Sheerea ’23 wins New York Times editorial contest
USN Junior Sheerea Yu’s essay was one of 10 selected out of over 11,000 submissions for the paper’s Student Editorial Contest.
By Sierra Smith, Communications Specialist
In the February/March issue of the Peabody Press, Sheerea Yu ’23 penned her thoughts on the potential extinction of the beloved snow day due to the technological changes made almost a year earlier in response to the coronavirus pandemic to support remote learning. Following a few changes with her new audience in mind, Sheerea submitted her op-ed to The New York Times’s eighth annual Student Editorial Contest.
The contest, open to students ages 11 to 19, posed the following questions to teens: What makes you mad? What would you like to see change? What do you wish more people understood? Entries, of a maximum of 450 words, flooded in from across the country and internationally to a total of 11,202 essays — the most ever in the contest’s eight year history.
Months after submitting her essay, Sheerea received an email thanking her for her submission with a link to the article revealing those who were selected.
“It was totally unexpected. Because the body of the email didn’t say that I had won, I just assumed I didn’t,” Sheerea shared. “I started reading the article and the introduction mentioned snow days, which is what I wrote about ... and still I didn’t think I’d won. I had to scroll all the way down to see my name for it to register.”
Sheerea’s essay, “Save the Snow Day: Save Teenage Education” was one of ten winners and, as a result, was published by The New York Times on Tuesday, June 15.
Sheerea shared tremendous gratitude for her classmates who inspired her original article for the Peabody Press, for Zoe Rosenblum ’21 who edited the article, and for the HS Dean of Student Life & Journalism Teacher Justin Karpinos, as well as the entire English department, for all that she’s learned from them.
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2000 Edgehill Ave.
Nashville, TN 37212
Phone: 615-321-8000
Fax: 615-321-0889
Email: info@usn.org
River Campus
1200 County Hospital Road
Nashville, TN 37218
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University School of Nashville models the best educational practices. In an environment that represents the cultural and ethnic composition of Metropolitan Nashville, USN fosters each student’s intellectual, artistic, and athletic potential, valuing and inspiring integrity, creative expression, a love of learning, and the pursuit of excellence.
University School of Nashville models the best educational practices. In an environment that represents the cultural and ethnic composition of Metropolitan Nashville, USN fosters each student’s intellectual, artistic, and athletic potential, valuing and inspiring integrity, creative expression, a love of learning, and the pursuit of excellence.