Gold, Silver, and Bronze
A portfolio by Peter Atchley, designed by Margo McDaniel
About the Author
Peter Atchley is a Clarke Central High School senior in Athens Georgia, and the Managing Editor for the ODYSSEY Media Group. Atchley enjoys expressing his creativity, ideas, and opinions through his writing and wants to improve his organizational and communication skills. In his free time, Atchley enjoys painting, drawing, hanging out with his friends and watching scary movies.
Photo by Grady Dunston
Theme Letter
Dear Reader,
The race has been run. Scores have been tallied. Metals have been broken down and alchemy on all ingots has commenced. Did you win? Where did you place in the end? Was it fair or was it rigged? Is your record tarnished with a loss or polished with a win? This is the thought process that inspired and ran rampant through this vein of creative pieces entitled “Gold, Silver, and Bronze.”
Each piece explores my feelings, thoughts, and emotions as it responds to the idea of winning and losing told alongside frequent metallic metaphors. After 18 years on earth, staring down my high school graduation, it's hard not to feel that the marathon of K-12 schooling is over. That idea is why I chose this theme, as both a love letter and eulogy to my own competitive spirit as impacted by recent personal experiences.
The idea of being a “winner” or “the best” or “a standout” contrasted with the idea of being “loser” or “the worst” or “a disappointment” is something I have spent a lot of time dwelling on. As a student and in my personal life, I have felt pressure to always perform to my best ability. Through the idea of a gold, silver, and bronze medal I wanted to connect this idea of winning and losing with a deeper meaning in my own attachment to jewelry.
Overall, I found this project very refreshing and freeing since I let go of some of the anger I have felt towards the pressure placed on me throughout my school experience. With solid ores and malleable minds the blacksmith works away. Olive branches aligned on my head and medals placed on sweaty necks. Let the victory lap commence!
Sincerely, Peter Atchley
Years of Tarnish
Luster and glow don’t evolve
Corrode, I can’t be Sterling silver true
No care and I fall apart
Sulfide for sea tide
safe copper me Stand strong oxide breath alive Matured in our air
Teal
The Weight of Medals
dramatic monologue
Pierce Lynne Darcy addresses the audience. Hewalks down the stage to the center andwipes a tear from his eyeswith the red clothwrapped around hiswaist. Taking a deep breath in and slowing his heart rate from the run he just lost, he stares out into the theatre at first blinded by the lights. The stagelights soften and only illuminate him as the rest of the characters on stage freeze.
Goldisn’t that heavy, in theory. After all, the average gold medal is only 1.2 pounds.
What makes it heavy is the weight of everyone’s eyes as their corneas and irises beam down boulders onto your neck.
God, it's heavy.
First place, it’s heavy.
Thank God that the first place pedestal for the first time turned into rusted copper.
Turned to a tarnished record with a bloody stain upon sanitized stainless steel.
Turned to a smile that doesn’t quite shimmer, nor does it gleam, nor does it have the same crowns wrapped around each tooth like when you chewed on the medals you won.
A smile that could hold up the sky on its shoulders, as Atlas did in the myths, that smile used to seem so strong, strong enough to lift spirits and bear the earth upon its canines. A smile that told me, “You are so loved,” that “You are only loved,” even that “You are so loved and only loved, when your feet stand tall.”
An easy feat for me, in theory. Standing 6’2”, I cast a long shadow that leaves many people scratching their heads and looking for the sun. Standing 6’2”, I seem to fit the frame of someone whose feet stand tall, head and shoulders above the rest. Despite standing 6’2”, I still fall short.
If anything, being that tall means I was only taught to look down, keep my head down, and never aim higher than my eyeline. Seemed high enough for a long time, until the right time came for someone standing 6’2” to be cut down.
If a marble statue, standing completely still, shatters suddenly and without reason, did it even exist in the first place?
Did you know that ancient statues were commonly made of bronze? They did that because bronze statues were able to be more expressive than marble. As a matter of fact, it was stronger too. Some statues even had copper lips, so they could speak in any layman’s terms as well as decadent speech.
If a bronze statue, standing completely posed, melts down from facial features with inlaid eyes to a cold lump of no shape or emotion, why did it melt? Did it fly too close to the sun? Did it say too much again? Did it step out of bounds? Did it think lips to talk meant we had to listen?
God, it’s heavy.
The sun, it’s heavy.
The cosmos, it’s heavy.
Thank God that the sun, as it sits in the cosmos for the first time, didn’t win first place for its heat. It never should have in the first place. Colliding neutron stars and the cores of supernovae are a hundred times hotter than the sun. Like a father to a son, the universe has to be honest. The sun had to know that just because it has worshippers, it doesn’t mean it is the best at burning skin.
Just because someone tries to have a neck that can lift expectations, a smile that can lift planets, a stature that can lift doorways, a face that can lift spirits beyond its depth of emotion, a sun that can lift the water out of oceans, doesn’t mean it has earned anything.
It hasn’t earned anything besides my admiration and love.
New Sneakers for the Hoplitodromos photography
It’s an Honor to be Nominated
found poem from famous winning and losing speeches
Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth
My heart is full today
Not of what I fought for
Full of love for our country and full of resolve
My loving people
I have been persuaded by some
That are careful of my safety
To take heed how I committed myself to fear of treachery
I know I have the body, but of a weak and feeble man
But exhume those bodies
Exhume those stories
I've got an awful lot to live for
Thanks for believing in me
You didn't like me
But you were good at your job
United by love of country with enthusiasm and joy in our fight
I would often say when we fight, we win
But here's the thing, sometimes the fight takes a while
It’s really, really scary. I’m really just one young guywhowas fortunate enough to be involvedwith a lot of great peoplewhom it’s incumbent upon me -- there’s noway I’m doing this in less than twenty seconds -- uponwhom it’s incumbent of me to thank.
