Board Thread:Season 21 - Salvation/@comment-24776269-20141203221205

Members of the Jury,

I don't want to sit here and make you listen to a beginning-to-end summary of my game. I think my game speaks for itself. If you have any questions about it, please feel free to ask.

I would like to address two things that were major moments of adversity in this game for me:

The first being the fact that I don't really know many of you outside this game. I love Survivor, and I enjoy playing in the occasional ORG. But other than that, I don't really chat too much outside the games. I think this was a definite disadvantage for me, especially in a returnee season, where connections are everything. You had allies and enemies from prior seasons working together and trying to claw their way to the top, and I was stuck by myself, with Julia as the only person I had played with before and Tyler as one of the few players I had conversed with outside the game. When the game first started, I had to make a choice to play a slightly less "honorable" game than my first attempt. In Sardinia, I tried my hardest to avoid deceit at all costs and stay loyal to one alliance. I knew that wouldn't work this time around, so I had to make hard decisions and betray people who trusted me. That really hurt, but it was the only way to succeed. If I hurt your feelings in any way, I apologize and I want you to tell me so that we can work it out. I wanted to connect with as many people as possible, but I avoided talking too often because I didn't want to get too attached. I'm a fiercely loyal person and it goes against my nature to betray someone else, so if I didn't get to know you too well, that was part of my game plan.

The second one being when I nearly quit at Final Eight. I know that everyone is busy and everyone has real life conflicts, but being a music major is a whole different animal because your schedule is so irregular. I hadn't participated in all the challenges and I felt like it wasn't fair for me to continue. If you want to scroll through the tribe chat and read the speech I gave to the tribe, go ahead. That's sincerely how I felt at the time. It was a low point for me because never had I considered quitting. If I wasn't producing, then someone could vote me out, but I had never viewed quitting as an option until that night. My grandfather had just had another heart scare, my grades were lower than I had hoped, and I had just been yelled at by a professor for 20 minutes about a paper I had failed to complete.

Sure, I wanted to quit. But I chose to stay.

In the end, I decided to stick it out. I participated in as many challenges as I could, talked strategy as often as possible, and here I sit.

Some may try and paint that weak point as a negative. I think it just goes to show that even at my most vulnerable point in the game, I was able to rally the troops, pull off a huge blindside, and make it to Final Tribal Council.

Vote for me, not because I was a huge challenge god, not because I was a master strategist who orchestrated every major blindside, not because I am best friends with all of you outside this game, but because I embody what this season is all about. I overcame my personality flaws of last season and was able to make it farther than I did because of it. I didn't allow my busy schedule to get the best of me and persevered through one of the roughest patches in my life so far to get past a difficult tribal council. Most importantly, I stuck to my guns, played my cards right, and made it to Final Tribal Council, despite all the things I've already mentioned. If that's not a good enough case for ultimate Salvation, I don't know what is.

I greatly look forward to hearing y'alls questions. Thank you for hearing me out. 