Where Do Classroom Essays Go to Die?

I'VE always felt that I did a good job back in middle school with a few short stories, in essay form, that our English class had to write. And I keep wondering from time to time what happened to those stories, the only copies that ever existed, with my writing on them, with those stories that always stuck in my mind. One was about a tense hospital situation where a doctor has to bring the news to a little girl's parents that she may be in terminal condition ... unless they can try a radical new treatment. Another (the better one) was about an Indiana Jones-type treasure seeker who, along with his fellow grave-robbers, fall under an ancient Inca curse and ... well, it's not pleasant.

So anyway, for some reason those two have been really bugging me, especially recently. I know that as soon as they were marked, the class assignments were put away in archival. But for how long? A week, a month, a year? In any case, they were probably thrown out a long time ago.

Kind of makes me shake my head and think about what it would've been like if we'd had the chance to keep a copy for ourselves, type it up and put it online ... silly really. I myself must have written countless little pieces of fiction through my school years. And that's just me, hardly an O. Henry or Mark Twain. Makes me wonder though how many amazing and insightful stories written by young people have been thrown away over the years....