choice I alone make in confronting a crisis will be meaningless without others willing to orient their freedom and choices toward the same projects. Disagreement is inevitable—even healthy—but the toxic polarization we face today keeps us frozen in the face of crisis because we choose not to persuade or communicate. We take sides—and we refuse to seek others to join us. We leave our lives meaningless, and crisis creeps ever closer to Armageddon.

As historian Gabriel Winant wrote in the throes of the pandemic, meeting the urgency and challenges posed by crisis requires “the building of relationships and trust across the forms of social difference.” To reach across dinner tables, borders, and backgrounds and build these relationships is to forge the bonds that alone have the power to bring the choices we make, sides we take, and solutions that follow into the world. As Winant quotes Holocaust historian Timothy Snyder from his text on fighting the crisis of tyranny, you must dare to “put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people.”

The urgency posed by a planet unequipped to withstand climate shifts in the coming decade and respond to structural inequities that will sharply allocate harm to the already-wounded means that we cannot risk inaction. For one person to imbue their life with meaning amidst extraordinary social problems, the urgency of crisis demands that they opt to take sides and try to effect change in the world. But they can only do so effectively if they dare to make those bold choices in partnership with others willing the same. That is, we can only make meaning in our lives and our world if we choose to embrace and act upon that one fundamental truth: we live in a society.

“Finding Meaning in the Pursuit of Survival”

Charles Cote ’23 Supply Chain and Information System (Schreyer Scholar)

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Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies

Essay Contest

New Website Under Development | New Publications Now Available

BICS has published the top 3 winning essays from the 2021 contest as Kindle ebooks and audiobooks. Click here for the Kindle bundle . For the audiobooks, click Jeffrey Mishlove’s Beyond the Brain , Pim van Lommel’s The Continuity of Consciousness , Leo Ruickbie’s The Ghost in the Time Machine .

The 2023 Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies Grants Program

Up to $1 Million in Grants

The 2023-2024 BICS grant program, “The Challenge,” will fund research into contact and communication with post-mortem or discarnate consciousness (also known as “the Afterlife,” or the “Other Side”) leading to the reception of higher order information of value to humankind (“wisdom acquisition”) with the allocation of a grand total of up to $1 million in grants .

After a massive international response judged by a panel of outstanding experts, the 2021 Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies (BICS) essay contest (“The Contest”) established that there is evidence beyond reasonable doubt for the survival of consciousness after permanent physical death (“life after death,” or “the afterlife”).

Now Read All Twenty-Nine Winning Essays on the Evidence for Life After Death

BICS is proud to publish, for the first time, all twenty-nine winning essays from the 2021 BICS essay competition. None of these essays have been previously published. The essays are a completely novel body of work that were written specifically for the BICS essay contest.

We hope these essays collectively provide a valuable resource for researchers and members of the public for presenting the evidence for survival of human consciousness after bodily death.

Preamble for 1st, 2nd and 3rd Prizes

As readers study the top three essays authored by Dr. Jeffrey Mishlove, Dr. Pim van Lommel and Dr. Leo Ruickbie, it will become apparent that there is a great variety of approaches that prove the case for survival of human consciousness after bodily death beyond a reasonable doubt as though you were in a courtroom .

One hundred percent of the responsibility for judging of the BICS essay contest lay in the hands of the six judges. There was no influence by either Robert Bigelow or Colm Kelleher on the judging process. The essays were chosen by majority rule with the central criterion being the cumulative evidence for Survival of Human Consciousness beyond permanent bodily death and beyond a reasonable doubt as though you were in a courtroom . Because of the very large number of excellent essays that BICS received—204 in total—the judges spent almost five months of very intensive work in meticulously evaluating, deliberating, arguing and eventually making their decisions.

Why Were These Essays Chosen by the Judges?

The winners were chosen based on the power of the arguments presented and on how persuasively the essays made the case for survival of human consciousness beyond a reasonable doubt as though you were in a courtroom .

In reading these top three essays, some members of the public may disagree that particular essays should have been included in the top three winning group. That opinion is to be expected. Every reader may resonate differently with these and other essays. While the judges were reading and re-reading the 204 submitted essays, they were conscious of the great responsibility of choosing the top three. The judges chose these principal winners with exquisite care.

