Metafiction: The worst essay in my life

It was one cloudy day which was too familiar for David, a professional journalist for The Times. While he has moved from Manchester to London when he was first hired, he has not been abroad for a lifetime. David was appointed as the branch manager of The Times in Seoul, so he had to move to a new house. He said goodbye to co-workers in London and started to pack up. There were so many things on his messy desks and drawers: family picture, a humidifier, a calendar, and a bunch of papers. Even though Internet media has developed, David has collected all his journals in the newspaper. While packing, David began reading some of his best writings and looked back at his brilliant career in London. Just at that moment, he found a piece of folded paper which made him feel somewhat familiar. He could figure out that the paper was written in a long time ago, but he could feel some strange affinity for it. David read the first three sentences. 

'This essay is an essay that I will never be able to forget. I read hundreds of essays each year and this one definitely stands out. You failed so horribly in defending for your side that you were extremely successful in advocating for the opposition.'

"Oh, my god! How could I find this? This is the essay feedback that I received from the teacher who hated me. I got perfect scores on other teachers' essays, but this teacher... what was his name... gave poor scores. I remember... he was bad-tempered... Anyway, what was the topic?"

'With the essay prompt: Should we allow female students to wear pants? you chose to write an essay about why we shouldn't allow it. However, because of the many hypocrisies and logical errors in your essay, one can only agree to allow the change in uniform after reading your essay.'

"Oh, right. It was about the school uniform. It is so natural for female students wearing pants nowadays, but it was not guaranteed in the world twenty years ago. In retrospect, restricting pants for female students was such an absurd idea."

'As I said before, you made an epic fail to claim on the opposite side, which helped to support the proposition side instead. However, I think this makes me raise a question; did you really try to support the opposition? I mean, it seems like you ruined the opposite side's idea on purpose. Also, by trying to rebut the agreeing argument about the prompt in a foolish way, you actually strengthen their idea. This is very interesting. I've never seen some essay style like this before!!'

"Is this a sarcasm or is this his whole heart? Did I really write that poor by supporting the opposite side? It is so ridiculous... The teacher must have misunderstood my intention. Oh... right! I might put only little effort on this essay at that time since I was so absorbed in The World Cup. In 2018 Russia World Cup, South Korea, the country that I will move on, beat England in the semifinal. Harry Kane, the best striker on our team at that period, tackled his teammate Heung-min Son and ruined the game by receiving a red card. It was a huge shame."

' I will give you an extra point for each epitome of logical error that you showed us, and take off a point for each grammatical error. Hmm.. wait that leaves you with the point of 31 out of 100. Maybe I should be more kind (Like your math teacher Ms. Chun LOL) and have some "+1" s in there. Maybe I should. But I don't feel like it. So 31 it is. Good Luck. Haha! Do you really believe that your score is 31? I don't know where my head is these days. Reading through what I wrote before, it seems like my past self-was very distracted making it hard for present me to wrap it up right now.'

"Hmm... I think I put enough effort into my essay. I now remember teacher's face. He wore glasses and had sharp eyes. He barely smiled and had monotonous tone, so I and classmates all slept in his class. He smoked in lunchtime, and some students got a cigarette from him. He was a terrible teacher, but he was an exceptional writer. His writing skills were outstanding. Although his feedback was somewhat strange, I could learn composition skills from him."

'You should really work on improving your grammar. However, since this essay was one of the most ingenious that I have read in a while, I think it's a shame to get such a low score. I decided to give you 20 extra points for your creativity and courage to try it out, making a final score of 51. You have great ideas but don't have the basic writing skills to back it up. I know that you will be going places if you improve your grammar and spelling just a bit. Good job.'

"51 out of 100? LOL... What a shameful score. But I remember that my score was the best score in my class. Still, I could not satisfy with my score. Thus, I stayed up nights, studying to get good scores in his essays. While other teachers praised my writing skills, he was the only person who pointed out the flaws in my writings. If he were not my teacher, I could not be a journalist for The Times. I want to meet him before leaving here."

David made a phone call to his friend Joseph, who was the favorite student of the teacher. 

"Hey, Joseph! How have you been nowadays? I am leaving on next Monday. Before leaving, I want to meet the teacher who liked you the most. You know, the writing teacher who wore glasses and smoked a lot. Everyone except you slept in his class, and the average essay score was about 30. What was his name? Ah... Right! Do you know his phone number or where he lives? I really want to visit him."

David received the teacher's phone number and made a call.

"Hello, I am David. Do you remember me? Or do you remember my essay which you wrote that you will never forget in the feedback?"