Ryann Jerome: Miss Maine Collegiate America

Hello, my name is Ryann Jerome and I am so excited to be your Miss Maine Collegiate!
What does B.R.A.V.E mean to me? It means standing up and being the voice for someone else/being your own voice. You don’t want to just stand around being a bystander, go out of your way to make sure everyone is feeling included and feels good about themselves. B.R.A.V.E is an acronym that I believe everyone should live by. That's why I believe the best way to get the B.R.A.V.E message out there is to teach it to children. 

Ever since I became Miss Maine Collegiate, giving my B.R.A.V.E presentations to the next generation has been my favorite because as I'm talking I see all of them focused and hanging onto every word I'm saying.
For me that is showing that they are listening and learning how to stand up for one another.
When I was younger I was bullied ever since first grade for not being able to read or write like
the other kids. I remember this boy, that fun fact I actually had a crush on at the time, I went up
to him to talk and I remember his exact words “get away from me bad reader”. It wasn’t until
third grade when I started to become hurt by their words. We had a day where we had to bring
in white T-shirts and draw our favorite scene from a book/movie and anyone who knows me
knows I’m obsessed with Disney, so I decided to draw a scene from Beauty and the Beast. Well
everyone in the class made fun of me because I spelt the word beauty wrong. I just remember
feeling very awful about myself when everyone started laughing at me to a point where when we
got a parade around the school showing off our shirts, I sat in the class in the corner crying as I
just worked in my phonics book.

After that moment I realized that I didn’t want to have to feel like that ever again. I don’t want to be looked at as the outcast who couldn’t tell the difference between m and w or b and d. Since that day I worked hard on my grammar, comprehension, and reading everyday with a teacher. As soon as I stopped letting their words get to me, I started feeling good about myself.
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As my reign being Miss Maine Collegiate, I want to start off being that voice for someone and as
time goes by I want to be able to teach them how to have a voice to stand up for themselves.
It’s like the quote says “if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to
fish, you feed him for a life time”.