Formula for an A Worthy Essay: b = # of body paragraphs, n = # of points to hit
Thesis Paragraph + b(Topic Sentence + n(Concrete Detail + 2 Commentaries) + Conclusion Paragraph.
I used this method for everything in high school, and it worked very well with my procrastination. Without fail I would write my essays the day before or the day it was due, and I would get that sweet A and call it a day. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” was my motto. After all, it got me into USC, and what really got me here was my application for the screenwriting program, so most of my writing was going to be spent within fiction anyhow.
Regardless, I assumed my writing process was structurally sound and going to transfer smoothly over to college, and for classes where we were given a couple two to three pagers, it was.
Not so much with Writ 150…
The Bane of My Existence
…which I did well in. I kept my end of the contract and my final assignments rounded my B to an A-. But never before had I loathed writing in the ways I did for this class.
Externally, I was upset that even though I already did my time in high school, USC refused to let my AP credits bail me out of a class that was a sidetrack from my major. The idea of the grading contract also rubbed me wrong – you’re telling me I could get As on all the writing assignments in the course, but none of it factored into my final grade? What was the point of even putting effort into the assignments?
Internally, the largest struggle was realizing the formula that gave “great” essays in high school gave ok essays in college, and had I accepted that earlier and opened myself up to actually using office hours and the writing center, my writing probably would have elevated to the level I hoped it would be. Instead, I continuously felt frustrated when my professor critiqued my papers, pointing out the ways my commentaries never went in depth enough, or claiming that my opinions were not as prevalent as my use of evidence. She could see that the biggest issue of mine was not planning out my essays effectively, and so she suggested for WP2 I try and expand out my ideas more.
The opinion aspect got our wires crossed – for the longest time, one or two sentences was enough justification for my opinion, yet when I attempted the same thing it didn’t seem to be working. Hindsight being twenty twenty, I know she was certainly calling me out for the right reasons. Yet I was still resistant.
Not only was I really not wanting to change my methods for WP2, but I also lacked any motivation to want to, especially during that time. I was addressing a prompt about how a memorial evoked humanistic values, which like the rest of the prompts felt vague and unengaging. I also had my girlfriend come into town, and I wanted to be done with this assignment so I could hang out with her. I also knew because of the nature of the grading contract, my work here really did not matter, only the final assignment did. So I used my old habit, following a more detailed blueprint I made a day earlier as an attempt to listen to one piece of feedback, and I did the essay four hours in the morning before it was due. I was stressed and burnt out, but I submitted it on time, and I got an ok grade as a result.
When I don’t care about my topic, the flaws of the formula stick out like a sore thumb. For much of Writ 150, I did not care at all.
Actually Caring
As an interesting reflection to my experience in Writ, during the same semester I also had to work on an autobiographical essay for a renewable scholarship. I was meant to talk about my time in college, what personal and career goals I had for myself, in what ways the volunteering I had to do for the scholarship impacted me, and why I deserved this scholarship again. Once again, I procrastinated to the final day it was meant to be due, largely because of the isolation, homesickness, and heavy imposter syndrome that regularly affects freshmen. Additionally, the volunteering I was doing was stacked on top of 18 units and a work study job, and I had to wake up at 5:30 AM two to three times a week to keep up with the fifty hours I had to complete – shaping that into a positive experience seemed disingenuous.
So I decided to just talk about that, and in the moment there was catharsis in just being able to say what I wanted to say directly. I talked about the ways I was really struggling with all the stress and change going on in my life, the fear it caused and the sadness it brought, but I did introduce optimistic takeaways like how volunteering familiarized me with LA and how I looked forward to my screenwriting classes coming the next semester. I still addressed the prompt, but framed it around something I wanted to talk about, and I didn’t realize how effective that had been until I had a follow up interview and received praise for the essay.
The formula I used was useful in a “get the job done” way, yet my overreliance on it created stagnation. Exploring a genre of writing that could not use the formula the same way gave me freedom in remembering that when I actually cared about what I write, it doesn’t feel like I’m dragging myself across a bed of glass – shocker!
Making it Personal
Following this remembrance, when I entered Intro to Psychology the prompts were much more open than a course like Writ 150. Our papers were not meant to be arguments, rather exploratory or expository on certain psychological subjects. The only criteria for the papers was a connection to what we discussed in class. Rather than trying to squeeze a topic I wanted to address in a limiting prompt based around argument, the openness of the assignment encouraged me to explore issues that mattered to me without requiring me to take a stance. I agree that elements of the argumentative essay are beneficial, yet I enjoy researching topics and presenting facts for interpretation rather than needing to cling onto an opinion immediately.
