Radnor High School student gets third place in national writing contest

Love, Kudos Remembrance is an occasional series profiling people from the Main Line who stumble into grand loves, stand out to their neighbors and whose memories remain after they're gone.

When Andrew Lin was 10, he tried reading a book no child his age would normally try to read – Ayn Rand's 752-page novel, Fountainhead.

"I didn't quite understand it then, but I reread it again last year, and I was struck by not only how much I understood it but also how it's the kind of work that captures the spirit of the times we need to look at [present day]," Lin, now 17, said about the philosophical novel.

The book resonated with the junior Radnor High School student to the extent that he not only explored other works by the Russian-American philosophical novelist, but also entered in two essay contests by the author's nonprofit organization, The Ayn Rand Institute.

Radnor School District announced in late January that Lin was one of 10 third place winners for the 2011 Anthem Essay Contest, a national essay writing contest the Institute sponsored based on the early 20th century author's novella.

Lin was also named one of 80 semi-finalists in the Institute's 2011 We the Living Essay Contest, based on Rand's semi-autobiographical novel about the struggle between a individualistic young girl and the tyranny she encounters living in a mid-1920s post-revolutionary Russia.

Both contests required applicants to be high school juniors.

Lin said his essay for the Anthem contest required him to write about the main character's individual development over the course of the novel, while the We the Living contest prompt he selected required him to explicate on the tyranny and poverty the narrative presents in Russia during that time period.

"It took quite a lot of revisions before I felt the essays were ready," Lin said. "It wasn't until drafts four and five that I felt I had workable copy."

Rand developed the philosophical system "objectivism," expressed in her aforementioned works as well as her novel, Atlas Shrugged. Objectivism, which simply put means that knowledge and values are determined by an individual's perception and reality, was what led Lin to appreciate Rand's work on such a grand scale.

"Rand's work caused me to embrace objectivism as an individual, and in her work, she emphasizes the individual," Lin said.

The Radnor High junior, who is also a participant in the Delaware Valley and Delaware County Science Fairs, treasurer of the school's student government, a band member and member of the school's quiz team, HiQ, said he would enter the writing contest for Atlas Shrugged when he's a freshman in college.

Although he hasn't made definite college plans, Lin said he wants to incorporate Rand's philosophies and a similar creativity in a science-related profession.

"Whatever I do, I hope to be able to combine this type of creative impulse with strong, rigorous analysis," Lin said.