Work Text:
Once there was a boy who was working on an English course online at school. He was doing fine in the English course, enough to pass. His school life was also average, having some friends and getting in trouble at times, but it was going fine.
When the boy has trouble with assignments, he would always try to ask his friends for help. The boy knew that he could rely on his friends when he couldn’t understand the assignment, as most of his friends were loyal and understanding of the situation.
The boy continued doing assignments in the English course, and it was time for him to do another project. The boy hoped that the project would be easy to do, as he doesn’t like thinking much about doing a project. When the boy opened the project to view the instructions, he was in utter shock. The project wanted him to write a short story.
The boy has never considered himself a decent writer. He has never written anything that won’t haunt him back in later times. The last creative writing the boy tried to do was so embarrassing, that he didn’t even submit it until the deadline was over. For a very long time, the boy thought that he was unable to write anything.
Seeing the instructions made the boy extremely anxious. He started thinking “What can I write about? What story do I choose? How will I approach this? Will I get a good grade?” The boy became overwhelmed with all of the questions he thought.
Naturally, the boy turned to his friends and said “I can’t write about anything. What story should I write about?” His friends thought of dumb and interesting stories the boy could write about. Whether his friends said it mockingly or not, the boy knew it wasn’t in any intention to harm.
The boy thought of an idea. One that was amusing but admittedly a little dumb. A story about a boy who was assigned to create a short story which he couldn’t think of anything.
It was the best the boy could think of, but he was afraid that he wouldn’t be able to shape the story to the teacher’s liking. When the boy talked about this to one of his friends, they said “Just start. If you get a failing grade, you get a failing grade, but just start.” His friend meant to just start, get over the fear of not starting, and type down anything.
So the boy did. He started by outlining the story of “a boy who didn’t know what to write the story about.” Naturally, the boy couldn’t think of much, but the most important thing is he started. The boy zoned out a lot since he was having a hard time trying to come up with ideas in his story, but he’s trying his best. Of course, the boy was scared that his story would turn out a little dull, but he couldn’t think of anything else.
After a while, the boy needed to go to the bathroom. He left the computer open and hoped no one messed around with it. However, luck was not on his side, and a mysterious person decided to delete everything, and close the browser.
The boy came back to his computer and saw his browser closed. He didn’t think much until he opened up the browser and saw that all of his words in the project were gone. He immediately started panicking. The boy didn’t know what to do, and he was afraid that all of the work he did was gone. The boy didn’t even know who caused this.
One of his friends then saw the boy's distress and asked him what went wrong. The boy described how his work is gone because someone deleted all of it. His friend then described that the website has multiple saved instances and that the boy could just go through the history and retrieve his work. The boy endlessly thanked his friend for showing him such a feature and felt relieved.
The project took the whole school day, but he was close to finishing it. When the boy reread the story he had just written, it was at least bearable to him. The boy told one of his friends to help check for any grammar or spelling mistakes or if there’s anything the boy needed to rewrite.
His friend said everything looked okay so far, so the boy trusted him. The boy formatted the project and inserted it in the online school submission. When the boy was about to submit the project work, he felt like he was missing something. He went back to recheck it, and he had almost forgotten to put his name in.
The boy laughed for a bit, saying to himself how he almost made a massive blunder for almost submitting the project work without putting his name in. He fixed the mistake, rechecked everything just to make sure, and submitted the project.
The boy told his friends that he doesn’t really care if the story gets an F since he thinks that the story is not that great anyways. But in the back of his head, he wishes for a passing grade. Not even a good grade. Just a passing one.