Don’t Let Him Rob You Twice

By Alizabeth Worley

The atmosphere in which I fell in love with writing—and with essays—was toxic.

My high school English teacher was a ghost writer, literally sitting down at the computer where a student had been working, then writing or rewriting a whole poem or essay or story. Every year, he won dozens of awards under his students’ names.

As a high school student, this literary surrogacy was debilitating. I did not feel like I was a good writer, not really, because he had overwri...