6th Grade Contributor: A President's Guide

“Next, we have Gabriella R.!”

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I stepped up to the microphone, the lights of the sky in my face. I took a deep breath and I spoke. I spoke with confidence and most importantly, I was myself. 

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A lot of stuff happened before this though. When I wanted to run for president we had to go through a process. We had to answer questions on why we wanted to be the president and what qualifications we had. I had done a lot of debate and acting, so I put that on there. I wrote about myself and why I wanted this role. I turned my paper in on Friday and waited. I waited until Tuesday. At first, I was cool over the weekend but, I was getting inpatient and I was counting the hours. Finally, at 3:00 pm on Tuesday the results came back, and I was there, on the list!

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After that, I wrote my speech and on Friday I presented it. (We had to turn in a copy of our speech on Thursday and practice.) When I presented, I was happy with myself until the final two seconds, I made a mistake and I said something absurd but, I quickly corrected it and I feel like people liked me more by making a mistake because everyone makes mistakes. 

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It was time for everyone to vote and I was nervous. This time I had to wait until Monday from Friday. I was going insane. On Monday the results came back, I doubted that I won because I was new and not many people knew me. When I went to Mudd… I was shocked I did it, I made it to the big shots. I was so happy, and I knew all the things I wanted to do to make everyone’s voices heard. 

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On the second SALC meeting, I got to make an agenda. My agenda was on suggestion boxes. I wanted to make a suggestion box that everyone could put a post it in and at SALC meetings we would read. Everyone than loved my idea and we developed it more. We made suggestion boxes for each homeroom and now all the students’ ideas are being heard. We have done quite a few of the suggestions in the box. This took about a month to completely develop. We used old shoe boxes as the box and we painted them.

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The next thing I wanted to do was dog toys. At the humane society the dogs need a lot of attention and they don’t get as much attention as people who have dogs. We liked the idea and then someone asked to do cat toys. We knew what we were doing, cat and dog toys. The class reps told the classes to donate t-shirts and socks. We got a lot of donations and on the next SALC meeting we made the toys for dogs. We donated the toys to the humane society and the dogs are very happy now.

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My term as president was coming to an end. The very last official thing we did was vote on Petridge t-shirt designs and Ellie Lin Stevens was our winner. A very bright sixth-grader. 

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I was very happy with myself. I had left a legacy and made my mark. There were some ups and downs and I had to make sure we stayed on topic, and no one was yelling at each other. My favorite part about being president was that, I ended my term knowing I made a difference. If you want to be president, there are three important steps you have to follow:

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1. Be yourself

2. Don’t be afraid to tell your ideas to the world

3. Be kind and let everyone’s voices be heard.