26 Years Ago, I Defrauded a Group of Scientists

In seventh grade, I decided to study the effects of ultraviolet light on plants.

I chose that topic because I was really into the idea of mutation. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. X-Men. The cultural idiom at the time that radiation gives you superpowers and not, you know, a slow and agonizing death.

So I bought a UV light. I bought some plants. I took pictures of myself with the plants, like a serious young scientist on the verge of discovery.

Then I turned off the lights for the night.

And forgot about the whole thing for three weeks.

It turns out the effects of no light and no water on plants is that they…die.

When it occurred to me the project was due the next day, I did what any panicking adolescent would do: I made all the data up.

I started plugging in numbers into an Excel spreadsheet, which I then charted into graphs. As I began to write my conclusions, I realized that I had stumbled upon a discovery. The plants, per my “research,” absolutely loved the radiation. It was basically Miracle-Gro.

My parents, unaware of my forgery, helped me make a beautiful poster board, complete with a mini uv light sticking through and real plants seeming to grow out of it. My parents are both abstract artists, which was helpful in this kind of situation but a questionable genetic pairing. When you let two abstract artists make more people with each other, this is the kind of kid they end up making.

I brought it to school hoping not to get an F.

As my heart thumped harder than a blow from Donatello’s stick, my teacher looked at it skeptically. After asking me some questions, he said, “This is great! You’re going to the science fair.”

I was mostly annoyed I was losing a Saturday.

So there I am, standing at a folding table in a gymnasium, explaining to actual, professional scientists that plants cannot get enough UV light. They’re thriving. We’ve had it all wrong. The scientists nodded thoughtfully.

Hours passed. I was hungry. I wanted to go home.

Then the awards ceremony.

Honorable mention. Third place. Second place. I’m wondering when the hell this will be over.

“And first prize goes to… Corey Nimmer!”

It took me a full ten seconds to stand up. I genuinely thought I’d misheard.

But it was true. I won first prize.

I got a plaque and a check for $275, plus entry into the Boston Regional Science Fair for grades 7 and 8. There, I won the Christa McAuliffe Award for getting the highest overall score. For anyone younger, she was the school teacher killed in the 1986 Challenger explosion. A symbol of courage, dedication, integrity.

Her namesake was awarded to a 13-year-old who was a complete fraud.

I wish I could tell you I learned something profound about honesty that day.

I didn’t. What I learned was that as long as you have a good presentation, you can win prizes.

I spent a lot of years operating on that assumption.

I would enter a contest, apply for a certification, or share something I made with the world. And sometimes I’d get the likes, award, or certificate that I was hoping for. Every time, it felt nice for maybe forty-five minutes, followed by a lingering sense that I’d just pulled off another successful scam.

More often, I’d put myself out there and wouldn’t get whatever the thing I wanted was. And a familiar voice in my head would clear its throat, and whisper into a megaphone:

See? You’re not good enough.

I don’t think I’m unusual in this. From the time we’re kids, we’re taught that life is all about striving for these visible signs of achievement. Whether it’s grades, sports, roles in the school play, or science fairs, it gets mashed into our psyche that your worth is tied to your accomplishments.

But the truth is, an award is an external symbol for an external achievement. It means something in the world. It just doesn’t mean anything about who you actually are. The trouble starts when those two things get tangled up. When the signpost gets mistaken for the destination.

I know this truth. I believe it deep down, but I forget it constantly. I still feel a knot in my stomach every time I consider entering a contest or sharing a win, because one part of me is still standing at that folding table in the gymnasium, wondering if anyone’s going to figure out it’s just a really good poster board. And the other part is just waiting for confirmation of what it has suspected all along, that I just don’t measure up.

Writing this has helped me see how much of a hold that belief has had over me. That validation lives out there somewhere, in a prize or a placement or a number of likes, just waiting to confirm that I’ve earned my place on earth.

It hasn’t loosened its grip completely. I still agonize over which photo to enter. I still spend more on contest fees than I probably should. I still hear that inner critic when something doesn’t land.

But awareness is something. And part of practicing what I preach is putting things out there anyway.

So if you want to read more about some specific things I’ve wrestled with lately, including some recent work I’m proud of, I wrote about it here: Read the Blog Post