As someone who graduated with a Major in English before going into a 20-year career in programming, thank you for posting this link. This article sums up everyt

As someone who graduated with a Major in English before going into a 20-year career in programming, thank you for posting this link. This article sums up everything I eventually came to hate about my college education: the heavy focus on analyzing long-dead writers, the silly idea of having to take a position before you start writing, and his quip about the last paragraph being the first paragraph re-worded well enough so that no one notices is absolutely spot on. When I tried to get a job as a writer after graduating, one editor looked at my resume and said, "BA in English? I'm sorry, but you just spent the last four years learning how not to write." I think he's right on target about what essay-writing really is: an exploration of complex and beautiful ideas. For the last 10 years I've been blogging purely as an exercise in researching and learning about complex topics. An essay doesn't need to argue anything, but can simply appreciate a subject and express its ideas from a new perspective and in novel ways in hopes of others appreciating the subject as well.