There is no week 4 post because that week was a nothing burger. My story was unable to be critiqued on that Friday because there wasn’t enough time and I had my first sociology midterm. I also only went to class on Monday and Friday as Wednesday was a holiday, Truth and Reconciliation day. People still worked but school was on break.

Week five is more interesting. My sociology professor really likes to go on lectures about the evils of capitalism, which is very refreshing in this damn school but nothing new for anyone here. I will still talk about that class, but for now nothing too crazy has been stated, not even by the students.

Some comrades (I remember you, don’t worry) asked me to share my story after it has been graded and I will do so later in the post. My critique happened this week on Wednesday, and according to my professor after our specific piece is critiqued he uploads the grade, so now I can feel comfortable sharing it with you all.

It was embarrassing at first, not because I was being “scrutinized,” but because it took forever for people to put their hands up to volunteer summarizing my story. Just to remind everyone, the way these class critiques work is we read a couple of stories before critique day. On the day we first summarize the story, then give the positives, and then give suggestions. This is how a proper and constructive critique of a work is supposed to go.

Anyway, when my professor asked someone (who cannot be me) to summarize the story, no one raised their hand. He then asked who was in my small group (people that refuse to communicate with me) and I pointed all of them out. None of them offered to summarize. When he pointed at one of my group members they admitted that they didn’t even read my fucking story. I laughed but in reality I was so sad.

Then a guy raised his hand and offered to do it. His summary was quite off but got most of the main bits down. The big thing was that he misunderstood the relationship between the main characters. I can see where he could mistake them. For what it is worth, everyone really liked my story and gave great compliments. The critiques made sense as well and I will be fixing things in my revision/final draft. I admitted that the word count screwed me over as I did want to clarify certain things but could not because I would go over the limit and I really wanted it to be exactly 700.

I am being vague here because I do not want to spoil the story and sway your own criticisms. I can share what was stated more explicitly in the comments.

For now, here is the story:

Important Note: the last line about approaching footsteps was actually mandatory for all of our stories. In the revision we do not have to have said line.