An attempt to justify the importance of university essays
Every essay is an opportunity. Whether you are given an essay topic, or whether you have too much freedom to choose your own topic, writing a paper can be an extremely rewarding experience. As you endeavour through your academic career, you will undoubtedly have to battle and grapple with an essay in one way or another.
I can already hear the sighs and annoyed grunts of students who disagree with me. How can anyone possibly enjoy writing essays? Is this legit? Yes. Yes, it is.
Writing papers can be an extremely difficult task, and, on multiple occasions, I have found myself contemplating why I have to write so many so often. By enrolling into the University of Guelph as an English and Philosophy major, I kind of had it coming to me. Regardless of how challenging these essays were, I found that a vast majority of them were valuable.
While writing essays might not seem like an exciting way to spend an afternoon, getting started and avoiding procrastination is the best way to combat the literary blues.
I think essays are great – however, I think they have a bad reputation. In many ways, writing a paper for what feels like hours on end is a tedious, brutal, and agonizing process. In my experience, the absolute and ultimate criteria preventing you from being able to enjoy writing a paper relies entirely on one thing – procrastination.
Scenario A: You’ve procrastinated. The paper was assigned two-months-ago, but you have decided to start now. You stay up all night the day before the paper is due, you type out eight pages or so with a frenzied and frantic rigor, and you hand it in the next day with coffee breathe and large bags under your eyes, grimacing at the Professor as you place your work into a pile of countless others.
Scenario B: You don’t procrastinate. You’ve been planning out your essay for a couple of weeks now. You have done research, planned an outline, and even begun typing out a bit of your introduction. Oh, would you look at that? What is this sweet, mysterious feeling? The grass is greener – the shining morning sun glistens through the silk drapery of your cozy bedroom as you wake up and remember how you’ve already completed the essay that was due in today’s class.
…engage and immerse yourself within a crucial dialogue between your thoughts and your ability to convey…
I don’t know about you, but I’d go B any day of the week.
Unfortunately, the inability to escape procrastination is all too prominent among students. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve definitely procrastinated on multiple occasions throughout my university tenure. However, the difference lies within wanting to change and completely avoid procrastination. For me, this happened near the end of my second year. I had a couple of incredible English and philosophy classes where I was given the freedom to write on a topic of my choice. That being said, not being assigned a topic by the professor is not ideal for many students.
One of the key ways to learn to love essays is by understanding that the topic you’re writing on should not dictate what you learn from that essay. There are so many things to learn about writing papers which do not include the actual content of the paper.
One extremely valuable thing to take away from the process of essay writing is having the ability to plan and communicate your arguments coherently. Sounds simple, right? Wrong. The process of writing an essay should not be simple. It is a time where you, as a student, are able to engage and immerse yourself within a crucial dialogue between your thoughts and your ability to convey those thoughts.
To further build on this idea, I think discovering that an essay is an academic exercise can be an important moment. In looking at paper from this point of view, I’ve found it helpful to objectively take a step back from the essay itself, and begin to analyze the kind of learning that takes place. So now, not only are you stating your arguments and claims, but you are looking at why and how those claims work and function within the context of your paper.
Jorges Luis Borges, a prominent Argentine novelist and poet wrote, “A writer, or any [person], must believe that whatever happens to [them] is an instrument; everything has been given for an end. This is even stronger in the case of the artist. Everything that happens, including humiliations, embarrassments, misfortunes, all has been given like clay, like material for one’s art. One must accept it. For this reason, I speak in a poem of the ancient food of heroes: humiliation, unhappiness, discord. Those things are given to us to transform, so that we may make from the miserable circumstances of our lives things that are eternal, or aspire to be so.”
When we write essays, we are artists. Yes, I am fully aware of how ridiculous I sound. However, I firmly believe that, in a way, writing a paper forces you to confront your own writing and learning habits. Those pitfalls of procrastination, which leave an abundance of students in disarray, are necessary “instruments,” as Borges would say, which ultimately contributes to the transformation of the critical and artistic potency of your writing. As mentioned previously, essay writing is an academic exercise. Not only can you flex your argumentative muscles, but you can also cultivate the ability to critically assess and communicate key components of your information.
Through controlling the way you write, and in the awareness of utilizing critical thinking and coherent structural argumentation, you will be able to truly craft a paper that you can be proud to call your own. When I began this editorial, I said that every essay is an opportunity – but that opportunity only arises from the approach you take to the process of writing the essay itself. The different ways you can engage with the process of writing essays will inevitably define how valuable you find the experience. By shifting your attitude about writing papers to focus on the habits and critical skills of the writing process itself, essays can indeed become a rewarding experience that has the ability to benefit any individual.