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“I am young person growing up during an age with war, dishonesty, discrimination, racial bias, gender inequality. Yet few seems angry by these issues. Many view the slight advances in social equality as having solved our issues entirely though that isn’t enough.”

Back in March 2015, and I’ve done it I’ve solved social injustice. Present in the basement room of Modern Art Oxford for my regional heat in a public speaking contest, I truly believe that perhaps I had presented the audience of parents and teachers to the idea of feminism. I felt proud with myself.

The Contest

This speaking award is an event aimed at older teens, aged 16 to 19, where participants get 10 minutes to present about an artwork of their choice. I learned regarding this from the leader of my college, and his room I frequently visited shortly prior to the competition. As a pupil, I was clever but chatty and easily distracted. I felt everything acutely often becoming overwhelmed and tearful.

I also took an all-or-nothing approach to academics: excel completely or quit entirely. During our meeting, we discussed my decision to drop history AS-level within weeks beginning it because I didn’t think to achieve for me to finish with an A. “Not everything is death or glory,” he implored.

A Chance

Along with my patient art teacher, the head of sixth form saw that Articulation was exactly the opportunity that I needed – since I loved art AS-level, and was suitably gobby as part the institution’s rag-tag discussion group. He suggested I develop a talk for an initial in-school heat. From memory, it seems no one else participated.

Choosing Art

My presentation focused about the artist’s medicine cabinets, viewed previously at his 2012 retrospective in London (the poster of which remains posted on my wall near my workspace). I’d seen his creations for the first time as a child visiting Ilfracombe, a coastal location where my grandmother had grown up, and where the artist had a restaurant, the Quay, full of formaldehyde-imprisoned fish, and walls covered with tablet designs. I loved that the art seemed funny and contrarian, and that he got away with labeling anything as artistic. It amused me my relative disapproved. But maybe most of all, I loved that, since the artwork took titles from after tracks from a punk record, I was going to say “The word” (Pistols) several times during the talk. I truly was the most radical young thinker of my generation.

The Outcome

During the local round, there were nine other speakers, each presenting had better cultural context, offered less unsupported, broad claims, and used the word “nonsense” rarely. I was awarded the bronze position. As a teenager who tied most self-esteem on achievement, this would usually meant a crushing blow. But, in that moment, that people people seemed to enjoy, and chuckled precisely where I had wanted, proved sufficient.

Fresh Directions

By the time the organizers asked to present once more, this time as part of an event at the British Museum, I submitted my application to study history of art at university. Prior to this, I assumed I’d choose for English or German, not considering at Oxbridge, where I knew I couldn’t become “the best”. Yet the experience had emboldened me and made me believe that my views deserved expression, without knowing the lingo. I no longer required perfection: I only had to add my perspective on things.

Finding Purpose

Talking about art – and learning how to make people laugh while I do it – quickly became my guiding light. My Articulation journey came full circle when I was invited back recently as the inaugural alumni evaluator of an Articulation heat.

The competition built my self-assurance outside academics: not that I would accomplish great things, but that I didn’t have to. I no longer needed to covet perfection; I needed to lean into my own voice. I transformed from anxious and easily overcome – emotional yet impatient to anger – into a person trusting in their capabilities. Perfection wasn’t necessary. For the first time, authenticity meant more to me ideal outcomes.

Gratitude

I’ll always be grateful to the sixth-form head who took time to comprehend me when I was a stubborn, sensitive teenager, rather than simply dismissing me (and, looking back, I think an eye roll might have been entirely justified). Not everything is absolute success or failure; I realized it is often worth trying even without the promise of “winning”.