Going Rogue: An American Life by Lynn Vincent, Sarah Palin Read Free Book Online Page B

with Tilly and two other girlfriends, we flew to Hawaii for our freshman year of college. Our intention was to play basketball there, but we made it to only a few tryouts and then decided we’d better concentrate on our studies … and the beach. It turned out that Hawaii was a little too perfect. Perpetual sunshine isn’t necessarily conducive to serious academics for eighteenyear-old Alaska gitls. Besides, we were homesick for mountains, cooler seasons, and even snow. After that first semester, we realized we’d better transfer back to sometbing closer to reality so we could actually earn our degrees.
    Tilly and I opted for a more conventional and affordable campus, choosing Idaho because it was much like Alaska yet still “Outside” (Alaskans’ alternative term for the Lower 48). I still desperately wanted to earn a journalism degtee and to put my passion fat sporrs and writing to work as a sports teporter. After our freshman year, Tilly and I returned to Wasilla for summer work at a little diner. While we were home, our friend Linda Menard, Doc’s wife, talked me into entering the local Miss America Scholarship Pageant wirh the promise of tuition for college.
    I thought it was a horrendous idea, at first. I was a jock and quite square, not a pageant-type gitl at all. I didn’t wear makeup in high school and kept my hair shorr because I
    like wasting time primping. I couldn’t relate to the way I assumed most cheetleader types thought and lived, and figured it was those girls who were equipped for the pageant thing.
    On the other hand, there
    the scholarship money. I knew I
    wasn’t a good enough athlete to get a Division I scholarship, but I did want to graduate debt-free. Was there some way I could make this work?
    I thought about it for a couple of days. My stomach knotted up at the thought of parading around onstage in a swimsuit, especially
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    Going Rogue
    since I’d packed on the famous “Fteshman 15” and wasn’t in the best shape of my life, It would be humbling at best, risky and embarrassing at worst. But a scholarship was a scholarship, and in the end, pragmatism won OUt. Half seriously, I wondered if the pageant organization would accept for the talent portion of the competition a fancy display of right-and left-handed dribbling. But Linda suggested I play the flute, something I’d been doing since age ten. Linda also reminded me that the scholarship money was generous, especially if I won individual competitions within the pageant, in addition to the Miss Wasilla crown. I enlisted the advice of a former pageant winner, my friend Diane Minnick. Then I shocked my friends ‘and family, put on a sequined Warrior-red gown, danced the opening numbers, gave the interview, and uncomfortably let my burt be compared to the cheerleaders’ butts. I played my flute, and I won. In fact, I won every segment of the competition, even Miss Congenialiry.
    The Miss Wasilla Scholarship paid my college tuition that fall. The following summer, I progressed to the next round and was crowned second runner-up and Miss Congeniality in the Miss Alaska Scholarship Pageant. I had to admit it was good tuition money, as well as a good testing ground for public speaking and issue advocacy, and I was happy to be even more involved in the community via this nontraditional adventure that took me out of my comfort zone. I went on to pay for two more years of college the same way.
    Recenrly, my sister Molly unearrhed an old pageant video, a Q&A exchange with a judge that I had completely forgotten about. Molly laughed as she recounted the exchange about the fact that not much has changed, besides the ‘SOs pageant hair. JUDGE: Geraldine Ferraro recently became the first female vice presidential candidate reptesenting a major American political party. Do you think a woman can be vice president?
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    SARAH
    PALIN
    ME: Yes. I believe a woman could be vice president. I believe a woman could be president.
    JUDGE: