I know what you're thinking, how on earth does someone enter a beauty pageant by accident? Aren't there forms, interviews and a mile long process to join? Well, let me explain.

I was a high school senior, and like all high school seniors, I applied to about a million scholarships a day, desperate to get any form of money to help pay for college. The process was a mind-numbing one: click a link, enter my information, maybe write a brief paragraph and then move on. Rinse, wash, repeat. It slipped my notice that one of those websites was the Distinguished Young Women foundation, though the fact that I had to submit a head shot of myself should have tipped me off.

A week after filling out the form I was emailed that I had moved past the online submissions and would receive a phone interview. I was over the moon! Finally, I would get something, anything, to help me pay for college. The phone interview went great! I answered questions about my hopes and ambitions as well as challenging questions about politics and the state of the world. Strangely, I was asked if I had any unique talents. I thought maybe the woman was just trying to make conversation with me so I told her about how I liked to sing and play the ukulele, as well as the violin. She also asked how I felt about health, specifically working out and staying in shape. I lied through my teeth and said I worked out three times a week and how important my regimen was to me. I needed that scholarship! I guess they didn't want to hand the money to someone who was just going to get sick and die soon so they wanted to make sure I was healthy? The woman said that I had done great and that she'd send me an email with more instructions.

Now, the email she sent was weird. It had a YouTube video of a woman doing a dance fitness routine. I was instructed to submit a video of myself doing that exact routine to the music by the end of the day. Why on earth would they need that? I was also instructed to submit a video of myself doing a talent. This scholarship just got weird. After forty-three tries, I finally managed a video of myself completing the one-minute routine as best as I could (which was not that good). I sang a song and submitted both videos.

I decided I needed to find out more about this scholarship. After one short Google search, which I should've done in the first place, I discovered Distinguished Young Women was a pageant (though they're adamantly opposed to being called a pageant? You perform on stage for points, answer questions and wear a nice dress. I don't see how that's not a pageant). Anyway, the small print above the form I filled out stated that by filling out the entry form, I agreed to participate on stage at the Carolina Theater in order to receive any money. Crap.

I honestly thought this would be a quick draw from submissions, that maybe there was a 1 in 1000 chance I would get some easy money. But, now there's a whole lot of work to do.

I was informed that I would need to miss a week from school to participate. I would also be staying with a host family in a town three hours away from home. After buying all the things I would need to participate: a formal knee-length dress, nude heels, black pumps, a purple blouse, jeans, lots of sparkly jewelry and work out clothes; I packed my bags and left. My host family was spectacular! They were my favorite part of the entire experience. The nicest, coolest people in the entire world tbh. The dad worked at Krispy Kreme (God Bless) and was mega funny. The mom is just the kindest, most incredible lady to have ever walked the planet and their two kids were wild, literally so fun to be around. I would gladly take a bullet for them.

I was given plenty of awesome food and got to meet a ton of awesome girls. We also got to volunteer at an elementary school in an impoverished area. Those kids were all so kind and eager to participate in our activities, I miss them all so much. All in all, it was a really good experience.

But it wasn't all awesome. We all had to learn an opening number and a closing number. A rigorous dance routine we had only six days to learn and it would all be performed in heels. We also had THE LITERAL HARDEST FITNESS ROUTINE EVER CONCOCTED to learn. We were given several months to learn that though, but there were several last minute changes to learn, the whole routine was over ten minutes of non-stop exercise which doesn't sound bad, but it really was. We left our house families house at eight every morning and returned around eight every night. The entire day was spent learning one of the routines, answering practice questions and practicing our talents. My poor, never exercised or eaten right piece of trash body ached every day. The rest of the girls were goddesses in mortal bodies. Most of them were dancers so learning a grueling dance routine was NBD for them.

I was an 'at-large' girl, which meant that I didn't have a committee back in my hometown to support me through the process (and by 'support' I mean send gifts, the other girls got gigantic packages every day filled with amazing goodies). Distinguished Young Women is not a known thing from where I'm from and I didn't care much. But several of the other girls felt bad for me, especially my roommate, so they asked their committee to send me gifts. It was exceptionally nice, but the competitive, paranoid part of my brain had to wonder if it was a scheme to make me fat since they kept sending me gigantic packs of Twix bars.

