Fellow writer and state journalism competitor Chris Yoder already gave you his take and a summary of Friday's events at Eastern Illinois University, where the Uni journalism team won the IHSA championship.

Since, you know, he managed to not only get to state in two categories but also place in both categories and win one of them, his perspective is a little different from mine. Whatever. Chris is a genius sports writer, and apparently he's pretty excellent at editorial writing, too.

I, however, feel gypped. Let me tell you why.

I've been writing since I was born, or something. You know. Ever since I could hold a pen. Ever since I could talk and could dictate to my mother what I wanted to say. Whatever. I've been writing a long time. Novels, mostly. I've been writing reviews for much less time, but, if you compare the number of reviews I've completed (17) to the number of novels (zero), I'm way more of a review writer than anything else.

So, sure. Competing in the review-writing event at IHSA journalism sectionals would be no big deal, right?

Sectionals was actually a breeze. I sat in a totally silent room with eight other totally silent people for one and a half totally silent hours, scribbling out my opinions on three obscure songs by some lame bubble gum trying-too-hard artist I'd never heard of before. I was fine with pop music. I was great with pop music, actually. I listen to so much pop music that just a small sampling of my music collection would cause the ears of all the more musically cultured Gargoyle music reviewers' ears to bleed relentlessly.

However, I jabbered on about a few too many "personal anecdotes" (too many = one) and my precious masterpiece was tacked onto third place. My art was too refined for those judges to comprehend, obviously, but its greatness was still apparent to them so at least I made it to state. I was pumped.

Then the day of the state competition arrived. It wasn't the greatest of mornings. I've been plagued with back problems in my "old age" and wasn't feeling the best, but I did get to stop at Panera for a frozen mocha and an asiago cheese bagel, so I was pretty content, I guess. Then I got to drive for an hour to Charleston, blasting music and singing along while I trailed at the back of our ragtag caravan, trying to keep up as I perpetually got stuck at stop signs and red lights thanks to slow-moving semi trucks.

Once we made it to Eastern's campus, I discovered a fact I hadn't yet considered: the number of people. The place was crawling with journalism-letterman's-jacket-clad journalism students, frantically pushing their artsy glasses up their nose and rearranging their artfully tousled hair around their fancy hats, clutching their notebooks and colorful competition programs.

I felt overwhelmed. Claustrophobic. Kind of ill.

However, I shook it off as I headed to the front of the big auditorium where all the reviewers were meeting. We were going on a field trip. To an African art exhibit.

Yeah. An African art exhibit.

I had known the genre of the review I was to write about a week before. And when I found out about it I went, "Uhhhh what?"

I read a few art reviews online, looked up some pictures of African art. But after some amount of research, I determined that there was really nothing I could do to prepare myself for this. How hard could it really be to write about African art?

We, the review squad, with our fancy-hatted proctor leading the way, traipsed through the mud and some random modern sculptures to a gloomy little building. One room of it was filled with tables and chairs and nothing else at all. Another room was filled with elementary school art, and a little, tiny, windowless room in the back held a modest collection of African "art" — if "art" refers to bowls, spoons, chairs, pots … like things that were actually useful for everyday life. Plus a few creepy masks and some jewelry and some small naked people made out of wood.

And this is where I started to panic. This was boring. This was irrelevant to high schoolers. To teenagers. To most people. Some of the stuff was cool, but it was such a terrible, lonely, unhappy space for the collection, which wasn't, overall, very impressive. I was just unimpressed, totally. But other than a couple comments about the room, I had nothing specific to say.

This is quite an event, when I have nothing to say. I guess I could have gone on in my review about how I had nothing to say, but that's so boring when you write about how you have nothing to write. So unoriginal, and so not a first-place review.

Instead, I rambled on about cultural differences, how the exhibit gave me new ways of looking at myself, drawing from the things I've learned in anthropology class, throwing in a few randomly specific details here and there. Basically my review was horrible, and I knew it, but it took me the entire allotted time to finish, so whatever. It had to do. I turned it in. I hightailed it out of there. I ate lunch. I went home.

I didn't even bother to stay to find out if I won, which I didn't. I didn't even place. I contributed absolutely zero of our team's winning points. I did nothing but support my teammates.

Looking back, I don't even think I could have done anything better. I don't think, given a second chance, I could write a winning review of African art. I don't even think a third chance could help. I just don't think the topic could get any more irrelevant. Maybe that was intended. Maybe someone just really didn't think this through.

Whatever. At least I got a medal.

And hooray for the Uni High journalism team!