I have a few accomplishments in my life of which I am extremely proud. As previously mentioned, I learned in my early twenties that I can consume an entire Chipotle burrito in 6 minutes. I taught myself to whistle at 17. In the sixth grade, I charged my parents and brother $10 each to attend my fall piano concert, which I held in the same living room where they had heard me practice the same six songs for a month straight (which is part of my upcoming blog post titled: How to Tell if You Should Send Your Daughter to Business School).

But in the fourth grade, I won our school’s spelling bee. I had spent months sitting at the kitchen counter with my mom while she prepared dinner and listed random words for me to spell: deodorant, yogurt, bouquet. When the school spelling bee came around, as shy as I was, I stood in front of everyone and spelled every word correctly. It had to be one of my best days ever – kids that never spoke to me came up to me to say congratulations, I had a little trophy to carry around all day, and we celebrated at the happiest place on earth, Cici’s Pizza.

The next step was the Regional Spelling Bee.

I sat in a chair next to two kids I had never met on a brightly lit stage where I couldn’t see any of the judges. Round 1 came and went, then Round 2…and then 6 rounds later there were only a handful of us left. When my turn came, I stood up and was asked to spell contradiction, which I misspelled as contridiction. I sat down in the audience with my family and watched as I sadly realized that I knew how to spell every other word that remained. The winning word? Pumpkin.

And every year when the fall recipes start popping up and pumpkins are everywhere, I fondly think back to that day where that little girl learned her first life lesson – though she felt defeated, she was still proud of herself knowing she had done the best she could.