He handed in his essay, but not with any confidence.
He had enjoyed writing it, despite the fact that it was a real struggle. He knew he needed a seven out of ten to get a pass. The class had been given free range with their topics. It was a composition about the fiction episodes he had been currently watching at home in the evenings. He felt that his descriptions of the shows and his summing up could probably be found by reading viewers’ views on the internet. When all submissions had been marked, his work was returned with a mark of only five out of ten. His teacher made time to sit with him and talk about his mark. He had always liked her as a teacher, but was nervous about what she would say about the poor standard of his work.
Without making him feel at all bad about his low mark, she suggested that he try something more personal, more creative, maybe some description of people struggling with a problem. He was allowed to submit another.
This time he wrote about a schoolboy who was asked to write an essay, who wrote a piece and submitted it, but failed to get a pass mark, and how his teacher had made suggestions and allowed him to write another…
He got a ten.