Your Turn Winners! Sadie Anderson and Simone Fuller

By Sadie Anderson and Simone Fuller

We have our winners for ThreeSixty’s Your Turn contest on the topic of jumping cliques in high school.

Sadie Anderson of East Range Academy of Technology and Science wrote our $100 top-prize winning essay this contest.

Sadie lives in the small, northern town of Chisholm, just south of the border of the Chippewa National Forest. “You’re with the same kids from kindergarten pretty much until you graduate. You can’t get too cliquey because if you do you won’t have any allies at all,” Sadie writes.

But even so, Sadie finds herself in a group labelled losers. She is teased enough to decide she’s had enough of what some adults would like to dismiss as “character building.” She switches from her public school to a small charter school. Her essay is our winner because not only does it show how powerful cliques can be, but that every individual teen has power too.

Simone Fuller of Cristo Rey Jesuit High School is this contest’s runner up winner of $25. Her essay describes her journey from a managing-to-pass student to one who loved to learn. But to make that change, she had to sacrifice her 6th grade summer vacation time for her friends, which they didn’t like.

“I was always considered the class clown while in school and that was enough for me,” Simone writes.

“During the summer a lot of my friends didn’t like that I gave up my plans with them to go to a summer program,” she writes. “But the point was I did it for me, just because friends may not have like what I was into doesn’t mean I shouldn’t do it.”

Please read their incredible essays and share your thoughts with them! Also, please submit to our new contest and get your voice heard!