On one of the days, we had to go to church. This wasn't a huge deal, but I thought it was pretty weird that it was mandatory despite the program not being Christian oriented? I'm a Catholic and we went to a Methodist church, again not a big deal. I did get salty though when the speaker made several digs at the Catholic Church. The church had three ten-foot tall chalk boards that they encouraged people to go write their prayers while the band played, so when the time came I planted my butt firmly in my seat. I watched as literally every single girl but me got up to do it. I felt a little bad, but righteous in my silent protest. Instead of the girls filing back into their seats, they all walked past our row and gathered in a huddle in the corner. Curiosity got the better of me and I walked over to see what all the fuss was about. What I didn't expect was for them all to be crying. Shocked I started to back away when one of the girls almost tackled me in a hug. Not trying to be insensitive, I hugged her back. Then all the girls went back to their seat. It was weird, but sweet. After that, we had tons of games to pass the time. During the week we also had a sleepover where I left my host family and all the participants congregated in a different church. I was challenged to a dance battle. I can not dance at all, but I also can't back down from a challenge (terrible situation for me). So rather than be outed as a rhythm-less freak, I intentionally danced bad, twerking, doing the sprinkler and all sorts of nonsense. I won the battle, but I sacrificed all my dignity for it. I lost a lot of dignity in this pageant.

FINALLY, performance day came. The opening number which involved gigantic, lit up metal arrows, jumps, a holographic background and matching outfits went off without a hitch. The fitness routine did not go so well for me. I tried my damn hardest, but my pathetic noodle arms simply couldn't make jumping push-ups look anything except a desperate spastic disaster. I freaking nailed the interview. If there's one thing I can do well, it's talk. I answered every question with heart, facts, and articulation. Self Expression was a tricky aspect of the competition. A half hour before my group's time on stage we were given a sheet of paper with a quote and a question. We had to prepare our answer in our dressing room whilst dressing and doing our hair/makeup for other on-stage performances. My Self Expression went well. I remembered the short 'dance' routine (more like walking slowly around stage and twirling) and then went up to the mic and answered my question in what I felt was a concise manner.

I couldn't believe it, I didn't even know what I was getting into and now I was kicking ass! My talent was a whole different story though. I decided to sing "You'll Be Back" from Hamilton. I thought it would be funny, a way to get the crowd laughing. I was a perfect, fun, girly version of King George from Hamilton. I was pretty proud of my homemade King's costume.I even managed to find a tiny crown online! I felt like a million bucks until I saw the other girl's costumes. My entire ensemble cost about thirty or forty bucks. Everyone else had dresses that ranged from two to six hundred dollars. Next to them, I looked like a cheap Halloween costume, but it was fine. I wasn't going to let it get to me. I went on stage, did it and got off. It didn't go bad, and it didn't go great. After I went, two more girls performed and then we had the closing number. I sprinted up the stairs and tore out of my costume and into my outfit for the closing number with its accompanying hair and makeup style. Then I hauled ass downstairs and rushed onto the stage, barely making it. We did the closing number and then sprinted upstairs to change into our award ceremony outfits. The whole thing was a stressful blur. I think I may have had several heart attacks, but I was too busy scrambling to notice.

To end the night, we all filed out onto the stage and stood there for finals as winners for each category were called. Talent, Interview, Scholastic, Self Expression and Fitness all went by... and I didn't get a single one. I left the experience with zero dollars in scholarship money.

I guess you could say by the end of the night this Distinguished Young Woman became...Extinguished!

On the down side, that week of school I missed really kicked my butt, but in the end, it all turned out okay. It would've been nice to leave with some scholarship money, but instead, I left with a bunch of friends, a flattened stomach, and a great experience.

This may be an example of the one time it's okay to not read the fine print, because if I had, I wouldn't have ever done this!