(A&M senior Amanda Arenivar was featured in Spellbound, a 1999 documentary about the National Spelling Bee.)
By APRIL AVISON
Eagle Staff Writer
The word was heleoplankton.
Angela Arenivar confidently but incorrectly spelled the word as “helioplankton,” and with the ding of a timer, was eliminated in the third round of the National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C., in 1999.
By the time of her elimination, she’d come a long way. She’d correctly spelled words like zwieback and wheedle.
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Eagle Photo/Dave McDermand
A&M senior Amanda Arenivar was featured in Spellbound, a 1999 documentary about the National Spelling Bee.
A film crew captured Arenivar, who was 13 at the time, on the documentary Spellbound, which was eventually nominated for an Academy Award in 2003.
“I wasn’t disappointed,” Arenivar said of the elimination. “I was shocked. I thought I had spelled it correctly. I knew how to spell plankton. But I wasn’t disappointed. I was ready to move on, and I knew my parents were proud of me.”
Now a Spanish major at Texas A&M University, Arenivar said she still loves words, and when she stumbles across one she doesn’t know, she looks it up.
The daughter of Mexican immigrants, Arenivar’s native language is Spanish, which makes her spelling talent even more impressive.
“I’ve always really loved language,” said the 21-year-old during a recent interview on the Texas A&M campus.
The Perryton native said she selected Texas A&M because she wanted to study medicine but after taking a contrastive grammar class as one of her Spanish credits she “fell in love with the language.”
She’ll graduate in May 2007 and hopes to go to graduate school, and eventually teach the language she loves.
Spellbound
It’s difficult to recognize the awkward teen with glasses and braces in Spellbound as Arenivar. A review of the documentary described her as “a gangly, tin-grinning brunette and daughter of Mexican laborers.”
The film appears to highlight the “nerdiness” of the spelling bee circuit, as Arenivar and others are portrayed as kids who spend all their free time studying and quizzing themselves in preparation for the national bee.
“My parents always knew I was a studious person and that I loved to spell,” Arenivar said. “I remember coming home after school and studying spelling words. My dad would tell me to take a break. Studying wasn’t the cool thing to do. From time to time, people would make fun of me, but I really think God has given me the gift of language and this love of language.”
Spelling bees are competitive, Arenivar explained.
“I’ve heard people say they don’t want to see the documentary because they think it just shows us kids approaching the mic and spelling words,” she said. “They don’t know about the drama or the intensity. I’d compare it to a basketball game, because it does involve competition. It’s also a little bit luck of the draw.”
The eight kids followed in the film are all a little quirky – intelligent, but childlike. Arenivar said she still keeps in touch with one of the other spellers featured in the documentary, April DeGideo, who is now studying journalism at New York University.
Arenivar wasn’t paid for her participation in the film, but was selected because she competed in the national bee the prior year. The filmmakers were looking for students who had a shot at going again, she said.
“They came to my town and filmed me at the regional spelling bee, and I ended up winning, so they kept following me,” she said.
Spellbound focuses on Arenivar’s immigrant parents when telling her story. Her father, a farmer, doesn’t say much in the movie, but has tears in his eyes when his little girl makes it to the next round of the bee.
The youngest of four children, Arenivar said her siblings also have had some academic successes. Brother Jorge, featured prominently in the documentary, is a registered nurse in Houston. Her brother Leroy is studying medicine at the University of Texas in Houston, and sister Blanca is a teacher in Perryton.
It was Leroy, she says, who inspired her to spell.
“Spelling can be learned, but some people are just naturally gifted,” she said. “Leroy is a natural speller like me.”
She keeps in touch with her family frequently by phone and e-mail, and about once a year, makes the 10-hour trip from College Station to her childhood home in Perryton.
Short-lived celebrity
Arenivar remembers vividly when she found out that Spellbound had been nominated for an Oscar.
She was in high school at the time and was speaking by phone with her mother.
“She had kept in touch with the mother of one of the filmmakers, and that’s how she found out,” Arenivar said. “I thought she was kidding. When I found out she wasn’t, I remember saying, ‘Do you even know what an Oscar is?’”
Her mother didn’t know what it was, so Arenivar filled her in. They watched the Oscars that year, and cheered when the title of the film came up on the screen. It was the year that Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine was named Best Documentary, and Moore made a famous speech attacking President Bush.
“Guns will always win over words,” Arenivar said.
The film didn’t win the Oscar but picked up top honors at the South by Southwest Film Festival and Woodstock Film Festival. Arenivar is still occasionally spotted by fans of the documentary.
“Sometimes when I walk across campus or in class, people will say, ‘Hey you’re Angela,’” she said.
She and fellow speller Neil Kadakia appeared in the audience of an Oprah Winfrey Show that gave insight into “places you might never be.”
Although those experiences were “pretty cool,” it was studying abroad last semester in Salamanca, Spain, that Arenivar says was the time of her life.
She lived with a host family from January through July and was invited by a school in Germany to speak about her Spellbound experience. The students were children of employees at a military base in Panzer, and they all spoke English, Arenivar said. The students watched a screening of Spellbound before Arenivar’s arrival.
“It was awesome,” she said of signing autographs and visiting with the children.
She also got to attend an Aggie Muster in Stuttgart, Germany, and make a quick trip to France.
Arenivar said she plans to take the GRE in October and finish up her last year at A&M taking Spanish classes along with her fourth semester of Latin. She has a job with the Texas A&M Library System.
Arenivar kept a web log of her experiences overseas and said she hopes to someday write a book.
“I think my life, so far, has been pretty interesting,” she said.
• April Avison’s e-mail address is april.avison@theeagle.com.
(Source: theeagle.com )
Written by GRE Word of The Day Team on September 1st, 2010 with 1 comment.
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#1. September 3rd, 2010, at 12:15 AM.
SPELLBOUND!!!!!