One of the awards I highly anticipate towards the end of the year is Time's Person of the Year Award. As soon as I start catching first wind of it a month prior to its starting, I look out for more details on nominees. I'm definitely guilty of spamming retweets of the topic on Twitter during this period.
As soon as the list of nominees was up, I went through all 60+ of the nominees as well as their work/achievement that got them such a great honor and voted for my top handful.
Then came the agonizing period of waiting until they announced the winner and runner ups that I always have to trudge through. My guess on the people who would get runner up/win consisted of Gabrielle Douglas, Barack Obama, and Malala Yousafzai.
When it came down to it, I felt like the winner was most likely going to be Obama or Gabbi, seeing as how they were the more popular nominees. Personally, I was vouching for Malala because her reason for nominated was truly worthy of the award.
Malala, 15 was moved to England after October for medical treatment. This was because when she went on a school bus October 9th, a Taliban assassin came on looking for her, and shot her head. Unlike how most people would react to a tragic experience, she took it and empowered girls in Pakistan to fight for their right to an education.
I like to think of the Time Award as a true humanitarian award, making me pick Malala as my first choice. But this thought definitely contradicts the dictators and shady politicians nominated.
I can clearly remember the moment when I realized the winner was announced. I just finished my semester exam for AP Language and was going through random articles. And then in bold, white headline I see, "Obama Person of the Year 2012."
The runner ups ended up being Malala Yousafzai, Mohamed Morsi, and Tim Cook. I was disappointed to see Malala didn't win, but also happy that she at least made runner up. Another surprise for me was when Gabrielle Douglas did not make the list. She seemed like a pretty popular choice to me with all the people interested in the Olympics.
The one thing about the Awards that I don't appreciate are the "lovely" comments people put in afterward. While I wanted Malala to win just as much as some of the commenters, I would not accuse Time for being sexist. This accusation is completely ridiculous seeing as how the votes come from us and not Time associates.
Overall, it was a pretty good nominee list for the year and I can't wait to see what's in store for next year. What are you thoughts about this year's Time Award?
