On September 3, I was notified that I had been elected by the faculty and staff here at Lawrenceburg High School to be their senior representative and compete for $1,500 in the Versailles Pumpkin Show. To be honest, I didn’t expect to win in the slightest. I was notified that it was a pool of questions, and only one was drawn to be answered on the spot… I didn’t even know how I would prepare.. but the thing is.. you couldn’t. Sure, you could do practice questions with your parents or friends, but that wouldn’t nearly suffice on this scale.
Even though I thought I couldn’t prepare, the fact of the matter is that I indeed had already prepared myself for this type of situation. Back in 2022, I was took to take an advanced Vincennes University speech communications course to strengthen my speaking skills. In which we would have to write essays, make presentations, and speak for multiple minutes without a clock to an audience of at least 20+ people. At the time, I didn’t enjoy it because it was 07:45 in the morning, especially if I forgot to get more than 7 hours of sleep.
However, besides that, the multi-thousand-word essays and multi-minute essays (my longest speech was 8 minutes) helped get me out of my shyness about speaking towards others in a semi-professional manner. To prepare for one of those speeches, it urged me to practice by myself to make sure my ideas were in order. Admittedly; however, there were also times when I didn’t like how a part flowed on the day of the speech. Thus, I had to make on-the-spot corrections, which improved my quick thinking and thought-gathering abilities. After 8 or 9 speeches, I got pretty good at this. To the point where sometimes whole paragraphs (often 30–50+ seconds) were different from the actual speech. With this ability, I maintained a 98% in the course over the whole semester.
After waiting, the day of the competition finally arrived: September 25th. Before that, I had to get a suit. I knew people usually go for black, tan, beige, or a dark blue.. but I wanted to stand out, so I went with a nice powder blue suit, haha.
Once we arrived, we were taken into a room full of people and advisors to practice some of the questions. There was a list of 30+ questions that all seemed to invoke on-the-spot thinking. Most of which you wouldn’t know an answer to right away and would have to either make up an answer or find something it could relate to. Thankfully, my question was pretty straightforward. Here’s a video of me on stage getting my question and briefly presenting my answer:
"What can be done to help the youth of today succeed?"
— Versailles Pumpkin Show Advisor
"You know, the most important thing I see [and wish] I had when I was younger was to have organization ... At my school (Lawrenceburg), we have pathways of success, so we have all these different things we can do ... I'm a computer programmer ... I had all these courses laid out for me; it was pretty straightforward. I had an idea — a thing I wanted to do. And thankfully, I was able to do that through my school. I think organization is a key point of that—something to put your foot in the door and start running. Because that's what I value most."
— Nathan Parker
Now, when speaking.. you need to avoid filler words like “um”, “uh”, and, in this case, “you know.” I took all the filler words from this transcript, but for the situation, the ratio of filler words to actual content is quite low here. If you were competing in something bigger, the main goal is to have 100% content and 0% filler words. But in this nature of an on-the-spot and thought-provoking question, sometimes you can’t help yourself when you need it.
They also ask a “describe yourself” question to give the contestant a stronger case if their answer to the thought-provoking question isn’t sufficient or isn’t answered well enough. I responded to this question with:
"I'm Nathan Parker, a member of my Technology club at Ivy Tech, so I do a lot of technology within the community, I help build computers, and solve issues with students' Chromebooks at the IT Helpdesk. I attend to the staff and students, all things technology. Something I do in my personal time is I code programs for others online. Completely free and downloadable to use all the code to their hearts' desire. So that's something I really cherish; something that is able to be provided for free is something that I value the most."
With my response, you notice there are barely any filler words with only two instances of “uh,” which is not noted in this transcript, along with the another use of the phrase “something I value the most.” In this case, you can notice comfort and routine kick back in. When describing yourself, it’s almost like second nature, as you’ve.. prepared.
After all the other contestants took their turn speaking from the vast array of other nearby schools (Jac-Cen-Del, South Ripley, South Dearborn, Southeastern Career Center, East Central, Milan, Oldenburg, Switzerland County, Rising Sun, and Batesville) and people (1 boy and 1 girl for each school), I started to notice things that I lacked; one of them was interaction. Some contestants were able to make the crowd and judges laugh, and some could connect to the judges and community more closely than I could. One had the crowd cheering before and after (popularity), and in this part of Dearborn County, I’m not that well known. But despite all that, I still won. Just because someone can make the crowd laugh doesn’t mean they’re guaranteed success, what matters is quality. So, don’t give up if someone else seems to be doing well; focus on building a solid foundation!
I’m super grateful to have had the opportunity to be recognized and respected for what I stand for. Trust me, it’s not easy to stand in front of that crowd of at least 120+ people, but rest assured, be yourself! For this achievement, I was awarded $1,500. $1,000 scholarship from Ivy Tech and $500 from First Bank. From this event, I was also put in local newspapers, radio, news stations, and on Twitter. Below, I’ll provide all the links that I have collected:
- https://sites.google.com/lburg.k12.in.us/tiger-tribune-october-2024/student-interviews#h.8xg5d7rgtli5
- https://ripleynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/2024-Pumpkin-Show-King-Queen-Section.pdf
- https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=873996798128700&id=100065551630616&_rdr
- https://wrbiradio.com/royalty-crowned-to-open-121st-versailles-pumpkin-show/
- https://www.812now.com/post/versailles-pumpkin-show-crowns-king-and-queen
- https://www.instagram.com/812now/p/DAXIlkWRhMy/?img_index=1
- https://www.instagram.com/p/DAXQ1j0R0Xv/?img_index=1
- https://x.com/812now/status/1839109720830840845
- https://x.com/ki4rex/status/1839113849632432468
If you happen to be one of those stations that have a story on me, and it’s not listed here, please reach out to nathan@ncp.dev and I’ll add it to the list.