Motiative

What!?

I do only one good thing a year as I'm quite selfish and too important to help others. Today was my day to give back to the little people.

I participated as a judge for a regional collegiate competition. Schools from the "region" (Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Alaska, California, Nevada and Hawaii) known as "the whole fricken West side of the USA" presented an annual report of their activities for the last year. They have a charter to promote business ethics, economic growth and other useless skills.

The presentations are good but what's really fun isn't hearing about how they taught high school and college kids credit card skills, or created a micro-loan program to enable immigrants be self-sustaining. No, the fun part is judging others.

There were many remarkable kids there but here were the top two that stood out:

The boy who brushed off his knee length tuxedo jacket to double as a business attire. It was cute, and in my head I gave him kudos for bravery. I did cut his points in half because he has to learn the harsh truth that fashion matters.

The other notable student was a gal who will win the "TP gal 2007 Fictionary Award" for excellentary word creatoryness. In less than 8 minutes she dropped the following words:

Motivative

Interactual

Advisement ** this apparently IS a word, but I promise you not in the context with which she used it.

Reoccurent

It was so bad that the CEO of CoinStar (seriously) mocked the team about their new vocabulary. Probably not his nicest move, but he's the CEO so whose going to tell him to shove it?

I did get into a raging debate with a student from the College of the Nazarene about the rights of students to post what they want on their MySpace pages. I was all "Look here Jesus-girl, if you put pictures of yourself doing heroin with your pet goat on a public web page expect people to judge you. Duh!!"

She was all "goat?"

Score the point for tp gal.

The kids that won in our room were the crew from the Heritage University from the Yakima Nation Tribal College. I knew it, foreigners get all the breaks.

City University-Bellevue also won... All they did was create a multi-cultural program to help immigrants build businesses, get jobs, and thrive (whatever) in our economy. Their program reminded me of a Jackson Pollack painting...anyone could have done it.

So, now that my one good deed for the year is done I have to say I'm exhausted. It is hard work having to listen to each team brag about their year long activities. I don't mean to whine, I'm sure that my six hours of time will totally change their lives. I just worry what they'll do without my guidance going forward. So can see, right, how it's a concern?

Oooh and the weirdest thing... There was a girl there whose name was Stephanie Petersen!!! How bizarre is that?

Sorry, one more thing I can never judge again because the judge demographics survey has its age boxes all screwed up.

18-24

25-35

36-45

46 and older

What the hell!? I don't accept that I share a box with 45 year olds.

Ta ta... I'm off to do more good deeds!