My “Before”

Sunday 23 August 2026

Grade 10 starts tomorrow.

Ten weeks ago I finished Grade 9 and asked a question on a Friday evening. Today I sat at my desk and looked at where the question has taken me.

What I have:

• The map. A Google Doc that catalogues every organisation, person, book, podcast, paper and policy document I found in five weeks of looking, with one line each on what they do and one line on what they don’t.
• The one-paragraph proposal. Written, published here, and not made smaller.
• A name, in pencil. Co-Authored. Boxed on the back page of a holiday notebook, waiting for the pen.
• The book, slightly-read. I am on chapter two. It is coming to school in my bag so I can read on the tube.
• A list forming in my head of things I am not going to do. It is turning out to be the most important list of all of them, and it deserves its own post when I can write it properly.
• Twenty blog posts. This one and the nineteen before it. The honest record of the summer.

What I do not have: a name in pen. A single email sent. An advisor. A site. Anyone’s permission, agreement, or reply.

The summer plan said all of that would be done by today. The summer plan was wrong, the way the camp-evenings plan was wrong. Camps are for swimming and holidays are for families, and the project got what was left, which was less than the plan imagined. I am deciding not to feel bad about it. The thinking got done. The building moves to term time.

So here is the term plan, one line long: Co-Authored gets Sundays.

School tomorrow. Algebra II, World History, AP Physics, and a swim season starting in two weeks. The question that started all this is coming with me in my school bag.

— D.