Between the hours of 10:00 A.M. and 11:59 P.M. on November 24, 2005, our inbox was inundated with more than one thousand e-mails. Was it spam? A virus? Were people finally responding to our Match.com profile? No, we still couldn’t find a date or a good deal on Viagra.

It was simply the deadline for the Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers contest, and as it turned out, nearly everyone—two-thirds of the total contestants—had waited until literally the last minute to submit. Click here to read more