The URL of this page is http://www.tomorrowlands.org/humor/essay.html.
       Have you ever had to write an essay?

   Of course you have.

  You should therefore sympathize with the following cynical look at our educational system, appropriately titled ...

The Essay Throughout Your Life

GRADE SCHOOL

  You're given a sheet of specifications: style guidelines for the Five-Paragraph Essay. Grammar and spelling are thoroughly emphasized.
  The teacher never notices whether your project actually has any content; what's important is that you follow instructions to the letter. After all, the Five-Paragraph Essay prepares you for your future.

JUNIOR HIGH

  You are told to write a Five-Paragraph Essay on one topic from a book you're reading in class, citing the book as a source. As the book was read in class and the material was thoroughly discussed, everyone's paper turns out the same. Students with good grammar and spelling get A's. Everyone else gets C's.

HIGH SCHOOL

  You are told to write a Five-Paragraph Essay on a book you're supposed to be reading for class. A topic is assigned for you. You end up reading just as much of the book as necessary to answer the questions, and come up with all of the supporting arguments you need off of the top of your head. Students with good grammar and spelling get A's. Everyone else gets C's.

COLLEGE ENTRANCE EXAMS

  "Write a Five-Paragraph Essay on one of the following topics: (1) Which has made a bigger difference in your life -- mozzarella cheese or hydrochloric acid? (2) What letter of the alphabet is the most interesting and/or useful? (3) If you could flip at random to any page in your World History textbook, and look up a person who you could claim to us would be interesting to talk to, who would it be?"
  Everyone picks topic #3. Papers are mailed to the college. Nobody ever looks at them, and incoming students are picked half by random and half by Affirmative Action and/or parental donations to the university.

COLLEGE, LOWERCLASSMAN

  To your supreme delight, there are no more Five-Paragraph Essays. To equal regret, you find out this is because they've been replaced by five-page essays, assigned on seemingly random topics just closely related enough to the source material to make you read the entire book in a panic.
  The class texts, of course, are unhelpful, and so you end up citing Friedrich Nietzsche, the Book of Isaiah (King James Version), and two late-night discussions with your hallmates. The grader doesn't actually have time to read all 600 papers for content, so students with good grammar and spelling get A's. Everyone else gets C's.

COLLEGE, UPPERCLASSMAN

  In lecture, the professor says: "Write eight to ten pages by Monday on one theme from our discussions of the last three weeks."
  You now know that it does you no good to read the class texts, so you quote Nietzsche, Sun-Tzu, last night's episode of "Seinfeld," and your professor's latest novel (whether or not it has anything to do with your topic). The paper ends up one solid page of quotes, one page of footnotes, one page of bibliography, a cover page, and four pages of unjustifiable bullshit.
  The TA (or professor, if you're lucky) reads through the paper for content, and if you're lucky you'll only be marked down half a grade because they disagree with your position. The students with bad grammar and spelling get C minuses. Those who write four drafts and run it through the spell-checker get A minuses, but fail the rest of their classes.

GRADUATE SCHOOL

  You're asked to write 20 pages by the end of the quarter on whatever topic you've happened to be herded into between your struggles with TAing and late-night burger-flipping. There are no class texts, so you quote Nietzsche, Plato, St. Athanasius, William Blake, and two of the lower-division student essays you're reading as a TA. The paper ends up eight solid pages of quotes and twelve pages of unjustifiable bullshit.
  The professor makes illegible comments in the margin. If your topic has any relevance to the world at large, he finds and takes the opposing viewpoint -- so you rewrite the essay until he can no longer disagree. The title ends up looking like "A Commentary on Interpersonal Psychometry in 20th Century Baltic Studies: Digital Stalinism Meets Dystopian Realism."
  Everybody gets A's, but it isn't worth the work.

DOCTORATE THESIS

  You're told to make it at least 30 pages, with a thorough bibliography, page numbers, twelve-point double-spaced Helvetica Oblique type, a nicely bound cover, and a partridge in a pear tree.
  If one comma is out of place, you fail (and hire a proofreader to pick through the essay for next time). If you're stupid enough to let content sneak into the paper, you fail. If you're not prepared to defend that lack of content to the review board, you fail. If you cannot defend that lack of content with enough buzzwords, you fail. If you show any emotion, you fail. If you do anything but fail, you fail.
  If your writing is sufficiently obfuscatory to sidestep even this last barrier, then you pass. The school library's copy of the thesis subsequently gets stolen by local Satanists to be read aloud during a midnight sacrifice to Vter'Xonius, the Inscrutable One.

OUT IN THE REAL WORLD

  You're given a sheet of specifications. Grammar and spelling are thoroughly emphasized. The boss never notices whether your project actually has any content; what's important is that you follow instructions to the letter.

  And you find out that, after all, the Five-Paragraph Essay did prepare you for your future.

Tad Ramspott
March 1998



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Page last edited Apr 16, 2001. Design © 2000-2007 Tad "Baxil" Ramspott.