Some of my best writing came in my AP literature class. Mrs. Smith, a spunky, real and, as she liked to say, very pungent teacher, taught me the ways of the world. She picked favorites. I don't think I was one of them. She always just thought of me as an annoyance. I always slept in class, and didn't like to speak up unless I needed to, but I always did just enough to keep an A. The only thing that she had any reason to dislike me for was that I didn't really care about her class. I was a STEM guy (STEM meaning science, technology, engineering and math), and we both knew it.

We had these things called FRQ's, free response questions. They weren't like short answer, one paragraph response questions. They were essays written about a certain topical question that happened to be annoyingly broad. Whenever I wrote these FRQ's I just wrote them do be done with them. I always received mediocre scores. They were never anything special. Yeah, they had perfect grammar, good syntax, etc. Never once did I ever actually write with substance, though.

At this time in my life, I had gotten really obsessed with physics and Einstein's theories. I decided to write an FRQ on physics instead of the book that the question was about. I'd get away with it by relating it to the book. My topic was relativity.

It was this really grand and outrageous thing about how good and bad times coincide and make the other better, and how we should cherish the bad times for making the good ones so amazing. I cared about this writing, and it was deep.

After reading and grading my paper, she actually bragged about my writing to the entire class, saying, "Guys, I know I dog on James a lot, but he absolutely killed it on this last essay!"

Needless to say, I was excited to see what I earned.

When I got it back, man I was pissed off. She gave me an eight out of nine.

Leafing through my paper, I couldn't find but one note, a circle around one very insignificant word. The word was "if."

The purpose of literature is to enlighten. Work at a book and it will yield much wisdom. Strange how staring at something with your eyes can teach you so much about a crazy world. Yet, I've realized that this kind of thing isn't limited to reading.

I took this experience, getting less than a perfect score because of one word that Mrs. Smith happened to dislike, and I've actually learned tremendously from it.

I used to tread lightly, examining every move like a surgeon, living life like I was hanging by the thread of breaking away from comfort. It wasn't ever a good kind of comfort either. It was always normality. I never really tried new things. Yeah I tried a new dish every now and then, but I lived life by a routine. I never invited things, people, or situations into my life that had even a chance of introducing some sort of chaos.

Coming to college and living on my own has forced my out of that comfort zone. I've become a stronger, nicer, and more humanistic man, and it was all thanks to my new experiences. Change happens when you force yourself to see that what has become normal to you just isn't good enough.

Change still terrifies me. The fear of living life in the shadow of my insecurities is even more terrifying.

What's the point of living life in the comfort of hiding behind the ifs, if you can only ever live life at an eight out of nine?