The 2021 BICS Essay Contest

Meet the essay contest winners.

Roll over the images to find out more and click the button to download the essays.

Jeffrey Mishlove

1st Prize of $500,000

Beyond the Brain: The Survival of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death

Pim van Lommel

2nd Prize of $350,000

The Continuity of Consciousness: A Concept Based on Scientific Research on Near-Death Experiences During Cardiac Arrest

Leo Ruickbie

3rd Prize of $150,000

The Ghost in the Time Machine

In addition to the top three winners, a further eleven essays were awarded prizes of $50,000 each as runners-up.

Honorable Mentions

Another fifteen essays were awarded prizes of $20,000 each as honorable mentions.

What we seek to accomplish

The Laws of Life Essay Competition in The Bahamas

Since 1987, students in communities around the globe have competed for prizes in essay contests based on Sir John Templeton’s writings.

In 2009, students in The Bahamas gained a contest of their own , sponsored by The Bahamas Ministry of Education and Technical and Vocational Training  and the Nassau-based Templeton World Charity Foundation.

The Bahamas Laws of Life Essay Competition is an annual contest open to students in The Bahamas.

Each year, young people are invited to reflect and write on values inspired by Sir John Templeton’s Laws of Life . Students in Grades 5 -12, as well as local college-level students up to age 25, are encouraged to participate. To date, over 12,000 students in The Bahamas have written and submitted essays in the competition.

Prizes and scholarships totaling over $1.4 million dollars have been distributed. The competition is viewed as the most prestigious essay competition in the country.

View past winners and read their essays .

Visit the Bahamas Laws of Life website for the latest competition news and more information.

The Bahamas Laws of Life website

“Progress depends on diligence and perseverance.” -Sir John Templeton, Worldwide Laws of Life.

Thank you to our partner in the competition:  The Bahamas Ministry of Education and Technical And Vocational Training

In 2008, the late Dr. John M. Templeton Jr. discussed his father Sir John Templeton’s writings on the Laws of Life with former Minister of Education, Hon. Carl Bethel. This led to the launch of the annually anticipated Laws of Life Essay Competition now noted as the country’s premier essay competition in public and independent schools across The Bahamas.

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Laws of Life Essay Competition (Bahamas)​

Annual Bahamas Laws of Life Essay Contest

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Perry High School students win 2024 Perry Optimist essay contest

Perry Optimist Club handed out medals to the local essay contest winners during its meeting on Wednesday, April 3 at the Hotel Pattee.

Linda Andorf, who facilitated the contest, said DMACC VanKirk Career Academy's Linda Kaufman assigned a writing assignment to her Perry High School/DMACC students. The assignment was graded and was then judged anonymously by Perry Optimist Club members. This year, 32 essays were submitted and four places were awarded.

Erika Guardado won first place while Jennifer Ramos received second place. Mia Munoz and Kain Killmer tied for third place.

The prompt for this year’s contest was "Optimism: How it Connects Us."

Guardado’s essay has been sent to the district level. She will also receive a $500 scholarship during the senior awards assembly in May.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Perry High School students win 2024 Perry Optimist essay contest

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2024 American Legion Post 403 essay contest winners named

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ROCHELLE — The 2024 Rochelle-area American Legion Essay Contest is complete. The topic was “What does freedom mean to me?”

In the eighth year of this program, it was a banner year. Almost every area school participated, and the Legion had a total of 90 essays. The program is for grades seven & eight (American Legion Competition Class III), freshman & sophomore (American Legion Competition Class II) and junior & senior (American Legion Competition Class I).

For American Legion Competition Class III, St. Paul Lutheran, which has participated every year, contributed 25 essays. Eswood, which has also participated every year, had 15 essays. Back this year was Kings with 20 essays, Steward with 19 essays and Creston with five. There were six essays at Rochelle Township High School for American Legion Competition Classes I & II with several of these students having been involved with the program since seventh grade.

