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I love writing essays
I've always taken english classes since my first year, even though I don't need them for my degree. And I haven't taken one for over a year but this summer I'm enrolled in 359 and 311 (BC literature and Shakespeare, respectively). I'm working on an essay on Ethel Wilson's "Swamp Angel" and I realized why I love english classes so much..it's the essays! I feel like each essay is a work of art, synthesizing so many different sources, influences, and opinions into one cohesive body of work. And it's not the essay itself that's amazing, but the dynamic process with which it forms and gives life to words that, in a dictionary, would be meaningless and mundane. Each line I write feels like squeezing that last drop of juice from an orange...it's sweet.
Comments
Yay for metaphors. :wink:
I definitely second the blank stare part, and I also agree with the lump of coal part. Last essay I had to write was for my particle physics class about B mesons. Had to keep going back over and over it just to clean it up, but it was finally half-way presentable when I got it handed in. :P
I enjoy creative writing, but I often do that in my own time.
lol, NukeChem I know what you mean (not the science part, god forbid if I ever had to write a paper related to physics...), it's so mind-numbing to read your own paper over and over again to find any imperfection that the words begin to lose all meaning.
And Malakaiii, I second the yay for metaphors. I also give a thumbs up to symbolisms and semiotics.
As Marcel Proust once wrote, "The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes".
Being a good writer is not all about being able to write about anything or everything, as some some my friends think--they automatically assume that someone who is a good writer is capable of crafting a written piece with meaning all the time, which is not necessarily true. Being a good writer is about being able to provide eloquent insight through one's own perception, which I think is intrinsic, and to be able to put meaning behind every sentence.
Marcel Proust obviously was not quoting about writing, but I love that quote and I think it can be applied to so many things...and I guess this can be one interpretation?
I still enjoy writing essays when I'm excited about the course and the prof has allowed for some creativity in what you write about. I hate when they give a very specific topic, but I do like some guidelines to help figure things out.
I wrote an essay last semester for my Fine Arts course on slasher flicks (horror movies like Nightmare on Elm Street, etc) that got me an A. :wink:
But yeah, for essays I prefer to write on topics that are more controversial. When a prof provides controversial topics, I find it is an implication that you can write a bit more creatively than what other essay topics may allow. Like I had a class where I wrote an essay about whether street crime is more serious than white-collar crime. Obviously there are no solid answers, so the prof focused more on what I was able to come with :)
I've gone back over things I've written and a word that I swear I put in won't be there, and I'll realize my brain put the word in but my hands never typed it. Kind of annoying that way. Or a line of reasoning that makes perfect sense in my head will look like balderdash once it's on the screen or on paper.
Essay Tip: Always do a rough outline before you actually start writing. It helps you stay focused and organized so overall, you end up with a better quality essay.