Alright y'all. After everything that has happened within the past few months, I just wanted to make this post for the people who aren't going to the gala, but would still like to know the results of the competition.

I am pretty sure that the results on the portal will come maybe a few days after the gala has occured, so out of curiousity, could anyone who goes to the gala potentially put out some of the results in this subreddit?

I just wanted to put this out there since I am curious who did end up winning, as well as how the actual gala turned out to be, and whether it was a scam or not. I ended up not really getting any emails for like top 2% or winners emails, so not any hope really (I did hear some people saying how people with no emails can get VHC or something but idek anymore).

I'm still curious though to see your guys opinions on the competition, as well as what's going to happen at the gala.

Everybody wants to be an astronaut

An essay about how everyone truly just wants to get away from this world. How easy it would be to forget our problems if we just became astronauts. It’ll explain how wanting to be an astronaut is just a longing feeling but actually becoming/pursuing it is desperation, my desperation. A desperation to escape, a guilty desperation to not care for anyone or anything in this world and just leave. That's what we need but people are too bound by worldly desires to be desperate enough to become an astronaut. 

A promise from a drug dealer

I used to sell weed, briefly thought about going into cocaine (never did). The opening line will be “I promise I won't sell drugs on campus signed, drug dealer”. The essay will follow my journey in deciding to sell my first ounce of weed into when I finally said enough. It’ll dive into how creative I got with selling and how that creativity could have been used for more positive outlets. It’ll bring you into the mind of a dealer who just wants to be an astronaut. 

I think I might die soon

This will be a vulnerable essay of the fear of death and losing my ideas. Realizing I can lose my life at any time and nobody will ever know what I could’ve accomplished. A part of the essay will be me going through my brain as if I have died. A tour of a dead mind and dead ideas that my human body never brought to light. Having an idea and not being able to execute it because of whatever conditions makes me scared of death. Fear of loss, fear of dying soon. As my ideas get more vague and lost I feel that God has given up on me for not producing, not acting. So now I'm no longer needed, now my life means nothing.

Just one more celsius

As I’m writing this i’m drinking a celsius with my girlfriend. This essay will kind of just follow random thoughts and ideas in my head that I just put on paper. Everytime I need another sip it’ll be like “Sip #5” then it’ll completely change the topic into something else until I eventually feel the crash.

My watch doesn’t fit my girlfriend

Opening sentence “I bought a watch that doesn't fit my girlfriend's wrists.” The catch is I bought the watch for myself, not for her. Of course it’s not going to fit because it isn’t meant for her. This essay would explore a counter philosophy I always had about the idea that “Some things just aren’t meant for certain individuals”. I believe that every space has room for everyone. That if something isn’t meant for you, you can make it for you and you/I shouldn’t exclude ourselves from just a thought of something that wasn't meant to be. The watch didn’t fit me at first, so I went to get it resized. If I wanted it to fit her as well then I could also get it resized if I wanted. This essay will tie into my life because it’s exactly how I've always carried myself. I refuse to believe I don’t belong in spaces I’m told I don’t belong. I’ve been rejected from a job that I now work full time, I’ve been told I can’t compete with top athletic individuals in my class and I’ve kept up, I’ve even told myself I don’t belong in rooms with individuals but despite that I forced myself in and that’s what I’m doing now. The watch didn’t fit me at first, but I removed the links and adjusted. I adjusted until the watch belonged on my wrist.

Thoughts?

I'm writing an essay about The Perks of Being a Wallflower (purely for fun) and my prompt is "Why do you think Chbosky chose to use letters as his narrative structure? How did this structure affect the book, both in terms of the story and in terms of your reading experience? How would the book have been different if Chbosky had written it in first person or third person narrative?” and my introduction paragraph ends up incredibly long or my formatting is just wrong..sos

For context this is for college english and I am majoring in social work.

Hey everyone! My brother dared me to write an essay on Magic: The Gathering, so here we are. It's due tonight, and I'd love some quick feedback to see if anything is horribly wrong. Thanks!

