This is a new story that I wrote for a storytelling competition on the theme of winning. It describes an event from May 6, 2016, that represents a triumph for me. I attempted to write in a sassier, funnier style than what I’ve usually done for stories. My story was not selected for the competition, but I wanted to share it regardless.
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I’d like to thank the academy for selecting me to tell my story tonight . . . oh, forget it, the academy never has that good taste.
In any case, in a classic Seinfeld episode, Kramer is mistakenly dragged onstage with a group of Broadway producers to accept a Tony award for Best Musical. The next day, he brings the award to Jerry’s apartment and gushes, “WOOOOOOO! I can’t describe how great it is to win!”
“That’s because you didn’t win,” corrects Jerry.
But unlike Kramer, maybe I can describe how great it is to win–precisely because I know what it’s like to lose.
Now, for me, I’m not always good with describing anything in my writing. I tend to abhor the normative conventions of craft in American writing, including maxims like “show, don’t tell” as the supposed common denominator of all great writing–like, puh-leeze, gender neutral beeyotch: being autistic, I’m hyper-literal, and if you don’t like it, go jump in a metaphorical lake.
This is to say that I’m very direct, and in other non-news, my writing is also wordy as fuck–try reading that clause in Shakespearean iambic pentameter . . .–and honestly, I like it that way.
But it took a long time to get so proud, sassy, or confident in my writing.
Looking back on my childhood, sometimes it seems like everything I’ve ever loved or learned to accept about myself, I’ve been bullied for. It’s not just my autism, my sexuality, or the strange confluence of both when I’m awkwardly trying to understand nonverbal communication when someone might be flirting with me. Fun times, y’all.
No, it’s also my memory, my burning passion for music, and my writing. In retrospect, it’s kind of funny that people bullied me for my writing, which they didn’t understand.
I’ll admit, in high school, I was insufferable in my obsession with school awards for academics and extracurriculars. Oh, man, did I talk and talk and talk about how much I supposedly deserved certain accolades–what garbage . . . at least in retrospect.
So, inevitably, when I didn’t get some awards, I was crushed. It’s where I was, so I have compassion for myself now, but it took a long time to realize that it wasn’t the awards that I wanted; it was social validation that I could never get, having no friends, no matter how hard I strained for connection with other people.
Now, today I have a mountain of honors in different settings, including a decade tutoring college students in writing; dozens of publications; a TEDx talk; conference presentation awards; the title of staff writer at PopMatters, the international web magazine; and a master’s degree, in English, no less. And a multitude of placements in state and national professional communications contests, including as Communicator of Achievement for 2024? Now, that’s some validation.
Needless to say, it took a long time to get where I am, but when I look back on all the academic and professional honors I’ve received in the last decade, there’s one win that sticks out.
It wasn’t the most prestigious award I’ve won for writing compared to, say, placing in national competitions, but in 2016, I received what felt like a once-in-a-lifetime honor from my graduate school department.
In high school and college, I often submitted work late, with plenty of perfectionistic procrastinating, rushing, and eventually writing terrible papers–and did I mention I was an English major? So, in 2014, when I was doubting I should apply to any English program ever again, with my awful GPA and trouble with time management, an advisor from Northeastern Illinois University told me, after three years of me having trouble finding a graduate program that would accept me, “We’d be lucky to have you.”
And nineteen days later, after I submitted my application, I got the following email from my new advisor:
Congratulations, Josh! Your application was fantastic and everyone on the committee was thrilled with your intelligence, passion, curiosity, and tremendous promise. This will become official tomorrow, but I wanted to let you know early. Congrats again. You've earned it and we look forward for you to hopefully join our program.
Best,
Ryan
And as I was severely manic at the time because of a medical mixup, to put it nicely, I could’ve posted something long and verbose–like an Oscars speech–on social media, but instead I just posted, “Sometimes, dreams come true. I officially got into graduate school.” And my Facebook blew up pretty fast.
Later that year, I was inducted into the international English honor society Sigma Tau Delta–affectionately known as STD–and I gave a speech about how much that honor meant to me, having struggled with writing and bullying for the biggest part of my life.
But a few semesters later, after submitting different work to the English department’s annual awards department, I was awarded for the outstanding Graduate Critical Analysis paper for an excerpt from my master’s thesis on rock music and race in the 1960s. I emphasize, this was not, in theory, a typical English paper, but they liked my work that much to consider–and reward–it.
When a revision of my master’s thesis containing this excerpt was published online months later, it pissed off a lot of people who didn’t read it, but at the point when I got the award, I’d presented multiple versions of it at maybe three conferences and won a different award at my university’s Research and Creative Activities Symposium as the outstanding presentation on a panel of English papers.
So this win was not entirely unexpected, but coming from my experience, the Graduate Critical Analysis award really meant a lot to me. My graduate advisor, who was advising my master’s thesis, said he’s always been “humbled” by my writing and research, and he spoke for four minutes about how inspired he was by my work.
My speech wasn’t that long. Here is an excerpt from my three-minute Oscars speech:
I feel like pulling a Kanye West tonight and saying Beyoncé should have won this award. But regardless, I am very, very honored to be here [. . . .] I’ve struggled with literature since I was a kid, and I’m honored to have even been considered for this award with some amazing scholars in this category especially, for a paper on music, my greatest passion. I’m honored to be here, and I wanted to recount a couple of moments that led up to this night for me. When I was in high school, plenty of kids said and thought that I was too “retarded” to be in AP English classes. [. . .] The last thing I want to say is, tonight is a very emotional night for me. Five years ago, I was at an emotional low point, desperately unhappy having come home from a phenomenal college experience, and that weekend turned into one of the high points of my life. So, to quote Smokey Robinson, a man that Bob Dylan allegedly once called America’s greatest living poet, my attitude at that point was, “I’m just about at the end of my rope, but I can’t stop trying; I can’t give up hope.” So, I’ll be celebrating tonight, and by the way, the fighter still remains. Thank you.
I was alluding to a night five years before that weekend, when I attempted suicide and the last person I ever expected–a straight crush who knew it–went out of his way to save my life by letting me know how much he cared about me. And for those who don’t know, which is probably most people alive, “the fighter still remains” is a lyric from Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Boxer.”
It was true. I was–and am–still here.
And you know what made it sweeter? My 88-year-old grandmother, whom I was living with at the time, had just published her story of immigration as a Holocaust refugee in her book, The House in Prague, and she was there with me and my dad. After I gave my speech, she blew me a kiss from across our table.
My unique thinking led to these honors. I couldn’t have done these projects without my autism and my rather idiosyncratic writing gifts, whereas a few years before I had thought I would never do them because of my autism.
I graduated from that master’s program three months later, and that win has stayed with me even with the online backlash for work I was awarded for that night. And as rough as my memories from growing up are, the next year, I found an old report card from seventh grade English, where the teacher, who had passed away a couple years before, wrote, “Joshua has a great deal of writing talent. I look forward to reading his published works of art in the not too distant future!!!” with three exclamation points.
And when I read that, I couldn’t help but cry. I earned that through hard work, dedication, and struggle. Those aren’t feelings, but that’s what a win feels like for me.