It may not surprise you to learn that I was a pretty good student. Not perfect, of course — I put everything off to the last minute and did a fair amount of late-night cramming when I was in high school and college — but when the grades went out, I was almost always near the very top.

Good grades, I assumed at the time, would reflect the intellectual effort I put into my studies and display a high level of mastery of the subject. I did especially well in English classes, and I think I devoted myself to that subject because someone told me, at some point during middle school, that if I was thinking about writing as a career, good grades in English would be especially attractive to future employers.