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> Looking back on it, most of our essays were not good. They were rubbish. It makes me cringe to look back at my high school essays, like I was trying to write

> Looking back on it, most of our essays were not good. They were rubbish. It makes me cringe to look back at my high school essays, like I was trying to write with a thesaurus. Thankfully, senior year, a friend who went on to write professionally edited one of my essays. He crossed out almost every adverb, and over words like "utilize", he wrote "use". It made me realize that myself, along with many students, mask their points with language because they have nothing to say, or are afraid to say it clearly (which is a separate problem altogether).

quacked 5y ago
I agree with everything you said, and had the same problems with writing when I was younger. However, I would say that it's not so much that students don't have anything to say, it's that they're not allowed to write about the things they actually care about in a way that is natural to them. Someone who's had three years of practice writing free-form persuasive essays about the non-school approved topic that they spend all their time thinking about (the NFL, girls, video games, etc.) is going to have a much easier time picking up the structured five-paragraph essay format than someone who was forced to write a bunch of five-paragraph essays about books they hated. All of the greatest essays I read now are random in length, style, topic, and presentation--why did I have to write somewhere between 50-100 structured essays about books and historical events I didn't care a whit about when Aldo Leopold was out there just dashing off whatever he was thinking about? The progression went like this: 1. I hated writing about historical events and books. 2. I graduated college. 3. I started reading unstructured essays about topics I cared about. 4. I started writing unstructured essays about topics I cared about. 5. I started writing about historical events and books.
niknoble 5y ago
> It made me realize that myself, along with many students, mask their points with language because they have nothing to say, or are afraid to say it clearly You're right about high schoolers using needlessly complicated writing, but this isn't why. A high schooler would use needlessly complicated writing even if he was eager to share his ideas about a topic. The reason is that K-12 schools teach this style of writing as an aesthetic. Other parts of the aesthetic include scattering your stories with "symbols," so that they mean something other than they appear to, and exaggerating your and your characters' emotions. A student who grows up immersed in this aesthetic would not secretly prefer a more simplistic writing style, any more than a person who grows up eating American food would secretly prefer Indian food. Your friend was inducting you into the aesthetic of modern journalists and bloggers, but if he was instead reading the academic humanities, or if he was a time traveller from the 1950s, he would have been perfectly happy with "utilize." Of course, plain language is better at conveying information, so I'm fully on that train myself--now that I've spent some time out of high school. But it's normal to adopt the aesthetics of your surroundings, and it's not a sign of masking anything or being afraid.

quacked 5y ago

I agree with everything you said, and had the same problems with writing when I was younger. However, I would say that it's not so much that students don't have anything to say, it's that they're not allowed to write about the things they actually care about in a way that is natural to them. Someone who's had three years of practice writing free-form persuasive essays about the non-school approved topic that they spend all their time thinking about (the NFL, girls, video games, etc.) is going to have a much easier time picking up the structured five-paragraph essay format than someone who was forced to write a bunch of five-paragraph essays about books they hated. All of the greatest essays I read now are random in length, style, topic, and presentation--why did I have to write somewhere between 50-100 structured essays about books and historical events I didn't care a whit about when Aldo Leopold was out there just dashing off whatever he was thinking about? The progression went like this: 1. I hated writing about historical events and books. 2. I graduated college. 3. I started reading unstructured essays about topics I cared about. 4. I started writing unstructured essays about topics I cared about. 5. I started writing about historical events and books.

niknoble 5y ago

> It made me realize that myself, along with many students, mask their points with language because they have nothing to say, or are afraid to say it clearly You're right about high schoolers using needlessly complicated writing, but this isn't why. A high schooler would use needlessly complicated writing even if he was eager to share his ideas about a topic. The reason is that K-12 schools teach this style of writing as an aesthetic. Other parts of the aesthetic include scattering your stories with "symbols," so that they mean something other than they appear to, and exaggerating your and your characters' emotions. A student who grows up immersed in this aesthetic would not secretly prefer a more simplistic writing style, any more than a person who grows up eating American food would secretly prefer Indian food. Your friend was inducting you into the aesthetic of modern journalists and bloggers, but if he was instead reading the academic humanities, or if he was a time traveller from the 1950s, he would have been perfectly happy with "utilize." Of course, plain language is better at conveying information, so I'm fully on that train myself--now that I've spent some time out of high school. But it's normal to adopt the aesthetics of your surroundings, and it's not a sign of masking anything or being afraid.