What a year it has been for Paint Branch Senior Tari Owei.

Over the last few months, Owei has been on quite a run as a writer, winning two prestigious awards for her work. Most recently, she won the F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Award and spent a Saturday at the festival in Rockville, where she took part in a daylong celebration with noted authors, including the Scholar of the Year, renowned author, storyteller, and radio personality Garrison Keillor. Owei and the other MCPS scholars had the opportunity to spend three hours with Keillor in a writer’s workshop.

This award came on the heels of another writing award that Owei received in the spring from sponsor David M. Rubenstein and the Junior Achievement Essay competition that garnered her not only an award but also a $10,000 scholarship. Owei was one of just a handful of Maryland students to win the award and scholarship for her essay response to the question: “What does the American Dream mean to you and is it still thriving in Greater Washington?”

It is safe to say that this past year been quite a time for Owei, her family, her teachers here at Paint Branch, and the entire PB Community.

Winning the F. Scott Fitzgerald award is something that surprised Owei. “Frankly, I was amazed to win this award. I first heard about the festival in May and thought about entering its short-story competition, but ended up deciding not to apply and not to attend the festival,” said Owei, who later learned that a group of PB English teachers chose to enter her into it themselves.

At the event, Owei says she was nervous at first but came to appreciate the time with her peers and Keillor. “The whole experience was amusing,” recalls Owei. “We wrote rants on any annoying subject from our daily lives. Mr. Keillor helped us create humor in our pieces and taught us how to further expand our rants to something greater.”

While the F. Scott Fitzgerald award is something that Owei certainly appreciates, the Junior Achievement Essay Competition award and convention was special as well. At the convention, Owei said she enjoyed Rubenstein’s speech, but was nervous to speak with him. “Being the shy and anxious person I am, I didn’t go up and talk to Mr. Rubenstein. The main point I remember is that the CEOs of all these Fortune 100 companies and big businesses didn’t major in STEM, business, or economic fields; they majored in humanities and progressed in their fields because of their ability to think creatively.”

The 2015 Junior Achievement Essay Competition took place just before Thanksgiving last year when all of the juniors at Paint Branch received the opportunity to write an essay and enter the contest.

Regarding how she felt upon learning that she was one of the winners in the writing competition – as well as the $10,000 – Owei said that it was as if she went into shock and then immediately went off to tell her family, including her mother, father and brother.

“I received a voicemail from an unknown number…I was chosen as one of the winners of the $10,000 prize! I thought that I was being pranked! I mean, I imagined winning, but I never thought it might actually come true! I felt like crying…”

She was not the only one surprised by this since her family – who she shared the news with later in the day – was also surprised by her finish. She says of her family’s reaction: “My mom was excited and said that she wasn’t surprised because she always says I’m a good writer and believes I’m going places.”