URBANA, Ill. (WAND) — Finding the right words comes easy to Robert Gao, a senior at University Laboratory High School in Urbana. But if you were to ask him a year ago what he would be doing, it wouldn't be winning a national writing award. 

"I come from a Stem oriented family, and so venturing into the literary arts was very scary for not only me, but also them. Math is quantifiable. It's objective. There are set answers to everything, whereas writing is a subjective art." Robert shares, he took a leap of faith when he began writing poetry during the COVID 19 Pandemic. 

He says, it started from his boredom. "I started poetry, honestly, because I was lazy. But as I soon came to realize, although the words might be shorter, the thought process is so much more complicated."

After countless hours of writing and full length poems, he decided to throw his work into a national poet competition. Robert soon found out, amongst thousands of other submissions, his was the winner.

Robert was awarded the 2024 National Midwest Student Poet award. 

"Winning this award, not only was just the largest amount of validation I've ever received as a writer, but also just gave me the go ahead to to to embark on a journey of what I finally wanted to do."

The green light to keep going.

Now, Robert is excited to begin writers workshops with younger children in the community and help them explore literary art. 

He hopes he can give them that encouragement and validation he needed when he was their age. 

Robert says he will continue to "...remind them that this path is completely valid. And see if they can foster and grow as a result."

Copyright 2024. WAND TV. All rights reserved.