At George Mason High School, our principal, Mr. Tyrone Byrd, set a standard in the school for all students to excel in mind, body, and character. In this series, The Lasso looks for students who excel in these different yet equally skilled values. This week, The Lasso digs deeper with freshman Annie Castillo to show how she excels at George Mason in creative writing.
In high school, many students dread writing the papers and the poems that teachers assign and fear for the moment that teachers ask for their work to be shared with the entire class. This is not a problem for freshman Annie Castillo, however, as she does not just adore writing, she excels at it.
“I love to write. It’s my passion, it’s what I do. It’s what I love to do, it’s what I want to do, and it’s what I always do. [So I thought to myself] why don’t I do what I always do, which is write and get some recognition for it,” Castillo said.
This year, Castillo entered seven pieces of writing, including poems and short stories, to the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. In the regional round, she won three gold keys, one silver keys, and one honorable mention. The gold keys she won in the regional round helped advance her to the national portion of scholastic judging. In this round, she won two silver keys and one honorable mention.
That accomplishments were not all that Castillo was awarded. She also received a letter of commendation from Virginia’s senator, Mark Warner, for her advancements in the national round.
“She just has a way with tying together words with really beautiful imagery and things that she would say are kind of beyond her years as a writer and as a freshman,” said Ms. Karin Tooze, Castillo’s Creative Writing teacher. “She’s a really skilled writer and she really cares about how she puts her lines and poems together and her poem together, she’s just really thoughtful about it.”
The Scholastic Art and Writing Awards are not the only places Castillo has recently entered her pieces. She also won a poetry contest at the Falls Church local library, Mary Riley Styles Public Library.
Another large accomplishment Castillo has recently earned is being accepted into the Adroit Journal Young Writers Conference. In this conference, high school students are paired with professional writers who help edit and revise their writing.
This summer, Castillo will have a personal mentor, Carly Joy Miller, for a week. They will read and revise all of Castillo’s work so that she can obtain professional help with her own writing.
“I’m really excited because I love the idea of having this community of writers and I love the Adroit journal itself. I’m sharing my mentor Carly Joy Miller with a rising senior in Oklahoma who’s also in the program and I think that’s great because you can learn a lot from more experienced writers. I also love that we’re all going to be sharing our work and talking about it. Revision is the hardest part of the writing process for me! It’s so easy to put a piece aside and decide it’s good enough but having that extra push to focus on improvement, especially in a group setting, will be great for me. I’m really looking forward to it.”