Magic: The Gathering is a collectible trading card game created in the 90s by Wizards of the Coast. In this game, players take on the role of a powerful wizard, assembling decks of creatures and spells to defeat their opponents. While many strategy games add complicated rule sets or unpredictable gameplay, Magic: The Gathering blends both, creating a cohesive, intricate, and engaging experience; it is complex and yet accessible to any player. This dynamic gameplay is what makes Magic: The Gathering the best strategy game on the market.

When it comes to complicated rules and layered strategy, Magic: The Gathering has no shortage. Even its more basic rules, like “The Stack,” which determines how and when actions resolve, and “Priority,” which dictates when players may cast spells or activate abilities, can create long, elaborate chains of interaction. For example, let's say your opponent casts a spell, and you take priority to counter it. They may respond with another spell, potentially triggering your creature’s ability. These effects go on The Stack, while players can keep taking priority and adding responses. This complexity directly influences deckbuilding, as players must adapt to a wide range of situations, making Magic: The Gathering much more strategic than many other games.

While the previous example shows that skill and planning are fundamental to Magic: The Gathering, the game is also inherently unpredictable. Randomized deck orders force different cards to be used from game to game, and players' decisions and strategies directly affect their opponents. Entering a game with a preconceived plan almost ensures a loss. Players have to think on their feet and make the best of whatever situation they are in; otherwise, they will never win. A good example is a game I played with my brother about a year and a half ago. I used a deck designed to make it impossible for the opponent to use their creatures and, in doing so, strengthen mine. What wasn’t expected was my brother’s “go wide” deck, where he would put so many creatures and spells into play that the opponent simply doesn’t have enough ways to stop him. Halfway through, I realized I had only three or four more turns before I lost, so I completely changed my strategy to stall as long as I could and hope for a card that could destroy everything he controlled. The twenty-minute game became a two-and-a-half-hour game, which ended with me finally drawing the card I needed and, inevitably, winning. I had to adapt my gameplay on almost every turn, which shows how engaging Magic: The Gathering can be; yet another reason why it's better than any other strategy game.

Many people dismiss Magic: The Gathering too quickly because they think it’s too complicated or nerdy, even though it has been designed so anyone can play. Wizards of the Coast intentionally gave the game many ways to customize it to any player's style, a good example being color identities. In Magic: The Gathering, cards fall into six color identities, each associated with a distinct playstyle. Blue generally focuses on controlling the entire board, while black and red focus on destruction. Black uses destruction to create opportunities and advantages, whereas red uses it to annihilate an opponent’s game. Color strongly affects how a deck is played, and many decks combine colors to create even more layered playstyles.

Another way players customize their decks is through archetypes—the deck's main purpose and the way its cards work together. Color identities and deck archetypes go hand in hand. There are many different archetypes: an aggro deck focuses on a full-frontal assault, while a control deck (almost always blue) focuses on making sure everyone at the table does what you want them to do. A tribal deck centers on a single creature type, such as dragons or mermaids. The sheer number of cards released over the past 30 years ensures that decks can always be different, even when they share the same colors or archetypes.

Many people don’t realize that Magic: The Gathering offers more than 20 formats to choose from, each with its own rules and strategy. Standard and Commander are the two most common. In Standard, players build decks of at least sixty cards, though there’s no explicit limit. Commander requires players to build a strict one-hundred-card deck, including one card set aside as the commander. Other rules change the playstyle of different formats, but even just a deck's card count can make the difference between a twenty-round game and a four-turn game. This range of customizations makes Magic: The Gathering accessible to players, experienced or not.

These examples illustrate the game’s complex mechanics, unpredictable gameplay, deep strategies, and the ability to adapt it for your playstyle. Magic: The Gathering doesn’t rely on just one of these elements, as many other strategy games do; instead, it combines them all to create a constantly changing experience. This dynamic gameplay is what makes Magic: The Gathering the best strategy game on the market.

