3 ms·

You’re getting towards something that actually caused me to drop out of college 2 decades ago. The essay then (and possibly still now) was the primary means by

You’re getting towards something that actually caused me to drop out of college 2 decades ago. The essay then (and possibly still now) was the primary means by which any of my non-math classes seemed oriented. I’m not an essay writer. I can sometimes give 500-1000 words on a topic because I tend to be terse, and found I was always being given poor grades for “not following the assignment” which would usually be 2000-2500 words. I just couldn’t do it. In the end I dropped out because the point of college wasn’t “learning” (which I was) but rather “how good are you at playing college” (which I wasn’t).

eszed 3y ago
Yeah, the way I always put it to my students was that the word-count was a rough guide to how deeply I expected them to dive into a particular topic. Any substantive question could generate anything between a paragraph and a life's work, but in this essay, you only need to do this much. I creeped your profile real quick (I'd up-voted you a time or too, lol), and I'd have loved to have had you as a student! Your writing style is admirably concise, which mainly means you have your thoughts in order. (Avoiding "terse", which is sometimes accurate, is a matter of learning a few rhetorical tricks to better engage a reader. That's, like, the easiest writing "problem" to solve.) Clear thinking is 90% of what we (should) want undergraduates to demonstrate, which would put you orders of magnitude ahead of the typical student who hasn't any ideas of their own, and desperately tries to eke out 2k words of pure waffle. From me, 1k words of closely-written reasoning would have been a 'B' from the jump, and provoked a conversation about where else you could take your argument, should you have the time and interest to pursue the subject further. I'm sorry you had such bad experiences. They're sadly not rare.
- TheCleric 3y ago
  Thank you for your kind words. Wish I would have had more professors like you.

eszed 3y ago

Yeah, the way I always put it to my students was that the word-count was a rough guide to how deeply I expected them to dive into a particular topic. Any substantive question could generate anything between a paragraph and a life's work, but in this essay, you only need to do this much. I creeped your profile real quick (I'd up-voted you a time or too, lol), and I'd have loved to have had you as a student! Your writing style is admirably concise, which mainly means you have your thoughts in order. (Avoiding "terse", which is sometimes accurate, is a matter of learning a few rhetorical tricks to better engage a reader. That's, like, the easiest writing "problem" to solve.) Clear thinking is 90% of what we (should) want undergraduates to demonstrate, which would put you orders of magnitude ahead of the typical student who hasn't any ideas of their own, and desperately tries to eke out 2k words of pure waffle. From me, 1k words of closely-written reasoning would have been a 'B' from the jump, and provoked a conversation about where else you could take your argument, should you have the time and interest to pursue the subject further. I'm sorry you had such bad experiences. They're sadly not rare.

TheCleric 3y ago
Thank you for your kind words. Wish I would have had more professors like you.