I shall shortly have a famous victory over this enemy of my god and of my kingdom
I would not be standing here if it weren't for those moms and parents who never get thanked I, in particular, failed to thank
Who gave so much of themselves
Our complaint is not that we are poor by comparison with people
But tonight, because of what we did on this day
At this defining moment
Change has come to America
To any dishonor that shall grow by me
I myself will venture my blood
Who, month after month
Year after year
For 18 years, told me that one day my time will come
And most of all, I want to thank my father out there
The man who, when I said I wanted to win, said
“Nineteen years ago, almost to the day,we lost three astronauts in a terrible accident on the ground. Butwe’ve never lost an astronaut in flight;we’ve never had a tragedy like this.And perhapswe’ve forgotten the courage it took for the crew of the shuttle.”
To the young people who are watching, it is okay to feel sad and disappointed
The stories of the people who dreamed big and never saw those dreams to fruition
People who fell in love and lost
On this day, 429 years ago, the great explorer Sir Francis Drake died aboard a ship off the coast of Panama. In his lifetime, the great frontierswere the oceans, and a historian later said, “He lived by the sea, died on it, andwas buried in it.”
They said, “Wonderful. Just have a backup profession, likewelding.”
But if need be
It is an ideal for which I am prepared to die
My grandmother is 87 years old, and she’s at home watching Nana, I just won an Oscar
Oh, I am so proud of the race we ran
But I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to It belongs to you.
Application de Novo open letter
Dearcollege application systems,
I hope you are well. I am sure this is a busy time of the year for you, so I will try my best to make it brief so you have time to read more applications after this. How dare you?
How dare you force every high school senior to painfully boil themselves down to completely unrepresentative test scores, inauthentic personal qualities, and AI-written letters of recommendation?
How could you ask that of someone?
A living being with a soul that is so incomprehensible and complex that it can take decades to fully understand someone. A human being that has more than 20,000 different genes that can influence countless different traits that make up everything from hair color to likelihood to violent outbursts. A person that is so distinct that they are by definition, one in 8.2 billion, one grain of rice amongst 8,200 tons of rice, one drop of water versus 108,000 gallons.
“A living being with a soul that is so incomprehensible and complex that it can take decades to fully understand someone.”
But for you, I suppose asking someone to shove 6,570 days’ worth of experience into one essay, or two if I’m lucky, is a perfectly reasonable way to approach college applications. It makes sense you would believe that, as I’m sure you are too busy to actually understand a student’s motivations and life.
Even better, you completely ignore an applicant’s entire personality and simply direct your eyes to their SAT score. A score that reflects roughly three hours of a student’s life, compared to the 157,680 hours that span across their whole life. I know you are just looking for anything above 1400, something I fell short of by 20 points.
As a matter of fact, I earned a 1380, an excellent score by any reasonable metric, given that it is in the 92nd percentile for test-takers, but that fact aside, I guess I deserved to be deferred.
I guess it makes sense to defer to a student who has wanted to be a doctor since he was eight years old and specifically a cardiologist since eleven years old. A student who has always pushed themselves to succeed and improve in life to achieve those dreams.
I am sure you always make the right decision.
Early decision or regular. I trust you, because who doesn’t understand high school students better than you?
“Every year, countless seniors plead their case to you on their hands and knees.”
Every year, countless seniors plead their case to you on their hands and knees. They try everything to stand out from the pack, while you get to skim just the first page of the 32 teeth, 78 organs, and 206 bones that make a human who they are. You get to sit back and pick at their gums with scalpels, prod their skin with pencils, see how easily they break when pressure is applied.
At least that’s what it feels like for all of us, for most high school seniors.
I am sure some people just coast through admissions; wing it on the essays, skip studying for the SAT, or try the ACT. It must be so easy to just skip circles around the rest of us. Of course these students who naturally just soar among their peers could use a pat on the back and a gold star.
Even the students who decide to go a different path to their future still have to let their fires lick their skin as assumptions on their ability to think begin to fly by. Society has cast such a weight on the medals you place on people’s shoulders that even the ones who didn’t run the race, still rub their necks from pain.
You really do it so well, holding seniors in your hand. Deciding to crush, cushion, or celebrate them.
Who doesn’t understand high school students better than you?
P.S. I’ll see you again this spring, round two, I suppose.
Thank you for your time, Peter Atchley
Medallion Weight
limericks
Alchemy
Transform me always with your potent spells
I am owned by the ringing of your bells
I don’t recognize myself in my own rusty mirror
Glossy copper eyes under silver brows much clearer
Achilles tendon in the final stretch, my fells
Oxidation
Stale air gets so old after the darkened room flickers
Pour the golden goblet on the ground, empty the liqueurs
Losing my spark as rust rises up my lung
To a broken and shiny hope, a rating must clung
By pagan wings I fly past, I’m none of the vicars
Colophon
All written work was created by Peter Atchley and edited by Margo McDaniel and David Ragsdale.
“Gold, Silver, and Bronze” headlines were printed in Josefin Sans Thin. Bylines were printed in Frank Ruhl Libre. All body copy was printed in Frank Ruhl Libre.
All spreads were designed by Margo McDaniel using Adobe InDesign and Photoshop.
