HSJA student wins MLK holiday essay statewide contest
Michaela Stevens, a Hot Springs Junior Academy ninth-grader, has been selected the winner of the 2021 MLK Holiday Statewide Essay Contest.
“It feels great. I didn’t expect it,” Stevens said. “I enjoy writing, and it’s something that I’m passionate about. It was fun to get to enter the competition. I certainly did not expect to win at all.”
The Day of Impact Essay Contest was a program of the Arkansas Martin Luther King, Jr. Commission, a division of the Arkansas Department of Education. Schools across the state were invited to host contests for essays in the middle school, grades 6-8, and high school, grades 9-12, divisions, according to a post on the school district’s Facebook.
Winners receive grants and gift cards from Walmart and will have a video reading of their speech featured via Arkansas Martin Luther King, Jr. Commission social media, the post said.
Stevens said she feels she was able to show passion and originality in her writing, noting she has a passion for equality and would like to do it as a career such as a civil rights lawyer.
In her essay, she wrote about things she enjoys and cares about, and how her passion ties into services such as community service.
“It’s good to get to talk about things that I’m passionate about,” Stevens said.
Stevens has had the opportunity to do a lot of traveling because she lived in Belgrade, Serbia, when she was 3 years old, which allowed her to see more things that most students or other individuals would not be able to see.
She was close to a lot of European countries, she said, so it was easy for her family to drive to interesting historical places.
“I’ve been able to see and meet a lot of very interesting people. I definitely think that gives me a very interesting world view because I’ve been able to see so many things,” Stevens said.
She said winning the essay contest has given her a lot of faith in herself.
“I definitely doubt my skills and my abilities often, especially in my writing. It was very affirming to witness, and it felt really good because I definitely have a tendency to doubt myself. It helped me to be more confident in my writing and my abilities,” Stevens said.
Her essay was about service and ties back to Martin Luther King and his dream for a more equal world, she said, noting she wrote a little bit about what service means to her and how she would define it and tied it back to how service presented greatness.
“I have always wanted to be great; I think that everyone has some drive to achieve, to be considered great. Seldom have I acknowledged that greatness is not something that others get to decide. I believe that greatness is something you feel in yourself, and one can conjure this feeling through service,” Stevens wrote in her essay.
“I have always battled with the term ‘ greatness.’ Despite my zealous quest to define the word, I still cannot put an exact meaning to it. Instead, I can say that greatness is relative; it is dependent on the person you ask,” it said.
“To me, greatness is something above average, out of the ordinary, and generally unexpected of most people. Some would say greatness translates to wealth, or perhaps a good job, a victory in battle, or frame of any sort, though in general, most would agree that few gain admittance into the club of great people,” her essay said.
She used a quote from King that “everybody can be great because everybody can serve.”
Stevens said she has always had the drive to be great and to achieve which helped change her view of what greatness is and how greatness is something that can be achieved through service and through helping others and not something that others get to define.
“It’s more of a thing that you find inside of yourself,” Stevens said.
“I want to say thank you to the Martin Luther King Jr. (commission) for choosing my essay. I’m very thankful to have this opportunity and to have been able to compete,” she said.
“I definitely think that it has helped shape my view of greatness and service and helped me to feel more passionate about pursuing service and helping others in the future,” Stevens said.
“I met Michaela last year when she moved from Serbia. I got her file, and we saw her grades and everything. She was recommended for the gifted and talented program,” Laura West, HSSD gifted and talented coordinator, said.
“She is a wonderful kid. She makes great grades. She’s very open-minded, and I’ve enjoyed her the last year,” she said.