Humans of St. Norbert:

“I grew up in Alaska and was there until I graduated from high school. I was a big spelling bee nerd back in the day. Between fourth and eighth grade, I got second in the Alaska State Spelling Bee every year, except for seventh grade when I got first. I ended up getting a free trip to Washington, D.C., to compete in the National Spelling Bee.

Back then nobody cared about it at all, but now they show it on primetime TV and people go nuts for it ... or at least a certain segment of the population does. When I did it, they would show it on TV but it was on like ESPN. They started putting it on TV after the fourth round and they showed me on TV walking up to the microphone and then they cut to commercial. Then I got out so you didn't see me on TV again.

The next year I was trying to make it back to Nationals but I ended up getting second in the Alaskan one because I misspelled 'syllabus.' I spelled it in the silliest way possible: S-I-L-I-B-U-S. I had never even heard of a syllabus until a couple months before that when my eighth grade teacher had a syllabus and talked about it. So I had heard it but didn't know what it meant and never bothered to look it up.” – Jean Falconer, assistant professor of economics.