When I was in fourth grade, I didn’t think of myself as someone particularly skilled with words. I enjoyed reading I Survived books occasionally, but the idea of memorizing long, complicated words never piqued my interest. That’s why the day that my teacher announced we would have a classroom spelling bee, and the top 3 in the class would move on to the schoolwide competition, the idea went in one ear and out the other. However, when my parents heard about this opportunity, they did not let me pass it up. So, there I was, 9 years old, signing up for a competition that I knew nothing about and had no interest in whatsoever.
Since this was the first individual competition that I had ever taken part in part in at the time, I was rightfully nervous out of my mind. At first, I could not have cared less about how I did; I just wanted to do whatever I could and get it done with. When my teacher handed out a list of words the next day that we had to learn for the classroom spelling bee and my dad started quizzing me over the words one by one, I surprisingly did a decent job. Even though I was still not convinced that I wanted to participate in this, my dad made sure that I spent at least one hour each day reviewing the words on that list. Slowly, words like “onomatopoeia” stopped being a blur and I was quickly able to run through the spelling of it. Even after doing this for multiple days, it seemed like I was only doing this to please my parents. This is when my mom and dad told me, “We can attempt to help you as much as we can, but you will only improve when you set your mind to it.” This stuck with me and made me realize that I should take ownership of this process and try to do well. After this, my stance shifted from my dad having to ask me when I was going to study, to me telling him that I need him to quiz me over the words. At the dinner table, on the way to soccer practice, before bed, words like “photosynthesis,” “resilience,” and “grandiose” started echoing throughout the walls.
It wasn’t just about spelling either. I felt a surge of confidence while talking to people because I felt like I had hundreds more words in my repertoire than I even knew earlier. My vocabulary seemed to skyrocket and I started to understand more things while listening to adults talk and I felt more mature for my age. I even noticed a significant difference in my reading comprehension and the books that I was reading. I began flying through The Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and started moving on to more advanced novels, such as The Hardy Boys and Harry Potter.
As it got closer to the day of the classroom spelling bee, I was spending a ton of time reviewing the packet and felt like I would do very well. It seemed like there was no way I could get a single word on that list wrong. Even though I was doing a good job, my studying methods were very inefficient and overly time consuming. However, when the day of the spelling bee came, none of that mattered. It was all about putting on my best performance and doing my best. As I got my first word, I felt like I knew it better than the back of my own hand. “C-o-n-s-t-r-u-c-t-i-o-n”, I said confidently, with a smile on my face, knowing that I got past the first round and most of my nerves were gone. Around five rounds later, two other students and I were left, so I knew that I had secured my spot in the school spelling bee a couple of weeks from now. Still, I was not satisfied with getting 3rd in my class, and I knew I wanted to get first. Unfortunately, this wasn’t meant to happen and I ended up getting 2nd in my class. This was bittersweet for me because I accomplished my goal of qualifying for the next round, but I never liked losing to anyone so I was filled with motivation to do better in the school competition.
The following two weeks were spent similarly to how I studied for the class spelling bee, but I was far more efficient in my studying methods. Instead of just going through each word in every list I could find, I made flashcards and quizzes for myself to test my knowledge. I wrote down commonly missed words in my notebook so I could get the feel for it in my muscle memory. I imagined that I was on stage and treated each word like the most important one that could make or break my hopes of winning the competition. When it was the day of the competition, I was filled with much more nerves than I was for the class competition. Nevertheless, I kept telling myself that I was well prepared and got myself excited to perform well. Even though I started off really well and got into a good rhythm, when I got the word “chandelier”, my mind blanked and I forgot one of the letters and got it wrong. Despite all my hard work, I ended up getting third in my school and I was really disappointed for a few days.
However, after some time I realized that it wasn’t about the final result. I had no intention of going to the national spelling bee and winning a medal. Instead, it was quite the opposite. I didn’t want to participate in the spelling bee at all until my parents forced me to. Considering this, I realized that I did a great job and getting third in the whole school is not an easy feat at all. Both my parents let me know that they were proud of how I took initiative and decided that I wanted to do well at something. Soon after this, I let my dad know how valuable his help was in order to get me started on this journey. Without him, I never would have opened up my eyes to the world of reading and writing and realized that it’s not so bad after all.
Overall, the biggest takeaway that I got from this experience is that if I want to do well in something, I must have internal motivation, not have other people force me to work hard. To this day, I still use some of the methods that helped me prepare for the spelling bee in my everyday life. For example, when I have a quiz in my AP Psychology class, I always make a set of flashcards to review my vocab words just like I did 7 years ago for the spelling bee. Although I do not participate in any spelling competitions right now, the introduction to reading and vocabulary, learning new studying methods, and figuring out that I control what I achieve and not others, are three of the biggest lessons that my dad and the fourth-grade spelling bee have taught me.
About the Author
Rohan is a current senior at Dunlap High School and wrote this piece for his online English Composition 110 class at ICC. Apart from school, Rohan enjoys playing soccer and hanging out with his friends.