My Curie Story - My Steem Journey

Curie soccer team and coach Donkeypong

My Curie story is same as my Steem story. I started my Steem journey last June. Shortly after I discovered Curie and joined as a curator. When I first came across Steem, I found it to be an interesting idea and decided to try it out. I started without much of expectations, but rather experimentation. I had a simple motto in mind as I was exploring the world of Steem, and this still remains to be the case for me. "I just want to put some positive stuff out there. If it works, great. If it doesn't, no problem."

My early days on Steem I was spending more time reading content and trying to understand how things work and what people were doing. I was and still am fascinated with an idea/action of changing some strangers' financial state by a simple click of an upvote button. As a minnow, my upvotes wouldn't be worth much, but still adding few pennies of value to author's content was better than nothing.

As I would browse Steemit and read interesting posts I kept seeing Daily Curie posts which featured authors that were upvoted by Curie. I would go and read posts by those featured authors to see and learn what they were doing and writing about. Seeing these posts earning hundreds of dollars was a motivating experience. I thought to myself, maybe I could create some awesome content as well. But what really caught my attention was in these Daily Curie posts I kept seeing this: "All curators are cordially invited to join our community of over a hundred curators by submitting hidden gems at http://curiesteem.com".

I was reading various posts daily and I was sure some of them would qualify as "hidden gems". So, I decided I would give submitting posts to Curie a try. Afterall, I was experimenting with Steem, why not try Curie? I signed up at streemian.com and the same week submitted 2 posts that I thought were awesome. Reading further on submitting process, I found out curators earned 10 Steem of finder's fee for each approved post. This couldn't get any better. I was already happy that by submitting posts to the Curie guild I was doing some good, helping out authors whose posts I enjoyed. Getting a generous reward on top of that was just mind-blowing. Yet, I still didn't expect much. Sunday came, and I saw 20 Steem transferred from Curie to my account for my 2 submitted and approved posts. Now I knew this was a real thing.

The same week I started submitting posts, Curie closed its public submissions due to many low-quality posts being submitted. Many curators with low scores and approval ratings were disqualified. Since I didn't get a disapproved submission, I was among the lucky ones who remained to continue as Curie curators. My first week I didn't know much about Curie. I didn't know they had guidelines for submitting posts. I was just experimenting. I wanted to learn more. I joined their channel on steem.chat, read the guidelines and started asking questions.

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Week 2

I continued submitting posts and learning more about Curie. The second week I was among tier 2 curators, my submission limits were higher. Although a couple of my submissions were disapproved, my overall score remained to be ok. My goal was to become a top curator.

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Week 3

Week 3, I managed to become a top curator. Yay! Since public submissions were closed, Curie initiated a recommendation program for new curators. Only top curators were allowed to mentor and recommend new curators. I loved the project and wanted more people to be able to join, and I started mentoring new curators and recommending them almost every week. Well, it was kinda funny to me at first, I myself being a new curator was mentoring even newer curators. That is another great aspect of Curie, meritocracy.

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Week 4

Week 4, I upped my game a little bit. Confidence levels were high, I thought I could do even better. I managed to submit 17 posts and all of them were approved. I ranked 3rd on the leaderboard.

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Week 5

The fifth week I continued curating as usual and at the end of the week, there was a pleasant surprise. I ranked 1st on the curators' leaderboard. Success! I maintained being a top curator for several weeks if not months.

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As of late, I have been distracted by other projects and my curating levels dropped down. I still enjoy curating and am proud to be part of Curie. I have gained skills, learned new thing, met new friends. What I treasure the most is the people of Curie. These are some amazing folks who are doing an outstanding job for the Steem community. Everybody who is involved with Curie played important role in my Steem journey, and I am very grateful for that. Thank you all.

In my opinion, Curie is an extraordinary thing that happened to Steem. Curie tries to make Steem work for everybody and serves as a proof of concept for the innovation that Steem has brought to us. Curie serves the Steem community in many other ways. It operates a reliable community witness and rpc node. It discovers promising authors and empowers quality curators. It helps to build communities, and it supports existing communities. It encourages engagement and supports development.

My story is not as interesting as so many stories that had been written under #mycuriestory tag already. I encourage everybody to check #mycuriestory tag and read authors' stories and impact Curie has had on people, how they feel about it, and what were their experiences. Do you have a Curie story to share? Please do so and tag it #mycuriestory.

Vote for @curie as your Witness!

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