She was resting her head against the palm as she gazed out the dirty, mud-splashed window. Outside, the sun was shining high in the sky and the warm late September breeze made her miss the long days of summer. Instead, she was here, sitting in an uncomfortable, hard desk at a new school surrounded by people she didn't know. She was shy and school was long and lonely now that she had moved. She spent her time in class quiet, trying to go unnoticed in the large, unfamiliar school. Life was rough.

Re-focusing her thoughts, the girl realized her English teacher, Mrs. Jones, was handing back the first big assignment of the school year. It had been difficult, quite different from anything she had done before. The assignment was to re-tell a specific part of Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God from the point of view of a different character, using imagery and dialogue to explain the situation. Prior to this assignment, she had not written many creative pieces and was nervous about her grade, especially after struggling to write the dialogue in the same southern voice Hurston did. A perfectionist, she waited impatiently for her grade.

The teacher placed her thick story face down on her desk and she opened it, hoping for an A but prepared for the worst. “Astounding! Superb! Interesting!” were the words scrawled over the pages of her paper. She received a ninety-nine and a large confidence boost.

The bell rang and the girl walked past her teacher's desk out the door. “Samantha," Mrs. Jones said. “I was beginning to wonder if anything was going on up there, but you really proved yourself to me. You are an exceptional writer.” The girl blushed, unsure how to respond to the insulting compliment, muttered a “Thank you,” and walked out the door, a prideful smile spread across her face. That paper changed the girl's life forever. For the first time she dared to admit she was talented and began to dream about her future.