Contest - Page 5

Erika Mária Szántó

(First Folyosó Contest: Second Place)

Dialogue 1
Venue: Kindergarten

Girl: “I have a mug of Elsa from Frozen, but I want the Beauty and the Beast one! It’s so much prettier! Mom said it’s disgusting, but I want it! I will still get it, no matter what she says! I will write a letter to Santa Claus! I need it!”

Boy: “Ha, that’s soooo childish. The Batman mug is so much cooler!”

Voice from distance: “Sweeties, here is the tasty pea pottage!”

Everyone: “Noooo!”

Dialogue 2
Venue: High school

Teen girl 1: “Yesterday I had to wait half an hour in the solarium! Ridiculous! I was nearly late to my hairdresser because of that. I nearly passed out from nervousness!”

Teen girl 2: “Oh, don’t even say it! I found some really cute shirts on Fashiondays, at a big discount! I was so happy. But when I finally got to actually ordering them, it was past midnight! All the sales! Gone!”

Dialogue 3
Venue: Park

Mom 1: “Ugh, finally I could sleep three hours continuously. I feel so refreshed.”

Mom 2: “I found a new baby supplement. My little one loves it, so finally the house isn’t loud any more from all the crying. There were moments when I thought I would go crazy.”

Gergely Sülye

(First Folyosó Contest: Second Place)

I think everyone can agree that priorities are subjective and change from person to person. While this is mostly true, there can be some discrepancies.

Every action that you have planned to take in the future has to be organized in a chronological fashion, and the order of this sequence is called priorities. Simply put, the higher on the list something is, the more important it is.

But this is not just a linear concept, as breathing and being successful are vastly different, but still have the same importance in the grand scheme of things. While the other we can live without, the first is required for basic survival. Yet being successful, whatever that might mean to a person, is still higher on the priority list than simply breathing.

One noticeable difference is that there are some actions that we take by instinct, and some that we have to make a conscious effort to pull off. Another criterion could be that some actions are required in order to survive, while others are not necessary, but of course still important. This already gives us two separate axes for our priorities, which would make it impossible to address the topic through a linear type of design.

Yet in common language we still just talk about lower- or higher-priority tasks, as if it were not as complicated as I just made it out to be. In reality we only have accurate priorities for pressing matters. If you are starving you will ignore everything else in order to acquire food. Thus the task is the highest priority. Similarly if you are mad at someone, you will be mostly focused on teaching said person a lesson. This case is rare, but it is valid for the example.

Most of the time we tend to brush our instinctual needs under the rug, but once they reach a critical state, like having to go to the toilet, they suddenly become our first priority.

Priorities are ever changing, and it is hard to keep to them. We may have a faint idea of what we should be doing, but in just a few hours that list may be completely flipped on its head.

Adél Mihályi

(First Folyosó Contest: First Place)

“You have to do it, because it’s important!” – But what if it isn’t? Yes, I need it in this hour, today, maybe even during this week or month, but does your forced knowledge affect my whole life? Does it help me to develop if I don’t think it could be useful? Will I do it with joy?

I could do anything else that I’m interested in instead of dealing with things I will forget right after they don’t need it anymore. For example… being myself. I haven’t done that for a while, I have been so busy completing tasks like mastering the level of expectations, getting bored while I had multiple things to do that I didn’t choose by myself. Still, I often chose just to lie on my bed and think about what I should do.

Or, in reality, what I shouldn’t, because in my own world, I don’t owe them, and they don’t own me.

…And then I’m in a hurry, beacuse I wasted my time with nothing, and I have to make everything right, like I’m alright with this.

“Okay,” I answer simply, with a little smile on my face, but inside raging full of thoughts that will never be spoken.

Maybe I just want too many reforms in one moment again.

But I can never forget the fact that instead of sticking to my guns, I still choose to do the unenjoyable-for-me tasks first, because they are important.

Everyone is just going their own way, but at some point, all the lines meet.

If schools kill artists, then forced priorities kill difference.

Why can’t I just be myself, just like others?