My first paper explored the developmental impacts of parental alcoholism on childhood and adulthood, a topic that candidly holds relevance within my life – after all, the best part of taking a psychology course is being able to psychoanalyze yourself, right?
Approaching this sensitive subject, my audience was intended to be for someone like myself, rather than just an academic setting – I intended it to be a summation of the discourse and serve as an entry for others who also might share interest in its research. Even though my procrastination still kicked in, my engagement with the research left me with more material to shape into a paper. The formula I typically used was a guideline so I could stay on track, yet it adapted to fit that goal rather than the writing adapting to the formula itself. Being engaged with what you’re writing about was simple enough to learn, but being able to adapt my approach to the need of what I wanted to write generated a paper I was proud of.
Applying the Method
To drive the point home, I’ll focus on a mini Op-Ed I had to do for my Contours of Change midterm last semester. The principle of the course was to hold opinions on domestic and foreign issues; what did we think about the shifting geopolitical landscape and how could we become involved? I chose to speak on how I believed the U.S. failures to address its internal perspectives were consequential to its failure in international affairs. I knew that I was writing this more so as an assignment than a genuine opinion piece, but I made it my intent to speak more forthcoming. It felt like we continuously brought up these issues of privacy invasion and the military industrial complex without digging deeper into their root causes, and my frustration with that channeled itself into the piece as I attempted to dive into what I believed to be the root causes of America’s “surface level” issues. I hoped to speak in a way that could engage with the average American reader suffering the same political apathy I had, and I intended to be more direct than the traditional critiques of America that deviated from its root issues.
I borrowed from the argumentative essay formula since it was a quick way for me to synthesize my opinion from a stream of consciousness into some structure, yet I still utilized the genre of the Op-Ed to talk more matter of fact. From the top, I contrasted the ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness against a more lived experience of isolation, narrowed political views, and lack of strong education. I wasn’t trying to convince the reader these issues exist; I was trying to get the audience to make a connection between these issues and the dominance of neoliberalism in our country. It was meant to serve as a statement against the “it is what it is” mentality that neoliberalism defends and I believed our professor underestimated the scale at which it impacts our lives. I attempted to use rhetoric and evidence that ideally would rally my reader behind my message in a way that was very different from if this had been an argumentative essay written directly to my professor; I wanted to get my audience to grapple with these systemic problems the way I was grappling with them.
There was still a need to frame the opinion piece in the context of our class by incorporating references to class materials. This limited the scope of my writing to academia again, since my reference to the Citizenfour film and Einstein’s reflections on capitalism are perhaps not at the forefront of my intended average citizen’s mind. Yet I tried to reincorporate the reader by including language that made it clear I was speaking emphatically towards the American citizens, as I referred to the ways we savor only a few hours of peace after a full day of work and the ways we are limited in our political choices. I wanted it clear that I was in the same category of the afflicted, and I attempted to incorporate myself more than I would have for other styles of writing, and part of that was the feeling that my own voice should be heard among the sea of opinions.
I understood that my Op-Ed was not the front cover of a New York Times paper, and I know that I could certainly rewrite the piece to have it be more poignant, supported, and widespread. I wanted it to give my perspective, however, and go against the partisanship of what ails our country. I mentioned the ways political gridlock left us with watered down laws, or how the government collaborated with the private sector to profit off of collection of our data – issues that stem from the fundamental issue of neoliberalism dominance, yet an issue that is not fundamentally challenged. The extent of my Op-Ed only being a few pages really hindered the depth that I could have gone with it, but I thoroughly enjoyed just sinking my teeth into this discussion that I actually cared about, and knowing that I would have loved expanding it out had we the time and myself the energy to do so.
TLDR
So, here I write this three hours before the due date time. I did do one rough draft yesterday, so there has been some growth in my procrastination, but there’s no greater motivation than the pressure of a ticking clock. My formula still serves as a guide when I have no idea how to approach an essay. It doesn’t spit out “great” papers, but it does let me get through a class with a good grade.
Over the course of college, I’ve grown to learn my strengths and weaknesses as a writer, and the best advantage I can have is the freedom to choose how and what I want to write, to be able to involve myself within it, and actually care. Even if it’s not great, at least I’ll actually have enjoyed taking hours off of my life working on something I can be a little proud of.