Winning top honors in each class were: Class I: first place, Jessica Nguyen; Class II: first place, Magdalene Good; and Class III: first place, Makenzie Johnson. These winning essays were forwarded to the 13 th District of the American Legion for competition at that level.

First and second places were named at all participating schools:

RTHS – Class I: First - Nguyen; secnd place - Aiden Ramsey. Class II: First place - Magdalene Good; second place - Kathryn Groves.

St. Paul: First place - Makenzie Johnson; Second place - Andrew Eyster.

Eswood: First place - Nolen Schweitzer; Second place - Chyenne Somers.

Kings: First place - Preslee Sanders; Second place - Kenna Beck.

Steward: First place - Morgan DeLille; Second place - Benjamin Hayes.

Creston: First place - Jasmyn Mascote; Second place - Caroline Montgomery.

Thanks to all students for their participation.

A very special thank you goes out to the Rochelle Culver’s Restaurant. They have been a supporter of the veterans of the Rochelle area, the American Legion Post 403 and this program since its start-up. Every year they provide every student who submitted an essay with a free scoop of custard. Please thank them for their generosity.

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The Case for Marrying an Older Man

A woman’s life is all work and little rest. an age gap relationship can help..

In the summer, in the south of France, my husband and I like to play, rather badly, the lottery. We take long, scorching walks to the village — gratuitous beauty, gratuitous heat — kicking up dust and languid debates over how we’d spend such an influx. I purchase scratch-offs, jackpot tickets, scraping the former with euro coins in restaurants too fine for that. I never cash them in, nor do I check the winning numbers. For I already won something like the lotto, with its gifts and its curses, when he married me.

He is ten years older than I am. I chose him on purpose, not by chance. As far as life decisions go, on balance, I recommend it.

When I was 20 and a junior at Harvard College, a series of great ironies began to mock me. I could study all I wanted, prove myself as exceptional as I liked, and still my fiercest advantage remained so universal it deflated my other plans. My youth. The newness of my face and body. Compellingly effortless; cruelly fleeting. I shared it with the average, idle young woman shrugging down the street. The thought, when it descended on me, jolted my perspective, the way a falling leaf can make you look up: I could diligently craft an ideal existence, over years and years of sleepless nights and industry. Or I could just marry it early.

So naturally I began to lug a heavy suitcase of books each Saturday to the Harvard Business School to work on my Nabokov paper. In one cavernous, well-appointed room sat approximately 50 of the planet’s most suitable bachelors. I had high breasts, most of my eggs, plausible deniability when it came to purity, a flush ponytail, a pep in my step that had yet to run out. Apologies to Progress, but older men still desired those things.

I could not understand why my female classmates did not join me, given their intelligence. Each time I reconsidered the project, it struck me as more reasonable. Why ignore our youth when it amounted to a superpower? Why assume the burdens of womanhood, its too-quick-to-vanish upper hand, but not its brief benefits at least? Perhaps it came easier to avoid the topic wholesale than to accept that women really do have a tragically short window of power, and reason enough to take advantage of that fact while they can. As for me, I liked history, Victorian novels, knew of imminent female pitfalls from all the books I’d read: vampiric boyfriends; labor, at the office and in the hospital, expected simultaneously; a decline in status as we aged, like a looming eclipse. I’d have disliked being called calculating, but I had, like all women, a calculator in my head. I thought it silly to ignore its answers when they pointed to an unfairness for which we really ought to have been preparing.

I was competitive by nature, an English-literature student with all the corresponding major ambitions and minor prospects (Great American novel; email job). A little Bovarist , frantic for new places and ideas; to travel here, to travel there, to be in the room where things happened. I resented the callow boys in my class, who lusted after a particular, socially sanctioned type on campus: thin and sexless, emotionally detached and socially connected, the opposite of me. Restless one Saturday night, I slipped on a red dress and snuck into a graduate-school event, coiling an HDMI cord around my wrist as proof of some technical duty. I danced. I drank for free, until one of the organizers asked me to leave. I called and climbed into an Uber. Then I promptly climbed out of it. For there he was, emerging from the revolving doors. Brown eyes, curved lips, immaculate jacket. I went to him, asked him for a cigarette. A date, days later. A second one, where I discovered he was a person, potentially my favorite kind: funny, clear-eyed, brilliant, on intimate terms with the universe.

