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Jackie Anderson
Dr. Harris
English 1101/H4
8/31/11
My Spelling Dilemma
“Everyone get out a sheet of paper and number it 1 to 20,” Mrs. Anderson said to my third
grade class. This meant a spelling test; I loved these things. I enjoyed spelling tests so much because I
aced every single one of them. I sat in my desk playing with the hem of my jumper while I waited for her
to say the first sentence that we needed to write verbatim on our piece of paper. Everyone around me
grunted in annoyance, and I’m assuming it was because of the test we were about to take.
Mrs. Anderson, my great third grade teacher, always presented herself as a very nice, older
woman. She wore small rimmed glasses with kind of small lenses. She reminded me of what a librarian
would look like: her short grey hair, wavy and always tucked behind her ear (even though there wasn’t
much hair to tuck); her rosy cheeks that welcomed anyone who saw her; her “old lady” clothes, always a
floral printed, long dress accompanied by a long-sleeved solid, colored sweater. Her appearance
imitated the stereotypical librarian.
I remembered being the first person done in my class; how could my classmates continuously
ask Mrs. Anderson to repeat each sentence? I could not understand how they couldn’t write it down the
first time it was said because these sentences were so easy!
Number One: “Molly had different handwriting than Bobby.”
Number Two: “Susie wrote magically about rainbows and unicorns.”
Number Three: “Ryan waited for a touchdown at the game.”
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Number Four: “Matt fought with Chris about who won the toothpaste.”
The rest of the sentences went the same way: a person, a past tense verb, and then a vocabulary word
mixed in to the sentence to make sense; they couldn’t get much easier. The frustration I had felt sitting
five minutes between each sentence hearing it over and over and over again engulfed me. As much as I
loved my teacher, hearing her voice repeating the same sentences for a couple minutes straight was
overbearing.
Andrea, who sat next to me in class, raised her hand and asked Mrs. Anderson to repeat the
bonus sentence. We always had a bonus sentence. Our teacher always helped out the students who
needed to better their grades. With every test or quiz we took in class, there was bound to be a bonus
question added in there, too. “Mary accepted the punishment of writing ten sentences, but misspelled
every word purposefully,” she repeated. I already had the bonus sentence written, so I just waited as
patiently as I could until Mrs. Anderson asked us to trade papers with someone else.
To an outsider, these sentences might seem a bit hard for third grade students; this was not the
case at my school. I went to a private Catholic school who strived for excellence. The school’s motto was
Semper Altius, which means “Always Higher”, and they made sure to follow through with this motto
every day. At Pinecrest Academy, honesty and high performance was ALWAYS expected. So if our
teachers had too much to grade at times, we just exchanged our work with someone else’s and graded
theirs in class; we were expected to grade honestly. The school taught us to always strive for our best
and to improve at everything we do.
When we got our test scores back, I wasn’t surprised at the outcome; another 100,
which meant another smiley face sticker. Mrs. Anderson spoke again, “Raise your hand if you got all of
the questions correct.” As usual, I raised my hand. I’m not a cocky person at all, but when it came to
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spelling, I knew I was above average for my age. However, another student, Margaret, had also raised
her hand. She and I had been in academic competition since the first grade. She was a very intelligent
student, as was I. We both got congratulated by Mrs. Anderson with a smiley face sticker. This was her
ritual in the third grade; you do well on an assignment, you get a sticker.
Mrs. Anderson was a great third grade teacher; she always knew what to tell her students, how
to act with her students, and why to be the way she was. She told us at the beginning of our third grade
year that for every test, quiz, or assignment we do in her class, a sticker will be handed out to those
students who did exceptional work. This meant getting 100s on spelling tests, getting at least a 95 on
the tests on the books that had been read to us every Friday, and getting a 90 or above on any
assignment given to us. We would always exchange with the person sitting next to us to grade theirs so
there would not be any bias. She, of course, took up all of our work to double check the grading to see
how well we understood the material and what she asked of us. Every time she would hand us our work
back, we would either have a smiley face sticker, or a “Good job, but I know you can do better!” in red
ink on the top left corner of the paper. Her philosophy for the smiley face stickers was to motivate us as
students to strive for A’s in her class because it would result in a party. Her idea of the party was for all
the students who got 6 or more stickers throughout the year. She would buy pizza and have ice cream
for us to make sundaes, all while watching the most popular PG movie (we would all take a vote).
Mrs. Anderson then proceeded to tell our class that the annual spelling bee competition was
approaching around the corner. She was right. Although we had three weeks to prepare with a 6 page
packet of words to study, the competition came so quickly. Even knowing I am a very good speller, I
went into our class competition very nervously. Writing words correctly on paper is easy as pie, but
spelling them out loud where I can’t visually see what I am spelling, is a whole other story. However,
round after round, I kept proceeding on to the next one. Eventually we got down to the last three
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contestants of my class: me, Sarah, and of course, Margaret. Sarah misspelled the word toothpaste by
adding another “e” after tooth and before paste. “Congratulations to Jackie and Margaret for being the
top two spellers of the class. Both of you are now eligible to proceed on to the school-wide competition.
