Speechlessly inspired doesn’t do justice to how I felt while watching this year’s Scripps National Spelling Bee – seeing the momentum erupt as eight champions were crowned. But soul-struck doesn’t do justice to how I felt after my conversation with Sneha Ganesh Kumar. Runner-up of the 2016 Scripps National Spelling Bee, Sneha is a spellbinding embodiment of not only the hype but also the honesty that innovative activists tackle head-on. Her Queen Bee Project (QBP) strives to shatter existing social inequalities and stress-steeped stigmas behind academic competitions. QBP is a testament to the reality that today’s world for young women (and men) thrives on being competitive yet compassionate, emotional yet efficient, and ambitious yet affectionate. Read on to learn more from Sneha, the spirited high school senior from Folsom, California, who’s determined to help her competition community spell “S-U-C-C-E-S-S” but also authentically spill the word’s multidimensional meaning.
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A popular notion at recent Scripps National Spelling Bees is one of collaborative
competition - students are competing against the dictionary and not each other. As a Scripps top finisher with extensive competition experience and Queen Bee Project founder, how true is this sentiment to you and in the remaining bee world?
While that is a popular notion, and is mentioned a lot in speller promos, there is a flip side to that idea. The National Spelling Bee champions get almost all the fame and recognition - like going on Jimmy Kimmel, Kelly & Ryan, meeting celebrities, etc. But to me, when it comes to the spelling bee, ranking doesn’t mean much. Sure, the higher you rank, there is a general gradient of improving spelling skills. But for example, I’d say the top 5 each year are just as good as the champion(s). All it comes down to is are you going to get a word you know? If the word list was different, for any year, I can almost guarantee that the rankings would’ve been different. But the general public ends up judging how good of a speller you are by your rank.
But I’ve never felt that way with my fellow spellers, despite the general public’s perception of the bee. We’ve stayed good friends for years after the competition, and never showed any attitude to anyone who ranked lower or were jealous of anyone who ranked higher, because like I said, we know that that ranking solely depends on the specific set of words we get. I’ve ranked higher than people who beat me at mock bees, and I’ve ranked lower than people who didn’t make it to finals. Ranking means almost nothing.
So that sentiment is completely true to me: I’ve never really competed with any of my fellow spellers, but rather developed that bond with them because we were competing against the dictionary together. And that’s a huge part of what we do at the Queen Bee Project. We started a podcast series called Spill the Bee (it’s on Spotify & Apple Podcasts), where we interview spellers who ranked completely differently, and instead of asking them the typical questions of how long they studied, we talk to them about their failures, and how that helped them with other parts of their life. We strive to recognize every speller, because they’ve all worked just as hard and have learned just as much from the bee.
There’s no shortage of young girls taking the stage at the Scripps National Spelling Bee. But there is in other competitions – The National Geographic Bee, The Brain Bee, etc. Why must this gap close?
For multiple reasons. One of the focuses of the Queen Bee Project is spreading the stories of women in male-dominated fields. For example, while the situation is definitely improving, there are many software companies where there aren’t many women in each department. I want to major in astrophysics, and that’s a severely male-dominated field. Just like there’s so much push for women to get into STEM careers, there should also be a push for women to compete in these competitions, since these are a type of preview of these careers. But it’s not a very widely discussed topic, but it needs to be fixed. We’ve actually started preliminary work on this idea. Our quiz bowl representative is going to start conducting workshops for girls in middle school teaching them quiz bowl topics, so that female participation in high school quiz bowl will increase.
What specific efforts is Queen Bee Project undertaking to equip underprivileged students (lack of money, resources, geographic distance from competitive regional bees) the chance to shine at a top level in bees?
Our brain bee rep has scheduled a region-wide workshop series in West Virginia! West Virginia has only one brain bee, and does not provide training sessions, and is therefore not as widely participated in as it could be. Our workshop series will provide students with an interest in neuroscience the training and materials necessary for them to succeed at their local brain bee! The curriculum we use will be public, and the workshops will be livestreamed, so that anyone with an interest in the brain bee can access our training materials! Additionally, we have recently entered a partnership with Storybox Books, who distribute books to students in low-income communities. We’ve partnered with them to develop spelling & vocab & reading comprehension curriculum along with the books we hand out. I would say the most important basis you can develop for the spelling bee is to read. Read all kinds of books; a word I got at the national spelling bee was actually one I read in a book. By developing curriculum to go with these books, we are providing low-income students with the basis one needs to go into spelling bees.
Who is your bee inspiration (perhaps a competitor you admire & adore for their spirit) and why?
Naysa Modi and I started spelling together, in 2015. She was in third grade then, so while I stopped competing in 2016, she only aged out this year (2019). We’ve become best friends, basically sisters over these years. A lot of this interview I talked about how getting second affected me, and Naysa actually got second last year (2018). This year, she missed making semifinals, which was a huge blow even to me as her best friend. I can’t even imagine what it felt like to not make it to semis after getting second and enduring all the whispers wherever she went - all the things people talked behind her back (and she knew it for sure). Despite all of that, she came to semifinals and finals to spend time with us despite having to face all the gossip wherever she went. And she was broken when there were octochamps - because the octochamps were just the top 8, and she just had to come in the top 8 to win (which I believe she’s done twice). It affected her so much, but she chose to face it to spend time with us, and I really respect and admire her having that level of maturity as an eighth grader, and think that aspiring spellers should also have that same attitude)
Triumph in competition is a beautiful thing, but tragedy in competition is a real thing. Describe a “movie-moment” signature lesson you’ve learned as a competitor.
I’ve lost every single competition I’ve done in high school. When I walked up on stage to spell usucapion, I was rapidly switching between two spellings – usucapion and usicapion. And I picked the wrong one.
I’ve always had trouble picking between two things. Spelling or dance? Astrophysics or neuroscience? But I’ve learned that I can always do both, which is a reason that the Queen Bee Project has a two-fold mission. It’s ok to want to try more than one thing, it’s ok to not be able to choose.
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Even if ‘usucapion’ ended Sneha’s run at Scripps, it made her realize the danger of over-internalizing results. Ultimately choosing multiple passions in life has allowed Sneha to become the intrinsic innovator she is today, to mentor several top bee finishers while resonating with their shared struggles and mutual understandings because she’s lived their dedication. Sneha breathes with unfettered passion – a passion that transcends a typical desire to excel in every endeavor. She has always loved competing because it has been a driving force that allows her to grow through what she goes through. She created Queen Bee Project (QBP), however, to show that while winning is incredible, learning is inimitable. Sneha and QBP are resounding hives of reassurance that although failure in competition is inevitable, if competitors are committed to heart-on hard work, success will chase them.
To learn more about Sneha’s recently upstarted Queen Bee Project(QBP), visit: https://queenbeeproject.org
Story by Sibani Ram
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