*sheepish grin*

       The constant scratching sound of a pencil dragging over paper suddenly ceases. In its place, a frustrated sigh and the sound of crumpling paper fill the otherwise silent room. The invocation sails in a slow, graceful arc toward a small trashcan overflowing with previous unsuccessful attempts at a beginning. It teeters at the very precipice before falling to rest among still more sadly failed attempts that litter the floor around the trashcan. The writer sits in a high-backed wooden chair in front of a small utilitarian desk. Copious amounts of sunlight stream in through an open window situated above the desk. The intoxicating smells of summer at its height waft in from the outside on a warm breeze. Another sigh can be heard as the writer idly taps her pencil on the desk, appearing miles away and lost in thought. Slowly, the sounds of the outside world seem to call her back to herself and, with a snort, she throws the pencil violently against the notepad that only minutes ago was the sole focus of her attentions. A contemptuous sneer crosses her face as she glares down at the notepad. “Screw this,” she growls, before thrusting back the chair and storming out of the room, intending to find something better to do on this beautiful day. A small, unbidden voice seems to whisper to her, pleading with her to be sensible, to finish the project early and get it out of the way. As quickly as it appears, the voice is crushed by the rationalization that the project can always be done later, preferably on a day not as beautiful as this one. Besides, she figures she has already done some decent work; after all, all of those bad beginnings are out of her system; the perfect one will come to her in time. Now all traces of guilt at abandoning her project before even beginning it are gone, leaving in their wake a feeling of exhilaration at what the remainder of the day had in store.

      By now, she has already retrieved her cell phone and keys. She is heading for the front door of the house when her phone rings. It turns out to be a friend who has the same project for a class they would be taking together next year and who is already almost finished. After making some excuses for her lack of progress, she invites her friend to come see a movie or perhaps just go shopping. Upon arriving home long after the sun has disappeared from the sky, the writer walks by the office she used to write in without so much as a glance or a passing thought of the looming due date of the project.

      Weeks pass like this, a token effort in the morning never amounting to anything and mindless outings or activities in the evening. One of her closest friends calls to talk to her about the project; her friend needs advice on how to do his paper and asks her what she has done. The writer laughs sheepishly and explains that she has gotten the heading done, and that is about it. Her friend is shocked, and asks what she has been doing all this time, to which she answers, “Oh you know, this and that, I do a little bit in the morning, but so far I haven’t been able to get past the very beginning. I just can’t think of anything! The beginning needs to be perfect; I want to impress the teacher. I know the perfect phrasing for what I want to say will come to me in time. I just need to be patient!”.

      Not convinced, her friend warns her to start soon: “The beginning is the easy bit!” is the last thing he says before hanging up on her. Annoyed that her best friend would hang up on her like that, she decides to ignore his advice and continue procrastinating.

      Soon, the first day of school comes, and still not even the excited talk of the other students in her class concerning the difficulties of the year to come can encourage her to finish or even work on her project further than the shadow of an idea that lurks in her mind. The class is an AP course and thus weighted, and will make a much greater impact on her grade point average should she succeed in the class or not. The actual due date is set for the first of November, and it is already September 25^th. The writer figures she has plenty of time to get the project done, and besides, there are much more interesting things she could be doing than sitting at home working on a project.

      The first dance comes up, and despite the warnings of her friends to skip it and work on her project, she goes ahead and joins in the revelry. Soon, the workload of all her classes starts to catch up with her. She spends less and less time on her project, even with its looming deadline, because she figures she can do it next week when she has fewer things to do.

      Next week comes, and the workload never lessens. Instead, the work seems to be coming in torrents now, a raging flood of work that never lets up. The teachers do not heed the cries of their students that they have too much work to do. Tests are scheduled on the same day over and over again, leaving her barely enough time to sleep, let alone work on a project due in just a few scant weeks. The writer begins regretting her decision to party and slack off during the summer, and longs for more time in which to work. She begins staying up later and later, her grades start to slip, and she has long since quit all sports and clubs in a vain attempt to free up more time for herself. Her friends wonder at her lack of involvement and the sickly pale color she turns as the stress takes its toll.

      Unknown to the writer, her parents are called into the school to discuss her lack of progress with her teachers and her failing grades. When they arrive back home, the writer’s parents call her down from whatever she is doing to give her a lecture on responsibility. They have high hopes for her, and will not tolerate any slacking off. The writer tries to protest, citing all the other work she has, and the project that still needs to be finished. Not satisfied, her parents dig into her more, trying to impress upon her the importance of this year to her future. The writer thinks of the college she wants to attend and knew that if her grades fell any more than they have that she would not have the grade point average to meet the requirements. With the new fear of a rejection from her chosen school, the writer goes upstairs and does not come out until she has finished her project. It takes her all night and into the next morning to get just the paper that went with the project done. She had not realized that there were more aspects to the project than just the paper. In her haste to start in the beginning, she had only read the very top of the assignment sheet. She has another two days to come up with a model representing the paper she had written and prepare a speech to go with it. The writer works frantically, and ends up skipping the two days before the project was due in its entirety in order to get it done. Finally, the day of reckoning comes. The project is due and as she drives to school, she wonders, panic-stricken, if it will be good enough to scrape a passing grade this quarter. Due to her absence from school the two days prior, the teacher has scheduled her to be the last presenter for the first day. She gets to sit through presentation after presentation, each one better than the one before, wondering how hers can possibly compare to the excellence of the other students. Finally it is her turn. She stands up, retrieves her model, and has the longest, darkest walk from the back of the room to the front. Her heart races, and she breaks out in the worst nervous sweat of her life. Her hands get so slippery that she thinks she will surely drop her model before even getting to the front of the room. Through some grace of God, she manages to attain the front of the room with everything intact. By now, she is as white as a sheet and her mind is a blank. For what seems like an eternity, she just stands there in the front of the room, staring out into the expectant faces of her peers. Her mind races, showing her every one of her fears coming true: failing the class, ridicule from her peers, and worst of all, not getting into the college of her dreams. It takes the teachers gentle cough to break her out of her spiral of doubts and draw her attention back to the class. Glancing at the clock, she notices that only about a minute has passed. She clears her throat and strains her memory to recall the speech she spent all of the last night memorizing. Finally it comes back to her, and after only a few false starts, she finishes the speech and the presentation as a whole. Feeling entirely drained, she walks back to her seat and cannot for the life of her remember what she has said to her class or the teacher; she just prays that it was good enough.