A Gold Medal Portfolio Award is the highest honor students can receive in the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. Jurors choose portfolios by high school seniors whose works best represent the Scholastic Awards’ judging criteria: originality, skill, and the emergence of a personal vision or voice. These remarkable artists and writers will each receive a $12,500 scholarship.

For the next few weeks, we’ll be profiling the 2023 Gold Medal Portfolio recipients. Next up are Maggie Hoppel and Siann Han.

Maggie Hoppel

I met Lois with the expectation that I would never see her again. I wished her Merry Christmas and thanked her for the homemade cobbler, but the fact remained that she was merely another largemouth bass in the catch-and-release fishing trip that was my uncle’s love life.

That should have been the end of it.

Instead, I found myself sitting next to her at Christmas dinner, so, despite my parents’ endless warnings against getting too attached, I struck up a conversation. We hit it off instantly: Lois, like me, loved to write . . . Lois continued to churn out stories, learning and writing in a contagious serenity. I wanted what she had. So, I emailed her one day asking for help starting my own blog. With her enthusiastic support, my blog 6 in the Morning was born, publishing biweekly articles on obscure people, places, and stories from history . . . Then school started up again, and I had to shut my blog down to focus on my studies. I would reflect on my pandemic work and Lois with fond memories but with no intention to return to 6 in the Morning.

And that should have been the end of it.

But it wasn’t.

Although I had stopped blogging, I began to turn to my passion for writing during all emotional times in my life. I wrestled my way through the teen experience on the page with subjects like bullying, hormonal acne, and first love. Capturing my life in words allows me to make sense of reality and recalibrate myself in what I know is right and true. I can’t imagine devoting my future to anything else.

The Four Horsemen of the Covid-19 Apocalypse

HUMOR

Maggie Hoppel, Grade 12, Noblesville High School, Noblesville, IN. William Kenley, Educator. Hoosier Writing Project at IUPUI, Affiliate. Gold Medal Portfolio Award, The Harry and Betty Quadracci Writing Portfolio Award

In March 2020, America had a lot of questions. By then, we all knew what Covid-19 was, although the term “coronavirus” received more linguistic PR in those days. What we didn’t know was everything else: How was this disease spread? What were its symptoms? And what, by gum, was the government going to do about it?

I was only fourteen when the pandemonium hit—underweight, anxious, and caffeine-addicted. The sudden validation of my late-night thoughts of death turned the downward spiral I called home into a full-on whirlpool. One moment, I was wondering if it all was a scam, and the next, I was sitting on the kitchen table, my legs swinging as I watched my dad make his morning coffee, asking him, “Is this the apocalypse?”

I can’t imagine what the poor man must have thought at that moment. Across the globe, everyone was grasping for certainty that couldn’t be found, and now my father had to scrape up the confidence to at the very least assure me that I wasn’t going to die? He couldn’t do it. Instead, he told me the horrifying truth: He hadn’t the faintest idea what was going to happen next, from anarchy to the rapture. Then he sipped his coffee and padded upstairs to the living room to work.

With Armageddon now firmly within the realm of possibility, the first course of action was to reread the Book of Revelation. That way I would know what to expect. Sure enough, it was as confusing as the last time I’d skimmed through it. The one concept that stuck out to me was the Four Horsemen. I learned that these bad boys would one day be released to ravage the earth, leaving only suffering in their wake. Their names were, charmingly: Conquest, War, Famine, and Death. And once I learned to look for them, the nefarious evidence saturated my new quarantine life.

The first horseman, Conquest, is said to ride a white horse, wield a bow, and wear a crown. He comes first and is a surefire sign that something’s about to hit the fan. On March 13th, 2020, I could practically see him galloping across the skies, writing nasty words in the air like the Wicked Witch of the West on her broomstick: SCHOOL CANCELED UNTIL SPRING BREAK. There was no escaping him. He closed down restaurants, isolated me from my extended family, and even cut off my weekly library book supply. A man’s home is his castle, they say, but what happens when it becomes his prison, too?

Cabin fever was everything The Shining said it would be. I wore pajamas until they fused to my body, survived on a slush of instant mashed potatoes mixed with applesauce, and slept with the TV on. My sole moments of productivity came when washing the dishes after family dinner for a few minutes’ escape from FaceTime conversation with my grandparents. Online small talk, that perverse illusion of closeness, was Conquest’s deadliest arrow, and he thrust it into my skull until my brain was nothing but socially awkward potato sauce. But Conquest was only the first of four, with War swiping his great sword close enough to graze the lead horse’s flank.

This is what happens when people have too much time on their hands. Before the pandemic, social media was something to be wary of. Afterward, it was a vat of toxic waste disguised as Chick-fil-A sauce: original, in vogue, and good on everything—but only for the first bite. We saw the rise of OK Boomer, the coronavirus challenge (who wants a toilet seat popsicle?), and CGI influencers. And the misinformation. Oh, it was everywhere. Coronavirus is a bioweapon from China! Masks are suffocating our children! The government is secretly run by Danny DeVito! By the time the election came around that November, the internet was a war zone and no one was safe.

Of course, I could have just turned off my phone. But then what? It wasn’t as if I could leave my house. Plus, with all the social media bullies on the prowl, it felt kind of like school, and I hadn’t been to school in so long.

