At 13, I signed up to represent Thoburn House, named after Bishop Thoburn, in the annual inter-House Track and Field Meet, competing in the 100 metre dash. A poor disclaimer: firstly, being somewhat new to the world of track and secondly, somewhat vertically challenged at that age, for reasons best described as irrational I believed a hundred metres to be the full perimeter of the track: four times the actual distance. Needless to say, that was a race I did not win....

Describe a character in fiction, a historical figure, or a creative work that has had an influence on you, and explain that influence. Faster than a speeding bullet; able to leap tall buildings in a single bound; baffling birdwatchers in five continents in under ten minutes; Superman, created by Jerry Seigel and Joe Schuster. Superman represents more than a two-dimensional, four-colour mannequin. Kal-El is, as Mark Waid narrated through the character of the Spectre in Kingdom Come, “the pinnacle of...

My drama club director (she was also the junior college's literature head of department) wrote my...