I hate to admit it, but I came close to inadvertently reprising Judd Nelson’s classic Breakfast Club role in my own high school English years. Leaning back in my chair, arms crossed and feet up on the desk in a less than subtle display of defiance, I would watch the highly ritualized process of education transpiring before me with nothing but suspicion and contempt. Unlike Nelson’s character however, I was a bright kid with well-read opinions and a genuine interest in learning— I just found it hard to believe any “real-life” knowledge could develop in the ultra-sterile classroom environment that confined me.
My essays naturally represented my qualities better than my (lack of) class participation after I recognized them to be the closest to an unadulterated means of expressing myself as I was likely to get in school. And though I honestly didn’t care what grade I received as long as I felt personally fulfilled by my work, I would always start off my papers with a keen eye on the assignment sheet, perhaps in a meek last effort to appease my teacher. This courtesy would wear off quickly, however, as I would become more and more immersed in my writing.
Once I had sunken deep into my essay, the assigned topics I was instructed to consider would suddenly trigger a flood of new, more enticing concepts which would, in turn, inspire their own, and so on. This free associative way of thinking would produce a surplus of alluring raw material for me to explore, but like the children’s game of Telephone, as the concepts grew more creative and captivating, they would simultaneously wander further out of the sanctity of the original prompt. Blind to this grave issue by my own fascination, I would ultimately churn out a solid, compelling final product that hung only to the prompt by a token thread.
My teachers, witnessing this apparent disregard for instructions, could only lower my grades (and for good reason), but their handwritten annotations commended the dexterity and potency of my writing. I've come to realize since that I was unconsciously using my papers as an apparatus to flesh out, organize and cement my often chameleonic beliefs, opinions and ideas. After all, isn’t it true that any thought is really only half-baked until it can be written down and observed? The essay format, I discovered, is a perfect system for achieving one's intellectual actualization.
Looking back, I can say without hesitation that this was the best problem I could have faced in high school English. Without knowing it, I was compiling a mental set of personal writing practices which, when recognized, harnessed and energized would prove to be greatly advantageous in the self-sufficient world of college writing. I’ve found considerable success in these homegrown methods and want to share them with other students as a sort of back alley insight into the habitually over-produced essay (maybe even as a my final desperate stab at institutionalism).
For the next five weeks or so, I’ll be publishing a series of what I have found to be my most effective approaches to essay writing. The upcoming first installment will introduce the phenomenon I like to call “writer’s shock” and how you can go about avoiding it. Stay tuned!
-James
