Less A's With Essays

Essays are not fun. Never have been. For me, however, and many of my classmates may disagree, they're pretty easy to write.

For me, the essay writing process has always gone a little something like this:

1. Find quotes

2. Find essay template

3. Fill in the blanks

4. Shove as many relevant quotes as you can into a paragraph

5. Consult a thesaurus for some snazzy, intelligent-sounding words

6. Replace half of your essay with more complex units of language of the English lexicon (like this)

7. Make sure you don't use personal pronouns

7. Celebrate because you're done

Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

Part of the reason I find essays relatively easy is because I never really had to think when writing one. I filled in the template the teacher provided, added some additional flare in the form of fancy, 5-syllable words, and bam! I hit every expectation my teacher had, and even exceeded some.

But finally, after 3 years of writing utter garbage such as "therefore elucidating the impression that" and "this both subverts and reinforces problematic and stereotypical ideals", they are telling me that all those hand cramps in English class were utterly pointless.

Thanks. ☺

I read two articles, Let's Bury the 5-Paragraph Essay: Long Live Authentic Writing by Brian Sztabnik and Write Less, Say More: The Power of Brevity by Danny Rudin. They both essentially say the same thing: Essays suck. They discuss how precise and to-the-point writing is far more effective than long-winded sentences, and that theAnd I completely agree. They are not at all a bless(ay)ing (I truly, genuinely think I'm funny). They're completely useless. I mean really. Really. Who actually wants to read a bunch of essay templates filled out in 30+ different ways? Not me. Probably not our teachers either.

But they get paid to do it, so.

When writing essays, and this point is brought up in the two articles, I've never had to be creative with how I wrote it, because that wasn't what the teacher was looking for. Truly, the teacher was just seeing if you knew how to shove quotes into a sentence, and if you knew how to use a thesaurus. And might I add, I was exceptional at the latter.

Now though, things have changed, which is why I'm writing this. Instead of essays, we're writing blogs, so that I actually have to think, be creative, and have a 'me' style of writing.

I really appreciate this change, since I now get to write whatever the fuck I want. In some ways though, I'm conflicted, since everything that I have learned in the past, what, 5 (?) years has been slam dunked into the trash.

Regardless(ay), essays still suck. Being able to have some quality (lol) me writing is amazing, and this blog is actually fun to write. Essays can suck my ESSay. (I'm funny, you just don't want to admit it).

Until next time,

A Little Fall of Rain