i am not a single letter.

i am not a number.

so why do you assign me these things

that constitue my "success"?

i am more than one letter in a report card.

i am more than a number in the class rank.

i am not a single letter.

i am so many memories and

so many feelings.

i am the silent acts of kindness

that I do for my friends and strangers

that you never see because you're giving my paper

a single letter.

do you know that that "single letter" essay

took me two weeks to write

and yet after 15 minutes of reading

you gave it

a single letter.

i am the stories i write.

i am the drawings i draw.

but how could anyone see all that

in the tiny font of

a single letter.

there are 26 letters in the english alphabet.

there are over one million words in the english language.

you should know-

you taught me them.

so then why (with all of your great knowledge)

do you only use

one single letter?

a grade reduces my project

reduces my paper

reduces me

to a single letter.

so please

give me more than a single letter

because i am more than that.

look up from reading my "single letter" essay

and see my actions and listen to my thoughts and

my fellow student's actions and their thoughts and

when you think about it really hard

you may realize that we are so much more amazing

and so much more complex than you could have

imagined in your single letter mind.

we are so complex that one you realize this

you will no longer be able to reduce us to

a single letter.

but if you really need to reduce me to single letters

reduce me to this:

J-U-L-I-A