There’s nothing high school students hate more than having to do school work over the summer. My classmates and I never had to do much. That is, until the summer before ninth grade. Upon receiving the list of potential literary works, students often based their selections on two criteria: which novel is the shortest and which one can be explained by his/her parents who’ve already read it. Assignments were distributed before the end of the prior academic year, and were to be completed based on their selection, in addition to the required novel. I remember being unfamiliar with nearly every novel on the list, so I chose one and skipped straight to the required novel, The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. My initial thoughts were of genuine disappointment;
