The cartridge glides smoothly across the paper, and a thin trail of slick, shiny whiteness is left behind in its wake. Your hand continues to guide the whiteout effortlessly over the inky loops and lines and flourishes when, all of a sudden, the sleek trail splits into two. Hoping to even out the jagged edges of whatever tape that has reached the paper, you pass your hand over the sheet again.

As the gleaming scar widens, starkly contrasting against the chalky beige and blue stripes, your hand jerks backwar d.

You grimace, attempting to tug the cartridge forward. The gears whirr, but the silky stream of plastic is now twisted and knotted. You sigh, staring unhappily at the messy streaks that mutilate your paper.

You should know better by now. The whiteout breaks every time, after it has been barely used, but still you do not care. You will immediately buy a new package the next time you visit Staples, hoping that maybe it will last longer this time. Anything to cover up your mistakes.

When does our quest for perfection stop being a respectful pursuit and more of an unhealthy obsession?

Of course, we all make small mistakes and have small faults. The desire to erase them is intrinsically human, but when we are given unlimited access to the tools to be rid of them, we often go too far.

Would your homework assignment really look so terrible with a few mistakes? Would you really be more distraught over the prospect of a single crossed-out word than an essay striped with random bands of startling white, screaming loudly of your mistakes and marring your work’s countenance?

Covering our minute imperfections with an ineffective, belying veneer only serves to heighten the problem. Ultimately, it calls to attention our blunders even more so than before without really fixing the original errors.

We make these same mistakes again and again, yet we can never learn because we believe in a false security constantly within arm’s reach, nestled in a pencil pouch.

So often in school and in sports, we chastise ourselves so heavily for our blunders, are so absorbed in disparaging our abilities, that we do not reflect upon our accomplishments or on how we may improve. Then we fail to properly correct our errors, opting to implement impractical or ineffective solutions, whether because we are simply too lazy or because we truly cannot identify any.

Maybe that is not even necessary. Our imperfections of body and character, our mortality, our unreliable emotions, and our apparent inferiority to others — everything about ourselves that we despise and wish to change — atually defines us, our genius and our success; they make us unique and human.

Although abandoning our whiteout at the bottom of our desk drawer and instead writing an honest story of our own in bold, confident ink will not be an easy task, it is an endeavor that we should all attempt to undertake.