Ok, this one is not missing a class but much better story IMO. When I was in middle school, if you didn't have homework completed or goofed off in some way, teachers could make you stay after school for 'after school help.' It was essentially a mandatory study hall and if a teacher called you out, you had no choice in the matter. Now, I was in Biology class towards end of my middle school career and was sitting at one of those lab tables next to another student. We both had newspaper routes (yes, people actually delivered actual newspapers to people's homes in the 1980s), so it would make us late for our deliveries if we were made to stay after school. This biology teacher would check our vocabulary assignment every week and I totally spaced it this week - Oh Crap! Now, my lab mate had most of his done, but just didn't quite finish. Our teacher is working his way around the classroom checking assignments. So, he checks my lab partner, "well Scott, looks like you will be staying after school today." This fellow student knew I didn't have mine either, but also knew I was a pretty good student. I feel like I am sweating bullets and trembling as the teacher approaches me. In a near panic, I reach into my folder and pull out a prior week's assignment. He looks it over and says "OK, good job" or something like that. Scott is looking at me in utter disbelief. Even funnier was the fact that this week's assignment required 67 pages of paper to complete. The one I had blindly grabbed from folder had 2 pages, with barely anything in second page. It was totally obvious what I had done, but our teacher gave me a break that day. I managed to make it thru all three years without needing any 'after school help!' This was a large public school and they still paddled students if the infraction was serious enough. I know none of that is allowed these days, but those were both good deterrents for me!! How long did it probably take the author to complete his newspaper route? - not enough information - Late into the night - Most of the evening - An hour
An hour

What is creativity? How de we define creativity? Where does creativity come from? How philosophical is the notion of creativity? Is everyone's 'creativity' different? Or is it an ill conceived, simplified term that is used to describe a very specific series of neuronal & bodily reactions to certain stimuli? These are all the questions I've been thinking (and googling, and youtubing) since beginning this Capturing Creativity studio* and I have found some answers or maybe I've just found more questions: Creativity is generally defined as the ability to make new things, or come up with new ideas, it's an ability to think outside the box, to see unique solutions and employ them in inventive ways. In this sense creativity is not always utilised when being 'creative', as to be creative is simply defined as the ability to make or produce something. However I guess that depends on your definition of creative, how different, unique, special, once off, un-influenced does something have to be, to be classified as creative? This is where creativity get's tricky. It's all well and good to be like oh this is what creativity is, so it's easy to investigate it, but what if you don't define that as being creative, maybe that was just following a formula, a somewhat inspired formula, but maybe it is just a formula. Creativity to most people seems to be a random mix of once off genius combined with solid skill and hard work and for us humans these percentages are unique to us. Maybe creativity to you is 90% unique idea, 5% skill and 5% hard work. Maybe creativity to you is 40% unique idea, 50% skill and 10% hard work. Maybe for you creativity doesn't have to involve any hard work at all. For me when it comes to creativity I'm most interested in that unique idea portion; where does that unique idea come from? Is it simply random? Is it a gift from the gods? Is our unique idea just a product of a lot of subconscious effort, only made aware to us in the sense of a 'random' idea? Have we been influenced by something, processed it... Why was the narrator thinking about creativity? - Because there was a definition of creativity - Because it was not tricky - not enough information - Because it was undefined
Because it was undefined

Rain, the young man is thinking. Of course it would be raining. Not a heavy, cleansing rain that leaves the streets steaming and the neatly sculptured yards lush and fragrant. This is a gray drizzling rain. A rain that makes him think of places like England and Scotland as they appear in those disturbing late night films on cable, the ones in black and white that weren't particularly memorable when they were made and are even less so now. Still, it rains and the air is cool. All he has to shelter him is a think nylon jacket. The jacket is soaked. It feels both chilly and coarse against his skin. His hair hangs in flat and sodden wings, falling into his eyes. It's long in the back, almost to his shoulders, and he thinks that the cars that pass him on the street, the occupants of those cars, might look at him and see only that he is wet and not that he is dirty as well. Can they tell that his hair has been unwashed for days? That his clothes are the same ones he's worn for more than a week? It doesn't matter. He's invisible to them as soon as they pass, taking any assumptions they might make with them. They might just mistake him for one of those hoity-toity college kids, one of those clean limbed and beaming have's who has happened to find himself caught out without his umbrella. He makes a desultory attempt to straighten his shoulders, to lift his eyes from the buckled sidewalk. To look like he might have a purpose or a destination. It doesn't help. He has become the day. He has internalized the environment. He did that years ago, in fact. That's all I can do. Not his words, of course, but he understands them. He is intimately acquainted with his limitations. He probably thinks the cars driving by might mistake him for what? - not enough information - old man - young professional - college kid
college kid