I know how common it is to say things like “hard work is worth more than talent” but I can't figure the truth behind this out, especially after who I have sitting next to me in English class. The genius of English class, writing essays in no time flat to my struggling to meet the deadline, and with grades to match. Well, it is not that bad, I usually pull off a B, but still he never seems to work at all and aces everything. His work shows up as the Cheshire cat does; it is just there, no forethought needed and no warning to match. He appears when he is needed and he may appear even when he is not needed. He seems to dance with life and exuberance all class long, forever enjoying the company of those who must invest more time in their work, rather than those who have the time to spare to mess around in class. Much the same as a cat behaves when it is around someone who must work, it pesters the person working until they give in and are distracted.

This has gone on for the entire semester with his one failing being his homework, which can drag him down to a B in the end if left unchecked, but of course he checks the problem that would attract parental notice to his teachers. He is a minor to medium nuisance in class and is watched keenly by his teachers. He keeps his teachers far from any means of contacting his parents or his home. He has become a funnel for all the information to his home and he acts as a filter for all things that his parents may get about him from school. He is in essence the one bridge his parents have to his teachers and he is no letting any information past. After all, what better way to control information than to minimize its spread.

All of this and still he thrives, unlike me, struggling along only just passing the bar set for me, a bar that I may hit on a bad day, while he soars over all bars set for him. This trend goes on and on.

“How are you today?” I inquire.

“Good, and you?” he replies,

“I am doing well, despite all these essays.”

“Eh, the work isn't all that bad” he replies “only about an hour a class at most.”

Yeah, right I think, at most, it's closer to at least but I only vocalize, “sure,” and thus the entirety of our conversations regarding school work are concluded for the day, with all further conversations merely an attempt to break the monotony of each passing day.

We march on as is if we were members of an unnamed, unnameable army sent to enforce an ideological code that demands us to see everything in a rainbow and to be colorblind at the same time, to evaluate but not to judge. Each passing day aligning our thoughts like a set of swivel wheels being pushed in the same direction. Eventually we all think alike.

Winter exams approach. Am I the only one who feels the doom and gloom of this tremendous beast that hunts us, that seeks to devour the sum of all of our knowledge, just to deem it insufficient to sate its maddening hunger? No, I am the only one who dreads the semester’s last barrier. The others only see the end of confined spaces that are oppressively bright, with a forced order upon us, we who crave chaos and wish to escape and wander as cats wander. We would wander with no real destinations or goals, except for those who may decide to reach a peak only to descend once more to the realms of thier peers. But alas the Cheshire cat would still be envied there, with his vanishing off to the hardest to reach points in this world at a mere thought.

The day of reckoning is upon us, the great terror, the fight of our papers to speak volumes about something much less. The shortest passage is tortured into pages of an essay. Why must we fight in these square rings that circle and circle around only to spear the point at the conclusion after digging it out of the abyss to start? Mr. Cheshire seems to dwell in this arena of the mind. He commands the words of obscurity that are to inspire us all to write from our hearts, to let the language flow down to the paper like an ethereal stream of thought. With this I must compete, with a blade in the form of my pen, a map in the form of a thesis, and with a shield called an eraser.

I found that these armaments were only sufficient for me to maintain my standing, not to rise above to the aspired A. Struck by this knowledge I sought to find a new path to the core of a question and a new way to mine a passage for information

. A friend of mine illuminated a saying her parents had, “Work smart, not hard. I replied “What's the difference?” Holding no understanding of the meaning held in these words. She held to the words to mean that "You shouldn't waste your work on unnecessary things.”

This saying "work smart, not hard" became the key to my success when combined with a bit of math, where I have a stronger base to work from. I found myself a pattern, a rhythm, or more accurately still, a formula, a way to plug and chug for English. Not a system for finding anything, but a system for showing the results that I found, almost like a Mad Libs or a fill-in-the-blank paper. This, I found, worked for me. This was no substitute for good hard work but it helped to speed the process along, allowing for more time to find the key points and the important quotes/passages/whatevers that the assignment needed. Thus, while not making me a miracle student, made it so that I skimmed A’s instead of B’s.

Soon the great terror shall rise to the forefronts of our minds once more, returning with an ever thicker armor and hiding in a labyrinth of paper with walls of words. Twisting and turning our attempts to unveil the messages hidden within, leaving us only the ability to decipher the core from scratching the surface of the great monstrosity. Forcing us to blaze a meandering trail through the wilderness of knowledge that is unveiled to us, while returning to construct a road that only runs to vital locations, bypassing all that is not needed for us to answer to the queries presented.

My new methods allowed me to mine all that deeper in my short time to seek the essence of passages and still build the road of sufficient structure. I could widen my net and not loose the depth needed to catch the fish. I am still far from perfect and far from a master at writing but I could now keep up with the Cheshire cat enough to see him come and go to notice the instant of strain before his works are done and revealed to us all.