And so beginning in our junior year, we studied together. We read an entire economics textbook, and whenever I found part of it inscrutable, Todd would frame the topic in ways that were comprehensible to me. When we were learning about marginal utility, for example, he explained it to me in terms of Zima.

Todd would tell me, “Look, you drink one Zima and you feel good. You drink two, and you feel better, but the added benefit is smaller than between zero and one. The additional usefulness of each added Zima gets lower and lower until eventually the curve inverts around five Zimas and you throw up. That’s marginal utility.”*

So we learned economics, but we also learned art history, and chemistry, and math, and much else. Through studying for Academic Decathlon, I learned about everything from the Indus Valley Civilization to mitosis. And thanks to Todd, I became a very capable Academic Decathlete.

I don’t want to brag, but at the Alabama State Academic Decathlon of 1994, I was the Lionel Messi of C students. I won seven medals—four of them gold—out of a possible ten events. I won a bronze medal in math, even though that year I received a D in precalc. Admittedly, none of my scores would’ve gotten me into the top ten among A or B students, but I wasn’t competing against them. For the first time in my academic life, I felt like I wasn’t an idiot.

I won gold medals in topics I thought I sucked at—like literature and history—and also one in speech, which was especially surprising because I’d always been a poor public speaker. I hated my voice, the way it betrayed my omnidirectional anxiety, and I’d done terribly in debate competitions. But with AcaDec, I’d found a place where I could flourish. Our school won the state competition, which meant we’d qualified for nationals, to be held that year in a hotel ballroom in Newark, New Jersey.

Over the next few months, my growing academic confidence, combined with study skills learned from Todd, meant that my grades started to improve. I was briefly at risk of losing my coveted C-student status until I realized I could tank physics to keep my GPA below 3.

That April, the nine of us and our coaches flew up to Newark. We made friends with other nerds from around the country, including a C student from the Midwest whose name was, I think, Caroline. She had a good fake ID and managed to smuggle a twelve-pack of Zimas to us.

Todd was one of the leading A students at nationals, and our little team from Alabama ended up finishing sixth in the nation. I even won a couple of medals. One was in speech. My speech was about rivers. I don’t remember much about it, but I think I talked about meanders—the serpentine bends in a river’s course. I’ve loved rivers ever since I can remember. I spent part of one summer with my dad on the Noatak River in northern Alaska, and another paddling the French Broad River in Tennessee.