[Y]oung Writers Project, an independent nonprofit based in Burlington, engages young people to write and use digital media to express themselves with clarity and power, and to gain confidence and skills for school, the workplace and life.
Check out the most recent issue of The Voice, Young Writers Project’s monthly digital magazine. Click here.
Each week, VTDigger features a writing submission – an essay, poem, fiction or nonfiction – accompanied by a photo or illustration from Young Writers Project.
YWP publishes about 1,000 students’ work each year here, in newspapers across Vermont, on Vermont Public Radio and in YWP’s monthly digital magazine, The Voice. Since 2006, it has offered young people a place to write, share their photos, art, audio and video, and to explore and connect online at youngwritersproject.org. For more information, please contact Susan Reid at sreid@youngwritersproject.org.
Many look back on their high school graduation as a first major life milestone. The freedom and sense of accomplishment are hard feelings to forget – but so is melancholy, too, for the bittersweet end of an era. Winooski senior Bekkah Lambert comes to terms this week with her own swiftly approaching graduation, reflecting on her personal evolution from distaste for her hometown to a strong appreciation for her friends, school, and community.
Home
By Bekkah Lambert, 17
[I] used to be embarrassed
to say I am from Winooski.
I would lie, hide,
do whatever I could to disguise it,
and would point out every flaw I could
to try to distance myself
if I was ever found out.
Now, as I am closing in on the time
when I will actually have to leave,
I don’t want to.
It has recently dawned on me
just how much this school and community
has had an impact on who I am,
and who I will become,
once my tassel goes right to left
and I exit these doors once and for all.
So I suppose I’m writing this
as a thank you.
Thank you to the student body,
teachers, administration –
everybody who has seen me cry
and heard me say hundreds of times
that all I want to do is fail, drop out,
only to take me in over and over
and help me succeed.
Thank you for the laughs, the yelling,
and the one detention I ever received.
Thank you for giving me
the space I needed to bloom
as a youth leader, writer,
and actual human being.
Thanks for having me
these last 13 years.
I have this fear of being forgotten,
so I hope I’ve made my mark.
Lastly, even though I must leave,
thank you for making me proud to say
that Winooski is my home.
