The audience enjoys the opening number of a pageant show while the girls wait backstage, anticipating the nerve racking moment when they’ll sit in a room with four judges, each one able to ask any question they desire. It could be about personal life, it could be about opinions on certain politics, or they might just ask for a joke. This was just one of the challenges contestants faced at the Miss Kansas Teen America pageant.

Last October, senior Mikaela Carson was awarded the title of Miss Kansas Teen America after competing in pageants for about a year.

“I was approached after I did a charity fashion show with the Natalie M. Foundation,” Carson said. It was the scholarship opportunities that convinced Carson to begin competing in pageants. “Just by being in the [USA] pageant you get a certain amount of scholarship,” Carson said. “As you go up in the rankings, you get a bigger scholarship. Winner gets a full ride.” Besides scholarship money, Carson said that it was also fun to play dress up and embrace her inner little girl. After being crowned, her new title provided her with connections and opportunities that were not open to her before. “It’s been a chance for me to kick start my anti-bullying program,” Carson said. “That’s something that I’ve wanted to start for years, but I didn’t really have the people skills or the mouthpiece to be able to take it places.”

As a pageant title holder, Carson said she was required to have a platform with a cause that she supported.

“I noticed that there didn’t seem to be any active [anti-bullying] programs in schools, or at least none that went to speak directly to the students,” Carson said. “I thought I’d provide my own. So, I started just by typing up a pledge that I could take to schools, working on a speech, contacting local schools and asking if they would allow me to come speak to their students.”

Through the pageant, Carson has met with the commissioner of education and the governor of Kansas in order to implement the program into more schools. She has visited about six schools so far, including Indian Woods Middle school, where she gave a speech followed by a Q & A. Afterwards, students got to sign pledges that would be posted in the hallways, both as a reminder and as a reassurance that they are not alone. Carson’s goal is to speak to every middle school in the Shawnee Mission District by the end of the academic year.

As her responsibilities stack up, Carson says it has only helped her transform into a young woman. “I’ve gotten a lot better at organizing and coordinating my personal life because I have to,” Carson said. “There are so many more responsibilities that I have now and I feel like I’ve kind of grown up as a person since then because I’ve had to take on all these responsibilities.” With her new title, Carson must fulfill certain duties such as being a representative of the Teen America organization by making public appearances and doing philanthropic work. Next month, she will be going to the national Miss Teen America pageant in Nashville, Tennessee.

“I’ve had such a great experience with my Teen title. I would love to continue it as I get older,” Carson said. “Maybe not forever, but just for a little while.”