Fantasy Football Saved Me on My AP English Composition Test
2 hours and 15 minutes to handwrite 3 essays. All 3 should be relatively long and support a complex argument with some success. This is a large portion of the AP English Language and Composition test administered by College Board for overachieving high schoolers attempting to obtain college credit. 2 weeks ago I was sitting in my high school gym feeling like my wrist is about to snap with one essay left to write in 45 minutes and with no clue what to write about. Enter fantasy football.
The prompt is here (Question 3) if you want to check it out. With an obscure quote at the heart of the question and the clock ticking down, my heart definitely started skipping a few beats. All my potential ideas sounded kind of dull and just didn’t make a great deal of sense. Writer’s block was hitting at the worst possible time. Horrifying thoughts of the low-scoring 5 sentence example essays that we had seen in class came racing back which wasn’t exactly the best confidence booster either.
Suddenly, it clicked. There might be a way to connect fantasy football to this prompt as crazy as that sounded. Now you’re reading this and probably wondering, is this kid really relying on a made up game to determine something that’s a pretty important part of his future? In short, yes.
If there’s one thing in this world I know how to articulate my thoughts on, it’s fantasy football and so in a time of duress and desperation, I turned to my safety valve and didn’t look back. At the end of the day, I knew as long as I was able to support my thoughts and make it easy enough for the reader to understand, even an essay on fantasy football could score well.
Once the pen hit paper, the ideas started flowing on their own. For my fellow fantasy nerds who are curious, I talked about how pulling the trigger on time and not waiting around even if its a riskier decision can work out well citing my draft pick of then rookie, Saquon Barkley in the first round of my fantasy draft. Alternatively, I mentioned how a lack of information can cost you as well and lead to rash decisions with me trading for Michael Thomas a few weeks into last season as my evidence.
In retrospect, maybe it wasn’t the best topic to pick in the case my grader turns out to be someone not in touch with the sports world, much less the fantasy football bubble. In that moment though, getting something decent on the paper sounded a whole lot better than having nothing and fantasy football was my savior that came to the rescue when I needed it the most. In fact, the best part of all this might just be that the hundreds and hundreds of hours I’ve invested obsessing over fantasy football haven’t gone to complete waste, something I’ll be sure to let my mother know.