I used to love men like men love women — that is, not very well, and with a hunger driven only by my own inadequacies. Not him. In those early days, I spoke fondly of my family, stocked the fridge with his favorite pasta, folded his clothes more neatly than I ever have since. I wrote his mother a thank-you note for hosting me in his native France, something befitting a daughter-in-law. It worked; I meant it. After graduation and my fellowship at Oxford, I stayed in Europe for his career and married him at 23.

Of course I just fell in love. Romances have a setting; I had only intervened to place myself well. Mainly, I spotted the precise trouble of being a woman ahead of time, tried to surf it instead of letting it drown me on principle. I had grown bored of discussions of fair and unfair, equal or unequal , and preferred instead to consider a thing called ease.

The reception of a particular age-gap relationship depends on its obviousness. The greater and more visible the difference in years and status between a man and a woman, the more it strikes others as transactional. Transactional thinking in relationships is both as American as it gets and the least kosher subject in the American romantic lexicon. When a 50-year-old man and a 25-year-old woman walk down the street, the questions form themselves inside of you; they make you feel cynical and obscene: How good of a deal is that? Which party is getting the better one? Would I take it? He is older. Income rises with age, so we assume he has money, at least relative to her; at minimum, more connections and experience. She has supple skin. Energy. Sex. Maybe she gets a Birkin. Maybe he gets a baby long after his prime. The sight of their entwined hands throws a lucid light on the calculations each of us makes, in love, to varying degrees of denial. You could get married in the most romantic place in the world, like I did, and you would still have to sign a contract.

Twenty and 30 is not like 30 and 40; some freshness to my features back then, some clumsiness in my bearing, warped our decade, in the eyes of others, to an uncrossable gulf. Perhaps this explains the anger we felt directed at us at the start of our relationship. People seemed to take us very, very personally. I recall a hellish car ride with a friend of his who began to castigate me in the backseat, in tones so low that only I could hear him. He told me, You wanted a rich boyfriend. You chased and snuck into parties . He spared me the insult of gold digger, but he drew, with other words, the outline for it. Most offended were the single older women, my husband’s classmates. They discussed me in the bathroom at parties when I was in the stall. What does he see in her? What do they talk about? They were concerned about me. They wielded their concern like a bludgeon. They paraphrased without meaning to my favorite line from Nabokov’s Lolita : “You took advantage of my disadvantage,” suspecting me of some weakness he in turn mined. It did not disturb them, so much, to consider that all relationships were trades. The trouble was the trade I’d made struck them as a bad one.

The truth is you can fall in love with someone for all sorts of reasons, tiny transactions, pluses and minuses, whose sum is your affection for each other, your loyalty, your commitment. The way someone picks up your favorite croissant. Their habit of listening hard. What they do for you on your anniversary and your reciprocal gesture, wrapped thoughtfully. The serenity they inspire; your happiness, enlivening it. When someone says they feel unappreciated, what they really mean is you’re in debt to them.

When I think of same-age, same-stage relationships, what I tend to picture is a woman who is doing too much for too little.

I’m 27 now, and most women my age have “partners.” These days, girls become partners quite young. A partner is supposed to be a modern answer to the oppression of marriage, the terrible feeling of someone looming over you, head of a household to which you can only ever be the neck. Necks are vulnerable. The problem with a partner, however, is if you’re equal in all things, you compromise in all things. And men are too skilled at taking .

There is a boy out there who knows how to floss because my friend taught him. Now he kisses college girls with fresh breath. A boy married to my friend who doesn’t know how to pack his own suitcase. She “likes to do it for him.” A million boys who know how to touch a woman, who go to therapy because they were pushed, who learned fidelity, boundaries, decency, manners, to use a top sheet and act humanely beneath it, to call their mothers, match colors, bring flowers to a funeral and inhale, exhale in the face of rage, because some girl, some girl we know, some girl they probably don’t speak to and will never, ever credit, took the time to teach him. All while she was working, raising herself, clawing up the cliff-face of adulthood. Hauling him at her own expense.