However, we still need to continue to find the winner in our class,” explained our teacher.
I thought to myself how frustrated I was. Every year, Margaret and I were always the top two of
the class in every aspect: academics, athletics, and leadership. Margaret was a family of 11 children and
was very well-known at our school. All of her family members were the top student in their classes, and
all the teachers knew this. Therefore, Margaret always had an advantage over me; she needed to keep
up the family reputation. This meant that all my hard work was not recognized by my teachers, and
instead all the praise went to her. For example, in second grade, we had a project where we had to
make a diorama of one of the books we read over the summer. I put so much effort into my project; it
was probably the best creation I had ever made. I had a poster board with different scenes from the
book, but made it three dimensional, like I had a treasure box filled with the secrets of those a part of
their club. When I brought it in to school to turn in, Margaret only had a shoe box filled with Barbie dolls
to act as the characters in her book. Although mine definitely looked like more time and effort was put
forth, our teacher fell in LOVE with Margaret’s shoe box. I got no praise for my hard work, and she got
all the praise. I wanted to beat her at something just once. Even in sports, we were the two best players
of both the soccer team and basketball team, yet she still got all the praise and I got all the criticism. If
our opponent swept by Margaret on the basketball court, I would get in trouble for not having her
support. She would not get criticized about playing horrible defense, but get praised for “doing so well
at the game and trying her best”. I was very motivated to beat her at something just this once.
As we continued the spelling bee, Margaret had misspelled her word, so it came to me.
“Repetition,” Mrs. Anderson had said. I closed my eyes, breathed in through my nose and out through
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my mouth. I knew this one so I started to spell. “That is correct!” I heard as I opened my eyes. I won! I
thought to myself. I finally did it. It was such a relief that I finally had beat Margaret. It took three years,
but I finally managed to out-work my opponent and be number one in something. I found myself
literally jumping in joy at the fact I got first place in the class. I felt like a nerd, but at the same time, it
didn’t matter to me at all. I achieved my goal in showing how my hard work did indeed pay off. My
excitement then turned to disappointment when I remembered that both of us were participating in the
school-wide competition.
Our school, Pinecrest Academy, is a private catholic school. We all had to wear uniforms: a plaid
jumper, a white blouse underneath, and saddle shoes with knee-high white socks. I will never forget
how stupid we looked in our uniforms. Even though everyone was wearing the same thing, I still always
felt embarrassed to be wearing our uniforms. Every morning, I would dread having to put on that
atrocious uniform. The way it made me feel, I felt so belittled in that uniform. I hated going in public
places in it because I felt like everyone stared at me and thought about how hideous I looked; it
embarrassed me so badly. Standing in front of all the parents and other students who decided to show
up for the school-wide competition, I just felt so uncomfortable, even knowing that they also have kids
who wear the same horrible outfit. It was as if people were judging me and my appearance, and I hate
being judged! I didn’t understand that everyone there did not look at me weird for wearing my uniform
because we all looked the same.
It was finally my turn; standing in line, waiting for the twelve people in front of me to either
move on to the next round or get disqualified, felt like a lifetime. My word was one of the easiest,
“dilemma”; second round, here I come. As the rounds went on, more people kept getting disqualified. It
was down to me and six other people, and my nerves started to kick in.
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I have this hands down, I thought to myself, there was no way I could miss any of these words,
they are all so easy. My turn once again approached.
“Grammar”, the judge had said. “Please spell grammar.”
Easy! Although I was very nervous and felt every eye in the room staring at me making me feel
so uncomfortable, I went through my routine of closing my eyes, visualizing the word as I spelled
it out loud, breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth.
Here goes nothing! “Grammar. G-r-a-m-m-e-r. Grammar.”
I opened my eyes to hear the words I was the most terrified of, “I’m sorry, that is incorrect. You
have been disqualified.”
I could not believe I had missed the word “grammar”. I could spell long, hard words like
hippopotamus, but not a short, simple word like grammar. This had made no sense to me whatsoever. I
was so ashamed of myself for missing such a simple word. My mother came over to comfort me in my
struggling moment. She said, “Cheer up, sweetie. Think of the positive side of the situation. At least you
will always remember how to spell grammar for the rest of your life. Never again will you misspell it. You
made it far in the competition so don’t beat yourself up.” My mother always had kind, inspiring words to
tell me. It is because of her that I remember this moment so well.
This moment is a significant moment in my life because of how I pushed myself to be the best. I
tried so hard to win and accomplish my goal of beating Margaret that I ended up being overly confident.
This moment has taught me to work hard to reach my goals, but not under-estimate my weaknesses. I
need to push myself to succeed, but not become cocky about the situation. I had over-estimated my
strength that I automatically assumed I could win hands-down. I never would have thought I could have
made a mistake while spelling, and resulted in a cocky third grader who lost in the spelling bee. I never
understood that there is always room for practice and improvement in everything that I do. I have
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learned a lot from this experience that I will never forget, one of which being that I will never misspell
the word “grammar” again!