“I can’t think of a topic.”
That was my only thought as I began my National History Day paper last year. It had to be perfect. This was the paper that would consume my life for months. It was the third paper I was writing for this competition: two papers were already behind me, 8 pages of writing with thousands of pages of research behind them. With the memory of these papers came the knowledge that I had twice been a national competitor; it was expected that I would move through the regional and state competitions with ease. Only I assumed otherwise.
Writing these papers in middle school, I had been coddled by due dates, an hour to work every school day, and a teacher always looking over my shoulder. Despite this structure, I had spent night
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The latter proved to be impossible. My topic, Gifford Pinchot and the Ballinger-Pinchot Controversy, was obscure enough that 43 sources were all I could find. At times, the goal of that perfect paper seemed just as impossible. Finding a topic was hard enough. By the time I settled on Gifford Pinchot, the middle schoolers were a month into their research. I didn’t choose the Ballinger-Pinchot Controversy until I was halfway through my paper, realizing Pinchot’s life was too long for the 2500 word limit. After a frantic week of writing and annotating and editing, I still wasn’t done. By the timeI submitted it, most sane people were asleep; it hurt to think and yet I somehow managed to survive until my work was finally complete.
It was the perfect paper. There were errors, but none I could find. All those hours of work almost seemed worth it the next day when it was submitted and I marveled at how I managed to write it myself. However, as I attended the national competition once again, as I finished presenting Gifford Pinchot to the judges, I was already considering my next topic. This year, I will write about the Korean armistice agreement. This year, I hope to have both a paper and a process I can be proud