A Pattern in Graphics Class

     I am still in high school, and i am taking a graphics class. And being one of the more advanced class, all of the other school organizations will occasionally ask us for posters, invitations, brochures and the like. A while back ,we had one we were assigned to do as a submission to the "Drive Smart" poster contest for the Colorado Springs Police Department encouraging people to drive safely. Now, at this time I was intently focused on another project and by the time the due date arrived for the "Drive Smart" poster, I had not a thing to submit. Since these submissions count as our grades, I hurried and completed a poster design in about half an hour, just so I would not receive a zero for the assignment. It was a simple (and frankly rather stupid) poster which had a picture of a meme from the internet with the caption "Students, y u no drive safe?". I hadn't expected much from it.
    However, come to realize that a month later when the winners were selected, not only had the runt of efforts won first place, the chief of police wanted to have it framed and mounted on his office door. And to further matters, the other project I was working on for over a month and that took up a majority of the time I should have been using to finish my "Drive Smart" poster had not received but a single glance.
    This was aggravating to me. Something I had poured all of my know-how in to had received far less attention than something that took the about same amount of time, effort, and devotion as picking your nose. My resolution to this? Do that every time. We will be given two weeks to do an ad for the school play, for instance, and on the last two days I will pull something out of my a** and hope for the best.
    To my surprise, I was receiving a lot more winning submissions than ever before. It seems that my last-minute spontaneous thoughts seem to out-gun my long and thought out work a million to one. And while I was still very appreciative towards all the praise, I still feel a bit misrepresented. I've been doing this system for about two months now, and it is painful how little what I do reflects what I can do.
    We have a free choice project coming up, in which every student designs something of their own free will. No contests, no competitions, no specifications, just what flows from you organically.
    I'm going to pour  everything I have into this; just for once have something impressive I can stand behind as a representative of my abilities as a graphic designer.