I find a post on Reddit where five thousand men try to define “ a woman’s touch .” They describe raised flower beds, blankets, photographs of their loved ones, not hers, sprouting on the mantel overnight. Candles, coasters, side tables. Someone remembering to take lint out of the dryer. To give compliments. I wonder what these women are getting back. I imagine them like Cinderella’s mice, scurrying around, their sole proof of life their contributions to a more central character. On occasion I meet a nice couple, who grew up together. They know each other with a fraternalism tender and alien to me.  But I think of all my friends who failed at this, were failed at this, and I think, No, absolutely not, too risky . Riskier, sometimes, than an age gap.

My younger brother is in his early 20s, handsome, successful, but in many ways: an endearing disaster. By his age, I had long since wisened up. He leaves his clothes in the dryer, takes out a single shirt, steams it for three minutes. His towel on the floor, for someone else to retrieve. His lovely, same-age girlfriend is aching to fix these tendencies, among others. She is capable beyond words. Statistically, they will not end up together. He moved into his first place recently, and she, the girlfriend, supplied him with a long, detailed list of things he needed for his apartment: sheets, towels, hangers, a colander, which made me laugh. She picked out his couch. I will bet you anything she will fix his laundry habits, and if so, they will impress the next girl. If they break up, she will never see that couch again, and he will forget its story. I tell her when I visit because I like her, though I get in trouble for it: You shouldn’t do so much for him, not for someone who is not stuck with you, not for any boy, not even for my wonderful brother.

Too much work had left my husband, by 30, jaded and uninspired. He’d burned out — but I could reenchant things. I danced at restaurants when they played a song I liked. I turned grocery shopping into an adventure, pleased by what I provided. Ambitious, hungry, he needed someone smart enough to sustain his interest, but flexible enough in her habits to build them around his hours. I could. I do: read myself occupied, make myself free, materialize beside him when he calls for me. In exchange, I left a lucrative but deadening spreadsheet job to write full-time, without having to live like a writer. I learned to cook, a little, and decorate, somewhat poorly. Mostly I get to read, to walk central London and Miami and think in delicious circles, to work hard, when necessary, for free, and write stories for far less than minimum wage when I tally all the hours I take to write them.

At 20, I had felt daunted by the project of becoming my ideal self, couldn’t imagine doing it in tandem with someone, two raw lumps of clay trying to mold one another and only sullying things worse. I’d go on dates with boys my age and leave with the impression they were telling me not about themselves but some person who didn’t exist yet and on whom I was meant to bet regardless. My husband struck me instead as so finished, formed. Analyzable for compatibility. He bore the traces of other women who’d improved him, small but crucial basics like use a coaster ; listen, don’t give advice. Young egos mellow into patience and generosity.

My husband isn’t my partner. He’s my mentor, my lover, and, only in certain contexts, my friend. I’ll never forget it, how he showed me around our first place like he was introducing me to myself: This is the wine you’ll drink, where you’ll keep your clothes, we vacation here, this is the other language we’ll speak, you’ll learn it, and I did. Adulthood seemed a series of exhausting obligations. But his logistics ran so smoothly that he simply tacked mine on. I moved into his flat, onto his level, drag and drop, cleaner thrice a week, bills automatic. By opting out of partnership in my 20s, I granted myself a kind of compartmentalized, liberating selfishness none of my friends have managed. I am the work in progress, the party we worry about, a surprising dominance. When I searched for my first job, at 21, we combined our efforts, for my sake. He had wisdom to impart, contacts with whom he arranged coffees; we spent an afternoon, laughing, drawing up earnest lists of my pros and cons (highly sociable; sloppy math). Meanwhile, I took calls from a dear friend who had a boyfriend her age. Both savagely ambitious, hyperclose and entwined in each other’s projects. If each was a start-up , the other was the first hire, an intense dedication I found riveting. Yet every time she called me, I hung up with the distinct feeling that too much was happening at the same time: both learning to please a boss; to forge more adult relationships with their families; to pay bills and taxes and hang prints on the wall. Neither had any advice to give and certainly no stability. I pictured a three-legged race, two people tied together and hobbling toward every milestone.

