During contest weekend I was roaming the halls on the lower level (near all the judging rooms).\u00a0 We were extremely short on volunteers so I was hovering between 3 different spots where volunteers would normally sit.\u00a0 As I wandered back and forth I smiled and helped people to their rooms and kept things orderly.\u00a0 After 20 min or so I noticed a girl, about 10 years old, sitting along the wall watching me.<\/p>\n
I smiled at her and she seemed to finally get the nerve to ask what she had been pondering for some time.<\/p>\n
She pointed at my name tag.\u00a0 “Are you the Erica that signs all of the certificates?”<\/p>\n
I had to think for a moment what she was talking about.\u00a0 And then it dawned on me that every student that participates in contest earns a certificate–both at preliminaries and finals.\u00a0 It’s mailed to the teachers with two signatures on it already and a blank for their teacher to sign as well:\u00a0 the President of MMTA and the Program Director (me).<\/p>\n
I laughed and said, “Yup, that’s me!”<\/p>\n
“Wow!” she whispered to herself.\u00a0 And she watched me walk away with eyes wide, as if she had just met a movie star.<\/p>\n
It made me chuckle.\u00a0 I suppose that’s what it must feel like being famous.\u00a0 She probably doesn’t know that my signature is actually printed on all 3,200 certificates by a machine.\u00a0 I don’t actually sit and sign them individually… But still.\u00a0 It was fun.<\/p>\n
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During contest weekend I was roaming the halls on the lower level (near all the judging rooms).\u00a0 We were extremely short on volunteers so I was hovering between 3 different spots where volunteers would normally sit.\u00a0 As I wandered back and forth I smiled and helped people to their rooms and kept things orderly.\u00a0 After […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/friesens.inkingmythinking.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12601"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/friesens.inkingmythinking.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/friesens.inkingmythinking.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/friesens.inkingmythinking.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/friesens.inkingmythinking.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12601"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/friesens.inkingmythinking.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12603,"href":"http:\/\/friesens.inkingmythinking.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12601\/revisions\/12603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/friesens.inkingmythinking.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/friesens.inkingmythinking.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/friesens.inkingmythinking.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}