As some of y’all may know, I participate in a program called Youth and Government. Depending on what section of the program you are in, you learn how to write bills or proposals and debate them, or how the judicial branch works. We do lots of preparation work that leads up to the District and then State conference, where we compete and present our work. We finally had our State conference at the end of April and it was amazing! I can proudly say that I won a Distinguished Delegate award for the second year in a row!

I was presented with the opportunity to prepare a speech against a topic I find wrong and present it in front of people who mostly thought the topic was right. Even though I knew not everyone would consider what I had to say, I still wrote and presented the speech. Oh. My. Goodness. That experience was my favorite part of the whole conference. I was right, not everyone agreed with me, but some people did and it brought me newfound confidence and rekindled my love for debate. I strongly encourage y’all to never be afraid of those who disagree with you or doubt you.

Now, looking forward to the summer! I WILL finish my draft of A Heart Adrift by the end of summer. I have not been able to work on it due to school and Youth and Government, but now I have more free time. I will also have my first unofficially official vocal performance at a camp over the summer which I am super excited about. I’m hoping to embrace all my artistic hobbies again and enjoy them all summer long XD.

The Word of the Week is: Towser

Pronunciation/Romanized: tou-zer

Etymology: Towser comes from the old English word “touse” which means to pull about.

Definition: a large dog

Example: A.G. Silver’s puppy could easily be mistaken for a towser due to the breed’s size.