I don’t fool myself. My marriage has its cons. There are only so many times one can say “thank you” — for splendid scenes, fine dinners — before the phrase starts to grate. I live in an apartment whose rent he pays and that shapes the freedom with which I can ever be angry with him. He doesn’t have to hold it over my head. It just floats there, complicating usual shorthands to explain dissatisfaction like, You aren’t being supportive lately . It’s a Frenchism to say, “Take a decision,” and from time to time I joke: from whom? Occasionally I find myself in some fabulous country at some fabulous party and I think what a long way I have traveled, like a lucky cloud, and it is frightening to think of oneself as vapor.

Mostly I worry that if he ever betrayed me and I had to move on, I would survive, but would find in my humor, preferences, the way I make coffee or the bed nothing that he did not teach, change, mold, recompose, stamp with his initials, the way Renaissance painters hid in their paintings their faces among a crowd. I wonder if when they looked at their paintings, they saw their own faces first. But this is the wrong question, if our aim is happiness. Like the other question on which I’m expected to dwell: Who is in charge, the man who drives or the woman who put him there so she could enjoy herself? I sit in the car, in the painting it would have taken me a corporate job and 20 years to paint alone, and my concern over who has the upper hand becomes as distant as the horizon, the one he and I made so wide for me.

To be a woman is to race against the clock, in several ways, until there is nothing left to be but run ragged.

We try to put it off, but it will hit us at some point: that we live in a world in which our power has a different shape from that of men, a different distribution of advantage, ours a funnel and theirs an expanding cone. A woman at 20 rarely has to earn her welcome; a boy at 20 will be turned away at the door. A woman at 30 may find a younger woman has taken her seat; a man at 30 will have invited her. I think back to the women in the bathroom, my husband’s classmates. What was my relationship if not an inconvertible sign of this unfairness? What was I doing, in marrying older, if not endorsing it? I had taken advantage of their disadvantage. I had preempted my own. After all, principled women are meant to defy unfairness, to show some integrity or denial, not plan around it, like I had. These were driven women, successful, beautiful, capable. I merely possessed the one thing they had already lost. In getting ahead of the problem, had I pushed them down? If I hadn’t, would it really have made any difference?

When we decided we wanted to be equal to men, we got on men’s time. We worked when they worked, retired when they retired, had to squeeze pregnancy, children, menopause somewhere impossibly in the margins. I have a friend, in her late 20s, who wears a mood ring; these days it is often red, flickering in the air like a siren when she explains her predicament to me. She has raised her fair share of same-age boyfriends. She has put her head down, worked laboriously alongside them, too. At last she is beginning to reap the dividends, earning the income to finally enjoy herself. But it is now, exactly at this precipice of freedom and pleasure, that a time problem comes closing in. If she would like to have children before 35, she must begin her next profession, motherhood, rather soon, compromising inevitably her original one. The same-age partner, equally unsettled in his career, will take only the minimum time off, she guesses, or else pay some cost which will come back to bite her. Everything unfailingly does. If she freezes her eggs to buy time, the decision and its logistics will burden her singly — and perhaps it will not work. Overlay the years a woman is supposed to establish herself in her career and her fertility window and it’s a perfect, miserable circle. By midlife women report feeling invisible, undervalued; it is a telling cliché, that after all this, some husbands leave for a younger girl. So when is her time, exactly? For leisure, ease, liberty? There is no brand of feminism which achieved female rest. If women’s problem in the ’50s was a paralyzing malaise, now it is that they are too active, too capable, never permitted a vacation they didn’t plan. It’s not that our efforts to have it all were fated for failure. They simply weren’t imaginative enough.

For me, my relationship, with its age gap, has alleviated this rush , permitted me to massage the clock, shift its hands to my benefit. Very soon, we will decide to have children, and I don’t panic over last gasps of fun, because I took so many big breaths of it early: on the holidays of someone who had worked a decade longer than I had, in beautiful places when I was young and beautiful, a symmetry I recommend. If such a thing as maternal energy exists, mine was never depleted. I spent the last nearly seven years supported more than I support and I am still not as old as my husband was when he met me. When I have a child, I will expect more help from him than I would if he were younger, for what does professional tenure earn you if not the right to set more limits on work demands — or, if not, to secure some child care, at the very least? When I return to work after maternal upheaval, he will aid me, as he’s always had, with his ability to put himself aside, as younger men are rarely able.