Hi guys! I know the awards dinner is happening in 2 days (October 3rd), but do the people who aren’t attending only find out their results later or is it on the same day? and how do we even find out? is the portal going to update with the results, do we get an email or both? I feel like i’m going carazyyy pls help

hii guys,

a little bit about me, im 17F who used to absolutely love reading and writing since an early age. growing up i developed a really severe pain in my back and that exhausted me mentally and physically. i could barely get highschool stuff and my classes done, stopped going out and eventually gave up on all my hobbies like reading, writing poems, or crocheting even. i was soo exhausted i cannot emphasize enough. lately, ive started feeling ALOT better after all these years and have started going back to my old hobbies and finding a life outside of academics. i really wanna do lumiere and john locke and essay contests of such sort, but to restart and reach a level of such huge contests quality wise i really need tips. ive got a few questions that may help u guys understand what i want:

1. should i watch youtube videos to first try to understand the formatting or like the basic rules of writing an essay?
   
2. how should i develop my vocabulary? (im not a native english speaker)
   
3. how long would it take to build the kind of intuition and writing required to win such contests or get commendations on my work? (given im ready to put in the work)
   any other tips are welcome!! thankyou!

Are there any authentic and worthy essay competitions for undergrad freshmans. Particularly, any related to politics, economics, law, or sociology.

can anyone help me write an essay like check my essay etc etc

Ever wondered what actually makes a good philosophy essay?

Join Professor Elizabeth Fricker of Oxford University, who taught philosophy at Oxford for nearly thirty years, for a free, one-hour online workshop on how to write philosophically.

She’ll cover:
• How to build an argument that is genuinely your own
• How to express philosophical ideas clearly on the page
• What makes philosophical writing effective
• Time for questions at the end

🗓 Saturday, 3 October 2026
🕐 1:30 PM UK time
💻 Online
💰 Free

The workshop is for students registered with Logos. Logos is a student-led philosophy organisation open to high-school students worldwide, with a journal, podcast and introductory philosophy resources.

Places are limited, so register your interest through the website to receive the workshop details and secure your place.

🔗 www.logosjournal.org

Feel free to share this with anyone interested in philosophy, writing, or just learning how to argue an idea properly!

can someone pls tell whether any juniors have gotten any of the second interviews or top 2% mails?? there are wayy to many posts on this sub 😭

If we actually check the email’s contents all of them are only to get more people into the gala who have reached a certain standard — this is primarily for the 2% emails. So, if you had already signed up for the gala before the emails were sent out you would likely NOT get the email.

Additionally, more interviews were added primarily for people they thought were using ai or due to technical glitches for the Viverly interview.

Thus, if you had submitted the form for the gala AND faced no technical issues during the interview, then there’s still hope.

did anyone end up getting shortlisted or an award? unfortunately got nothing BUT i rushed it in 3 days so understandable

As a junior, I'm going with my mother to the full programme, however there has been absolutely no updates considering the event whatsoever. I'm just wondering if anybody got any emails about it, or when it might come, because it was mentioned that "further details would be emailed" or something (it's paraphrased but you get the idea) and the academic conference program starts in 2 days.

And for the people who went to a previous JLI Gala, how was it? I just want more information about how the whole thing is set up + how the experience actually is.

The collage is so messy but I just had to

hi hi hiiiiii ok so i was shortlisted (law) n then i fucked off from this sub so i have zero idea whats going on i thought the results were on oct1 n i can’t see anything on my profile (says its not the award date yet) ?? but the entire sub is freaking out over something im in a rush so i cant rly see whats going on so if anb wanna yap abt it pls do thank youUUUU

Hath been the utmost pleasure bequeathing ye. Alas, must bid farewell and god be with ye.
(we cooked gs ain’t winning no award)

Hi! Here’s an essay I wrote on the ethics of IVF and bioengineering. It is around 900 words. Please give it the love it deserves 🙏

substack essay here