Bits of Spelling Bee Wisdom

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Pretty nifty, huh? 

Back to today's scheduled programming.

Haulage. 

That's the word I lost to in the district-wide spelling bee championships when I was 11.

Haulage.

It has been 17 years and I still remember that word.  Yet, I have never actually used that word in a sentence. 

First, I remember asking for the definition.

1 : the act or process of hauling
2 : a charge made for hauling
 
That helps.
 
Then I asked that it be used in a sentence--mainly as a stalling technique, but hoping just a tiny bit that something would clue me in.

The ship's haulage was being carried across the sea.

(Or something to that affect.  It's been 17 years folks.)

And somewhere in my brain, I got stuck on the word ship and spelled it as h-u-l-l-a-g-e.  Which was a pretty good guess considering the sentence I was given. 

Oh, and did I mention that I picked the #1 seat?  How's that for pressure?!?

So, in honor of my 11-year old niece, who is headed to the statewide spelling bee in two weeks here are some tips from a seasoned veteran.

1.  Don't pick the #1 seat.  You don't need that kind of pressure.
2.  Always, always, always ask for the definition.  This gives you time to collect your thoughts before rattling off the letters.
3.  Study this year's words, and the previous two years worth of words.
4.  Study the definitions.  Sometimes a word is pronounced differently then you think so you don't remember ever having seen it until you hear the definition.
5.  Don't get too overconfident and speed-spit out the letters.  Your more apt to mess up that way.
6.  Come up with mnemonic phrases to help you remember those hard-to-remember words.
7.  Spend time writing them out as though it were a spelling test.  The act of seeing the words in your head and spelling them out on paper helps your memory retain it.
8.  I'm suddenly realizing that perhaps I should have posted this about 3 weeks ago.  Oh well.  Continuing on.
9.  Convince your English (or is it reading in Elementary?) teacher to give you an automatic A for having gotten this far.
10.  17 years from now, you'll look back and remember what word it was that you missed.  And though you will never use that word in conversation ever again, you and your mom will laugh about it in the car one day.  That is, if you don't win the whole thing and go to Washington D.C. where you're bound to lose to someone who's native language isn't even English.
11.  Have fun.  This is one of those things that not a lot of people will have to pad their resume.  You will be heralded as a genius, once everyone stops laughing at your apparent nerdiness.  You should probably keep it a secret until at least high school.

Looking over this list, with a few tweaks, it's a pretty standard list for most things in life.

Good luck Aud.