jmgoyder

I have read enough posts lately to know that I am not alone in my award anxiety/aversion.  Despite the gratitude I feel towards other bloggers who have nominated me for various awards, most of the awards themselves, though well-intentioned by their inventors, entail hard work, resemble chain letter pressure and I keep losing the plot with what award? who nominated me? what do I have to do?

Today I decided to trace back to those culprits who nominated me so that I can punish them with the Hot Potato Award that I invented ages ago as a kind of award-shield.

Here is a list of the beautiful culprits. Their blogs are worth following because of the honest heartiness in each person’s words.

http://writingmusings.wordpress.com/

http://terry1954.wordpress.com/

http://dogdaz.com/

http://perfectingmotherhood.wordpress.com/

http://magnoliabeginnings.org/

http://help-me-rhonda.com/

http://mamatattoo.com/

To each of these people I want to say three things:

1. Copy/paste the Hot Potato award to your blogsite. There are no rules – the award is yours.

2. If you nominate me again I will send you a cold potato!

3. I love your blog!

Now, here is a little story to explain my apparent ungraciousness and my award anxiety/aversion:

A few years ago, the university decided to introduce a teaching award. If you were nominated you had to give a 5-minute speech about why you loved teaching. So I was nominated and gave a flustered speech. I was competing with a few other lecturers, but I won the vote and was given the award. The nominations and votes were anonymous of course. I was congratulated and I felt quite chuffed to be recognized.

A few weeks later I was having a coffee with a colleague who also happened to be a student in one of my classes (this often happens on small campuses) and she mentioned the award.

“Yes,” I said, “It was a bit of a surprise because I am the least professional of all the lecturers here but that seemed to go down well – my down-to-earthness or something!”

She looked at me strangely and said, grinning, “I nominated you.”

I was shocked. “Why?”

“Just for a laugh,” she said, cackling.

That’s why I don’t like awards.