The Tell-Tale Assignment

Mom and Dad,
I’m writing you to apologize, and to explain about how stressed out I’ve been lately. I wouldn’t say that what I did was due to craziness. Crazy people do unreasonable things for dumb reasons, and I have a perfectly good explanation for everything, I’ve just been really nervous. You just have to listen to the whole thing unfold, and you’ll understand.
I don’t really know what made me even think to do it. I was doing well in it- I went to class and turned in my homework, so I was expecting to make a decent grade. I think it was because I was dreading this service learning project. In this class, we were supposed to volunteer a minimum of 10 hours of our own time with an organization through the school, and then write a 5 minute long speech about it. Whenever I thought about simply standing up in front of the class to give that speech my palms got sweaty. And that’s not even mentioning the huge pit that grew in my stomach when I thought of giving up 10 hours that I didn’t have.
So, for the first weeks of the class I went to class, but in the back of my mind I was thinking about how to get out of this service learning project. In the end, the only way to avoid it, and keep my academic status in good standing, was to drop the class.
After I decided I would drop the class, I was still a good student. I would still go to class, but when class was over, I would go online to the school’s website and look up the policies regarding dropping classes. I would envision myself not having to worry about the class, but I was also worried about what you would think.
The night before the assignment was due is when I finally did it. It was past midnight, and the apartment was quiet when I logged onto the website. I found the link to drop the class and my heart leapt up in the throat. It kept wriggling up in there as the page loaded and I clicked on the drop down bar. There was a slight feeling of fear as I wondered if this was the right thing to do or not, which I dismissed and clicked the “drop now” icon.
As I was heading home, a new fear washed over me, as I realized I would be seeing you two very soon and you two won’t be very happy with me dropping my class. I quickly gathered up the book for the class, as well as any loose homework papers or note, and shoved them under my bed.
I felt like I had just