Let us explain that the Ensemble gigs—which you started working every weekend and almost always involved long journeys by car or plane—began on Thursday nights and ended on Sunday evenings: a seventy-two-hour work cycle with no time to study or write papers. Let us acknowledge that during the week you worked additional jobs. Let us confess that you struggled with addiction, that what began with coffee and then cigarettes accelerated into Adderall and cocaine, and that you used these stimulants to stay awake Monday through Thursday in order to work and study. You intended to graduate a year
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