https://thisibelieve.org/essay/4881/
This writing is one that stood out to me the moment I clicked on the link. The title is interesting, and draws you in, wanting to fulfill the wish of wanting to read and finish this piece. This story starts out young and naïve, she wanted to win the Student Council Vice President position. She tried hard to win the campaign, but she was shy in the beginning, and didn’t have the ‘blue sparkly pencils with her name printed on them’, and she lost. She took the loss hard, and tried to rethink of a new strategy to win, knowing that her parents wouldn’t fund her campaign. She wanted to run again in high school, and as soon as she got there, she tried to make friends with everyone so they would vote for her. She wanted to learn everyone’s name in order to gain a vote. By the next year, she knew over 1/4 of the people in over 500 people.
There are many connections to this post. One of them is that even if you fail at doing something, there are many good things that can happen. Also, if you have an open mind, you can meet many new people and create new friends and acquaintances. She was determined to win the election, and kept up her effort in order to win. In the end, she didn’t bother trying to campaign again.
This writing illustrates and shows that with showing kind gestures, being friends with lots of people is better than winning an election or campaign. She ended up knowing over 1/4 of her class of 500+ people, and many people looked to her if they needed to rant, or simply just to share what was going on in her life. In the beginning, she merely wished to get followers to get her elected, but in the end, she ended up making so many friends and meeting all different kinds of people. She realized that her ‘motives had changed’, and instead of getting caught up in winning, she actually ended up valuing the people she had met and the friends she had made.
What other people thought was a kind gesture, she wanted to win, but now she cared about making friends. She said it made her genuinely happy to see someone who was smiling and being friendly with her, she truly did care about the people in her school, and didn’t have to put forth an effort to be kind to others.