This is the only medal I have ever won. When I was seventeen I won it for an essay I wrote on a topic on the composition paper for my Irish exam in the Leaving Certificate. I always liked writing essays, never regarded them as a test, just a vehicle to assemble my thoughts into some form of intelligible order and offer my take on subjects as diverse as economic problems and trade agreements to abstract titles based on music, art, literature. And now my addled brain has forgotten what was the subject matter that won me the medal!