This is only the introduction

Don't be alarmed.

Essay: (noun) an initial tentative effort (verb) to try

-Merriam-Webster

It’s just the introduction.

Not the whole essay. That’s due in a couple of weeks.

Still, 67 percent sucks.

Especially since I finally did what people have always been telling me to do: Apply myself.

Teachers have written it in the margins of ancient report cards. Principals have pleaded with me. Employers have… well, they just fired me.

It wasn't until I crawled out of a crater of addiction and despair that I finally took their advice.

I applied to to university. And then I applied myself. And I just got a grade back for my first major assignment.

67.

That's applied me. And it's worth a C.

It’s just the introduction to an essay. Worth 15 percent of my final grade. But it sure doesn’t bode well for the rest of it.

‘This is a good start,” the teaching assistant wrote in his feedback.

Really? It seemed like a mean-spirited grade to me. Did I talk too much in seminar? Or smell like the nervous cigarette I inhaled on the way to class? Was I too old to be there? Scaring the kids, perhaps?

I shared my concerns with the teaching assistant. I could deal with the 67. Begrudgingly. But what next? I have to deliver the rest of this stillborn specimen in two weeks. He offered to read a revised version of the introduction — though he couldn’t change my grade. At least, it might give me some insight into how to navigate the final essay.

You see, an essay isn’t writing, exactly. I could make words here all day long for you. But these Confessions are a matter of the heart. An essay is cold logic. It’s meticulously structured. Every word has to pull its weight. No passengers. It's an argument. Your thesis makes a case and the body of the essay prosecutes that case. Finally, you bring it all home with a conclusion that’s half regurgitated thesis and half reflection on what you learned along the way.

Or, in my case, 100 percent half-baked. I didn't think that maybe I had been too cocky or recklessly disregarded the assignment instructions. I thought I had finally found the part of my brain that was blown out by years of drug abuse.

As you may recall from a few Confessions back, I’ve been wondering when I’d finally find the department of my brain that had been ravaged by the pipe. You can’t just get high for years and expect to get off scot-free.

Well, it looks like that would be the Department of Logic. The bureau responsible for essay-writing — the science of rational thought in language — is cooked.

Or is it?

Way before I set out on a crack-addled crusade to kill myself in the most undignified way possible, I was an English student. I crafted essays sturdy enough to earn As.

Later, as a journalist, I was allowed to be a little less… intellectually rigorous. I figured I’d never write a bibliography again. Then as a ‘content creator,’ I let everything slide. And today, I get to dipsy-doodle all over this blog, rational arguments be damned.

You might expect a few bad habits to sink in over the years.

“I’m kind of glad you got that grade,” a sage friend told me the other day. “It’s not supposed to be easy.”

That woman is always right. I remembered, also, a recent sermon from a professor I like. The moment you feel like you don’t get it — when you hit the wall — isn’t when you declare yourself unteachable. On the contrary, that is the moment your brain begins to learn.

Funny, that's exactly what I went back to school for. A rewired brain.

So I re-wrote that wretched introduction. Then I deleted it and tried again. And again. One more time. Finally, I emailed it to my TA. He got back to me within an hour:

“This is absolutely a step-up from your first introduction. You are dealing a lot more closely with form here.”

While it won’t change the 67, there’s at least hope for the future. Maybe there’s still a light on at the Department of Logic. In any case, I don’t need to write the perfect essay. I just need to try.

I haven't reached my final form yet.

This is just the introduction.