Above all, the great gift of my marriage is flexibility. A chance to live my life before I become responsible for someone else’s — a lover’s, or a child’s. A chance to write. A chance at a destiny that doesn’t adhere rigidly to the routines and timelines of men, but lends itself instead to roomy accommodation, to the very fluidity Betty Friedan dreamed of in 1963 in The Feminine Mystique , but we’ve largely forgotten: some career or style of life that “permits year-to-year variation — a full-time paid job in one community, part-time in another, exercise of the professional skill in serious volunteer work or a period of study during pregnancy or early motherhood when a full-time job is not feasible.” Some things are just not feasible in our current structures. Somewhere along the way we stopped admitting that, and all we did was make women feel like personal failures. I dream of new structures, a world in which women have entry-level jobs in their 30s; alternate avenues for promotion; corporate ladders with balconies on which they can stand still, have a smoke, take a break, make a baby, enjoy themselves, before they keep climbing. Perhaps men long for this in their own way. Actually I am sure of that.

Once, when we first fell in love, I put my head in his lap on a long car ride; I remember his hands on my face, the sun, the twisting turns of a mountain road, surprising and not surprising us like our romance, and his voice, telling me that it was his biggest regret that I was so young, he feared he would lose me. Last week, we looked back at old photos and agreed we’d given each other our respective best years. Sometimes real equality is not so obvious, sometimes it takes turns, sometimes it takes almost a decade to reveal itself.

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• Provides schools with a proven, easy-to-implement character education program that gives students an authentic purpose for writing.
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How to Become Friends With a Wild Bird

A winning essay by Shannon Hong, age 16.

By The Learning Network

This essay, by Shannon Hong, 16, of New Hyde Park, N.Y., is one of the Top 11 winners of The Learning Network’s new “How To” Informational Writing Contest for Teenagers .

We are publishing the work of all the winners over the next several days, and you can find them here as they post.

Each essay is illustrated by an image or video from a Times article that touches on the same topic. For this one we have used a video from a 2023 Times article, “ Why Mister Grouse Is the Friendliest Bird in the Forest .”

“I think the greatest gift a wild bird can give to you is friendship,” says Alexandra Rösch, author of the How to Befriend a Wild Bird series on her YouTube channel, Krari The Crow. Through many years of maintaining friendships with birds, Rösch has been able to find tranquility in the beauty of nature amidst the busyness of the world. Although it may seem like having a bird friend is something only Snow White can accomplish, developing a heartfelt connection with these feathered creatures is within your reach, whether outside your home or at a park.

“Familiarize yourself with the bird species you want to attract,” says Rösch. Although you can make friends with many types of birds, it’s easier to make friends once you lay the groundwork. Figure out what species you’re interested in and research its tastes. For example, while blue jays like to eat crushed peanuts, peanuts are too big for house sparrows, so if you want to attract house sparrows, try putting out bird seeds.

Once you’ve found a way to attract a bird species, let the birds come to you. Remember that most birds are not used to human interaction, so gentle persistence is key. Don’t act frustrated, as you may startle the bird. You can tell how a bird is feeling about you by the look of its feathers. “If a bird is relaxed, it will sit down and look all puffy,” says Rösch.

In the wild, birds recognize each other by their voice. If you want a bird to remember you, try talking to it. Some birds, such as crows, are even capable of facial recognition. Overall, if you spend enough time with the bird, it’ll be able to “recognize you regardless of what you wear,” says Rösch. Over time, a bird will be able to put its trust in you, just like people in human relationships.

You can tell if a bird sees you as a friend if it visits you frequently and comes close to you without fear. They will realize that you’re someone who is trying to help them.

Once you’ve built a friendship with a bird, you can continue to maintain this bond by spending time with your new avian companion. You just might notice how calming it is to just spend some quality time watching your bird friend. “It is a very beautiful experience,” says Rösch.