It’s been a wild ride from being bullied for my writing in high school to chairing a high school communications contest as a professional communicator.
When I was in high school, I remember feeling helpless. I was nonetheless very lucky.
I didn’t have to go to the local public school because I got a four-year, full tuition merit scholarship from a private school. So, while it could’ve been a lot worse, it was still awful.
Realizing that I was autistic and gay and also struggling with mental illness was a recipe for disaster long before the rise of smartphones and cyberbullying. I couldn’t do anything about my being different, making Jimi Hendrix “uncool,” or my high levels of anxiety about everything.
I was a yearbook editor, academia trivia team captain, as well as member of clubs for math and French, and I completed a three-week project studying music with Greg Kot, then the rock critic for the Chicago Tribune. But there was a disconnect between how hard I tried and how little I succeeded at socializing.
The way one person I didn’t get along with then put it, “You were misunderstood. People didn’t know what to do with you. You didn’t fit in any box.” Of course, I was also a difficult teenager full of self-absorption, but sometimes I still struggle with the feeling that something could have been done about bullying at that school. Regardless, I can’t change the past, but I’m realizing acceptance to a greater degree every day.
Back then, I remember students saying I was “retarded”—all the time—and regardless of whether or not I could have known better than to internalize it, it hurt. I heard that word hurled at me more than I ever got “faggot,” and I got “faggot” a lot. And as I’ve discussed elsewhere, what I went through severely hurt people close to me, too.
That can feel hard to live with, but some of the most healing work I’ve done is with some of the people I clashed with in high school. I’ll never forget receiving a message on social media, shortly before I finished my last semester on campus at college, terrified of going home and reliving eighteen years of awful memories. The message was an amends letter from someone from high school who was in recovery for drugs and alcohol, and when I read it, I cried.
Fast forward a few years, after a slump of aimlessness, I found graduate school and got a mountain of subsequent publications—and awards, like the ones I longed for in high school as a substitute for social validation. Many of these awards came from an organization I found out about through my department called the Illinois Woman’s Press Association, open to professional communicators of all genders, and in the last year I was elected to their Board as their High School Contest Chair for 2022 and 2023.
The IWPA’s annual High School Communications Contest gives high school communicators the chance to enter their best work in twenty-three categories—from yearbook, news, and sports writing to visual media—and get feedback from experts in the field. Last year, I judged multiple categories in the contest at the state and national levels and worked hard to give substantive feedback for every submission.
The process has also built my confidence, as my decisiveness has markedly improved since I was younger, like when I changed my major in college multiple times.
Although taking on such a responsibility as chairing the contest made me nervous at first, it has worked out great. I have worked hard to get the word out and find expert judges for different categories.
This endeavor has been a really powerful learning experience of networking in the communications field. I don’t consider myself a journalist, though other people have called me one, but I do consider myself a strong writer, which is a massive improvement from where I was in high school.
Back then, I remember students calling me too “retarded” to be in Advanced Placement English classes, and though my English teachers knew better than to take that idea seriously, I internalized a lot of garbage about my worth as a writer.
One of the most useful texts I’ve read about writing, Matthew Salesses’s Craft in the Real World, discusses writing craft as a cultural construction, and realizing how that applied to my own writing as disabled and queer means, among other things, that I don’t value the idea of “show, don’t tell,” often called a hallmark of all good writing.
And yet, I value the feedback I’ve gotten entering different categories in the IWPA’s Professional Contest since 2017. I’ve learned that communicators are not the best judges of their work—in fact, we don’t get to decide what our best work is.
That said, I’m anticipating doing well in the Professional contest this year—we’ll see if it’s my best year yet, as I won First Place in four categories last year: Video for Web—Special Interest for my TEDx talk, Personal Essays for one about my relationship with my grandmother, Online Feature Articles for an article on race and gender in country music, and Headlines for an assortment of essay titles.
These entries went on to the National Federation of Press Women’s contest of first place winners from different states and regions, and three of them placed in that national contest (Third Place for Video for Web—Special Interest, Third Place for Headlines, and Honorable Mention for Online Feature Articles). This was a major honor for me, as a sometimes-insecure writer who has struggled with major imposter syndrome around a lot of success he’s had.
It feels weird to call myself a professional communicator, but I am one. In the past couple weeks, as Contest Chair for the High School contest, I’ve assigned judges, had to inquire about multiple questionable entries and transactions, and coordinated different aspects of the contest. It’s like a whole new world.
Looking back, as I’ve discussed in my TEDx talk, I grew up thinking I wasn’t creative. But I had a number of teachers who encouraged my writing, and one wrote in a report card for my seventh grade English coursework, “Joshua has a great deal of writing talent. I look forward to reading his published works of art in the not too distant future!!!”
I found that report card in 2017, two years after that teacher died, and I cried. She saw things in me that a lot of people, including myself, did not, and reading that hit me differently after I got multiple publications, including one released shortly before then that would land my first award from the IWPA Professional contest, a First Place for Online Feature Articles. It was a controversial article about race and 1960s rock, but I was very proud of it and of the feedback I got from an expert in the field.
I knew when I got that feedback that I was on my way as a professional writer. Such feedback over the years has meant a lot to me, but even more meaningful, again, has been the healing work I’ve done with different people from high school.
In September, I met someone for lunch whom I didn’t get along with in high school. It was really powerful to hear what she and some of her friends had been through then, and it made me have much more empathy for the students at that school. She praised an administrator who, in my family’s view, was awful for us, and it made me have more empathy for that person and for the people who appreciated what they did there.
It’s moments like that that mean more to me than any award, but I won’t lie, I’ve come a long way, and I’m proud of the awards I’m getting for my writing. The high school students in the contest I’m chairing, too, are doing amazing work. They’re writing about topics I never could have with remarkable clarity, insight, and courage, and I look forward to seeing them rewarded.
So, here’s to growth all around the communications field and in me. Especially in this pandemic and in the age of fake news, the communications field matters perhaps more than ever before. I matter, too.