I mostly identify as awkward.
I highlighted the heck out of this week's Palmeri chapter. I got totally hyped up about how engaging, creative, and open-ended his assignment ideas are, and I marked all of them for later reference. But then I started thinking about how 15-year-old me would have felt about these assignments. If you take my present-day awkwardness and multiply it by about five thousand, you’ll have some idea of how awkward I was at fifteen. Talking in front of other people was really, really painful. Writing – quietly, in isolation – felt much safer. I still feel that way. The only difference is that, back then, I didn't have a 20-year accumulation of awkward moments to ruminate about. In eighth grade English, we had to research a topic of our choice and give a speech about it. At the time, I was really into dreams. I kept a dream diary and had a dream dictionary on my nightstand, and it seemed like a good chance to learn more. I threw myself into my research, where I had my first encounter with...