Response to Response to Paul Graham's The Age of the Essay
About a quarter ways through his essay, I can't help but wonder what the point of high school writing was, after all. Each of his examples resonates with me, and I keep thinking back to the frustrations and feelings of futility in high school language arts classes, most of which were filled with both mental and verbal complaints of the pointlessness of essays. Things changed a bit in junior year, but not as much as I'd liked it to be - our teacher took on a little bit of a different way of grading and whatnot, but still we had the thesis - of - literature structure, which, granted, were supposed to be taught in such a way that guaranteed succees within the IB curriculum. And then we had college essays, which didn't help much either considering our fear of getting rejected, even while we studied a bit of Michel de Montaigne in that class. In lieu of this, senior year was a bit more of a relief, given our new focus on plays for about half a year rather than ancient literature for an entire year. I admit I have been pounded to expel essays of such a sort for a while, and I can write decent ones on the fly - but I do like my rhetorical, exploratory essays best. After all, that's how I think before and while I end up writing a draft of a thesis-ed essay. I'm curious, however, of one thing - if there are professors or people who believe that the ideal essay is one in which you develop ideas as you write, would they give me A+'s on my first drafts?
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