Besides, War was nothing compared to what was about to happen next. While we were all looking the other way, the pandemic snaked its wicked tendrils around the most private, most personal of places: the bathroom. I couldn’t even poop in peace anymore. That’s what Famine, a rider carrying a scale and sitting atop a black horse, does to you. The scarcity of essentials is a frightening thing. Sure, Fauci was fighting the good fight, preaching the gospel of Stay at home and Keep your face covered. Quarantining kept Covid-19 from spreading and mutating quite so fast. Overcrowded hospitals were begrudged at least a little more room, and stories of your mom’s friend’s fourth cousin twice removed getting The Virus were few and far between. There was just one teensy problem. With everyone safe at home, production had slowed to the unimpressive ooze of a jaded BMV employee. Stores were short on everything, from cleaning supplies to that modern pandemic icon, toilet paper. That stuff was like gold. You knew you’d made it in life if you could afford Charmin’s plush caress instead of the store-brand sandpaper. Unfortunately, the frequent fliers at our local Kroger were too ruthless to allow my family that particular luxury.

But my hygienic woes were nothing compared to the fun the final horseman, riding his vaguely described “pale horse” and known only as Death, had to offer. With the first three horsemen already surrounding me, Death tightened his icy grip on my exposed neck. I breathed him in every time I went outside sans mask. His hypnotic call reached my ears during especially long Zoom meetings. He was featured on the news a lot, too, escorting large numbers and disheartening graphs like a plastic Barbie date on his scrawny arm. His hobbies included stealing my sleep at night and holding it hostage until I paid him in hours of worry. His favorite words were what and if. I could tell when he’d arrived by the air of finality that swept through me, that maybe this quarantine business was forever. Maybe I did have the rotten luck of growing up during the apocalypse. Come on, man, I prayed one night, this can’t be the end. I haven’t even been kissed yet.

The things you think about when faced with death are concerningly antifeminist. By 2020’s close, I thought for sure that this was It with a capital I. Armageddon. The apocalypse. Curtains. The Four Horsemen had descended from the skies into my freshman life, poised to strike the final blow and end me once and for all. I waited. Braced myself for another worldwide flood or mosquito plague or fiery pillar or something—anything. But nothing ever happened. Slowly but surely, society was picking up and moving on.

And, just as I had seen the Horsemen enter my life, I began to see them leave. Conquest retreated as I received the Covid-19 vaccine and was allowed to see my friends and family again, as well as attend school full-time. War retreated— well, sort of. Social media was still a mess, but at least Trump was banned from Twitter and healthier alternatives to scrolling aimlessly through my phone were available again. Famine vanished altogether, along with my butt rash from the cheap toilet paper. And Death. People were still getting sick and hurting and fading away into nothing. But now vaccines were available to help, the mandatory quarantine had ended, and my hope for a permanent solution was enough to send the final horseman fleeing in fear. I began to think past the pandemic and consider what the rest of high school might look like, then college. Maybe I’d audition for a play or write a book. In other words, it had taken me an entire pandemic, but I’d finally begun asking the right question, one that didn’t have anything to do with the government or my dad’s morning coffee or even Death’s two favorite words: What’s next?

The world couldn’t have ended in 2020 anyway. The world had already ended, with the sacking of the Roman Empire back in 410 a.d. Then the Black Plague swept the globe and ended the world again. Armageddon came back in 1930 with the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. Credit cards were the Antichrist in the nineties, and 9/11 was it for us in 2001. The world even ended the month after I was born with a woman named Katrina who devastated coastal New Orleans. Conquest, War, Famine, and Theodore have been fading in and out of history for thousands of years—perhaps since the beginning of time. But humans, like cockroaches and that little smattering of acne across my nose, are resilient creatures. Every time our world falls apart, we pick ourselves off the ground, out of the trench, up from the left couch cushion, and rebuild. My great quarantine apocalypse of 2020 was no different. The world seemed to stop for a few long months, but, gradually, it adapted and moved on. And so did I. I’m sure I’ll witness a hundred more endings and beginnings in my lifetime, but this first one taught me to approach them all with the skepticism of a species that has seen it all.

Sure, 2020 was the apocalypse.

But I come from a long line of apocalypse survivors.

Siann Han

I imagine a world where robots are frolicking in fields and hyperloops are a mainstream form of transportation. With career interests in engineering, science, and computer science, my ambitions to realize this world are often concerned with practicality and utility. However, when I create art, these inhibitions disappear altogether and the boundaries between disciplines become blurry, transforming into a symbiotic mush of innovation, aesthetics, and self-discovery. At this busy intersection, my digital electronics projects meet pastel, the slides I examine under a microscope at school inspire colors and abstractions, and my knowledge of artificial intelligence and computer systems becomes an infinite source of imagery I can pull from. All the while, I dig deeper into my own psyche, navigating through my consciousness to uncover the vision that I can then actualize in order to be experienced by others. With my art, I strive to spark curiosity, introspection, and a desire to explore the unknown.

Featured image: Siann Han, Discontinued, Painting. Grade 12, Bergen County Technical High School-Teterboro, Teterboro, NJ. Kayla Jang (Art Lab Studio); Dan Park, Educators; Gallery Aferro, Affiliate. Gold Medal Portfolio, The Merson Family Art Portfolio

To see more Gold Medal Portfolio recipients, past and present, visit our Eyes on the Prize series.