The clock showed that it was 16:12.

The boy sat down at his desk, haphazardly lobbing his backpack onto the left side of his table while doing so. It’s a motion that he has clearly refined over hundreds of repetitions and a decade’s worth of schoolfaring experience. 

The boy then breached containment. The double zippers on his backpack purred to life, releasing a begrudged groan as the boy tore the companions apart. He carefully procured from his bag a fairly new yet already worn laptop. The must of years of gym clothes accompanied the device- a high-pressure mushroom cloud of ardent pungence being freed at last and erupting into the boy’s room.

The boy opened his laptop. 

"For this assignment, I ask that you compose a narrative personal essay.”

A wave of unfathomable relief and joy washed over the boy, coalescing itself in the place where stone-cold dread had once furiously gripped the boy’s heart with sweaty palms.

THANK GOD! Piece of cake. Those past two papers… were… uh… something… this one’s gonna be a walk in the park. Home-field advantage, man. I used to do this kind of stuff for fun. I mean, it’s basically a homecoming. Fulfilling my nostos, haha! I should probably study chemistry or something I don’t know how to do first. I can get around to this next week.

The clock showed it was 5:01.

The boy opened his laptop.

“Try to present an episode, or series of episodes, in which you learned something essential about yourself.”

The boy sighed. He’d hoped that the expulsion of his last virgin breath untupped by the words on SOPHOMOREENGLISHESSAY4.DOCX would also lead to the expulsion of his resentment towards the essay. It did not.

Yeah, I mean it’s just a personal essay. Simple enough. I mean these prompts aren’t really the easiest things to work with, but like, whatever. I still have like another four days- what am I doing working on some English paper on a Friday anyway? I could probably finish this up in like an hour or two, tops.

The clock showed it was 19:05.

The boy opened his laptop.

“Be as specific as you can in your presentation, and please do your best to bring your characters and setting to life in lively, sleek, and grammatically sound-”

Yeah, I’mmmmm gonna do this… tomorrow.

The clock showed it was 7:09.

The boy opened his laptop.

“The page length for this essay may vary depending on the amount of dialogue but should be no longer than four pages.”

Blah Blah Blah

The clock showed it was 22:05.

The boy had been rooted in his seat all afternoon. Initially, it was his determination to begin his essay that cemented him into his chair. He had put off running, lunch, and even his chemistry homework for this paper. The guidelines’ tendrils had wrapped itself around the boy, and gripped him, beckoning him to begin working. The boy begrudgingly complied.

Dread for the paper’s final form had slowly built up within the boy like a kidney stone. The boy was not yet ready nor willing or able to expel it.
This first draft was quite possibly the most cringe-worthy and bland piece of work to have ever been spun from the boy’s fingertips.

Okay… well… so what if this current version of this essay isn’t the best thing I’ve ever written? I mean, it’s probably not even THAT bad. I’ve still got some time anyway. This isn’t even gonna be its final form.

The clock showed it was 13:05.

The boy furiously grabbed his hair. He wiped his sweaty palms on his shorts. He had racked his brain for hours, yet there had been no divine spark of genius as he had hoped for. It was akin to receiving an Ikea bedframe with just a handful of missing screws.

WHY DOES EVERYTHING I WRITE TURN OUT TO BE SO BAD??? WHY CAN’T I JUST THINK??? WHY CAN’T I JUST WRITE??

The clock showed it was 1:14.

The boy leaned back in his chair and took a sip of his vaguely warm water. He shifted his gaze from his luminous white screen down to his dull wooden table. He’s not sure what kind of wood it’s made of. He sighs and then looks around his room, catching a glimpse of himself in the unforgiving void of his phone’s screen.

Okay, well, there’s still gonna be the final, right? This one paper won’t matter that much. I mean, there’ll also be class participation and stuff that could lift my grade up a little bit, right?

The clock showed it was 1.

The boy stared blankly at his screen. He had thought that he caught a faint flicker of inspiration from the muses, something he hadn’t felt since his first steps. A tantalizing yet fleeting whisper of hope grazed the boy’s ear, yet it all vanished just as quickly as it had mystically materialized.

This is hopeless. This essay is just awful. I just can’t do any better. I should’ve worked on this sooner. Why didn’t I work on this sooner?

The clock is ninety seconds from midnight.

The boy has birthed his final creation. An amalgamation of text and dialogue lay on the boy’s laptop. A garden variety of grammatical errors lay there, fat and ripe for harvest by his teacher the next morning. Comma splices and confusingly worded sentences spewed from every pore of his work.

The boy read it all over one last time and sighed. It was a sorrowful sigh made faintly bittersweet by his release from the grasp of Untitled Document. But then he let his eyes glaze over and his mind took over.

The boy felt the crushing weight of defeat press every last ounce of his strained optimism out of him mercilessly.

There’s nothing more I can do. I’m just not good at writing personal essays I guess. I always thought that I had it. Well, you learn something new every day.

It’s midnight.

The boy closes his laptop.

The boy leans back in his chair and weeps. 

And then he laughs.