1
“A C-plus?! Are you kidding me?”
I stared at the marked sheet of paper in front of me,
struggling to digest the letter grade that was about to
taint my long-standing track record of As and cause my
7th Grade progress chart to take a nosedive. Literature
hasn’t always been my strong suit, but I could’ve sworn
on my own life that I was going to ace that test. I made
sure I pored over the passage repeatedly, forcing my
brain to comprehend and absorb each and every word as
though they were the Ten Commandments themselves. I made
sure I answered the literary analysis prompt as
thoroughly as possible, strategically extracting evidence
from the text to delicately craft a concrete pillar for
my well-structured thesis to lean on. I even made sure to
triple-check every detail perfectly; not a single
component of my literary jigsaw puzzle was to be fixed
out of place. The moment I placed my response on the
chipped, weathered oak desk stationed at the corner of
the classroom, I genuinely (and naively) thought I had
written the best essay of my entire academic life.
Apparently my teacher didn’t share the same sentiment.
JUSTIN SINCLAIR
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