Awards for best awards: Enter our contest

(If you’re here reading this, you have probably heard – more than once – about our upcoming award certificate template contest. But you haven’t heard it from me, so pay attention.)

Here we are, at the mid-point in August when the thoughts of parents everywhere turn to... BACK TO SCHOOL! To mark this time-honored holiday — I mean tradition — we're holding another template contest. In this go-around, we want to see your most brilliant and snazziest award certificate templates. Sounds simple, you say?

Maybe so. But we want you to think beyond the same old awards: Best Speller (*yawn*), Most Considerate (*suck-up*), or Top Attendance (*oh, come ON!*). How about getting a little creative? You're going to need shiny text and sparkling images if you want to stand out to our judges. I wrote about the last template contest we had, and if you take a look at the winners of that contest, you'll see the sort of standards we're talking about.

But don't be shy or intimidated. This is a great opportunity to show off your mad skillz and learn something along the way.

Although I am not eligible to participate in this contest (I think the templates team is afraid of what I might do — and rightly so), I did come up with a few of my own:

• Most eccentric science teacher
• Most anxious parent of perfectly thriving kid
• Most awkward student-teacher video store back-room moment
• Happiest parents as sullen newly-minted teen goes back to school
• Most macho combo coach/remedial math teacher

And of course, my favorite: Best book report in 140 characters or less:

Think you have what it takes? Read about the guidelines and how to submit here: Office Online Templates Contest. You only have until August 28th!

“I don’t deserve this award, but I have arthritis and I don’t deserve that either.” – Jack Benny

- Crabby