by Sylvia Perez Sylvia Perez won last years Distinguished Speakers Essay Contest. In the essay below Perez describers her process for writing the essay that won her the oppurtunity to have dinner with the award-winning journalist & author Laura Ling. On the night of September 19, 2014 I sat down at my dining room table and stared at a prompt for an essay contest. The winner would personally meet and have dinner with journalist and author Laura Ling. This was the prompt:

By Bertha Alyssa Villarreal How Lack of sleep can hinder academic writing performance Bertha Alyssa Villarreal, a college sophomore attending the University of Texas-Pan American has recently uncovered a negative correlation between the lack of sleep and academic writing performance in college students. She decided to create a video to provide students with the knowledge that lack of sleep affects academic writing. Throughout the month of October in 2014, at the UTPA cam