The 2019 Paideia Institute High School Essay Contest

For High School Students — Win a Trip to Italy or Greece!

The Paideia Institute is pleased to announce its fourth annual high school essay contest for 2019. We will publish the winning essays in In Medias Res, and the winners will receive a full scholarship to either the Paideia Institute’s Living Latin in Rome High School Program or Paideia’s Living Greek in Greece High School Program.

This year’s topic is:

Lin-Manuel Miranda scored a major hit with his 2015 musical Hamilton, which found contemporary relevance in the life of the first U.S. treasury secretary. Imagine you are making a proposal to a theater company to produce a show about a Greek or a Roman whose life would make a good musical. Explain the dramatic conflicts, emotional high points, and contemporary relevance of the Greek or Roman life you would like to see on a Broadway stage.

If you wish to win the scholarship for the Rome program, please write about a Roman life; similarly, if you wish to win the scholarship for the Greece program, please write about a Greek.

Essays are due on March 1, 2019, and should be between 500 and 1000 words. Please send all essays in .pdf format to inmediasres@paideia-institute.org. Submissions should include the student’s name, the name of their high school, their grade level, and the name of their Latin or Greek teacher. To win the scholarship, students need to meet the prerequisites for the intended program; please see the prerequisites for the Latin program here and the Greek program here.

For examples of previous winning essays (on different topics), please look at the following links: “‘Away Hector Fled in Fear’: Homer’s Humanization of War,” by Kimberley Montpelier (2018); “The Wisdom of a Former Slave,” by Clare Pavlides (2018); “The Power of the Poet,” by Charlotte Skolasky (2017); and “On the Importance of Classics,” by Carl Anderson (2016). This year’s essay may require a bit more salesmanship: make the producers feel they simply have to find funding to produce your show!

[Links to the winning essays for 2019 are below.]