Essay, ese.

I bumped into a couple of interesting points while reading through “The Age of the Essay”.

In the things you write in school you are, in theory, merely explaining yourself to the reader. In a real essay you’re writing for yourself. You’re thinking out loud. But not quite. Just as inviting people over forces you to clean up your apartment, writing something that other people will read forces you to think well. So it does matter to have an audience. 

Are the essays that the University are making us students write essays that make us explain ourselves to the marker, or essays that challenges us to think out loud? I think it’s both. In a way, the questions raised make us think deeper in theory and express them out loud in our essays but at the same time, we HAVE to explain ourselves to the marker as well. It’s sort of like selling our ideas for marks, the way we write our essays in Uni. So based on the writer’s view on real essays, should the University really challenge their students with REAL essays, or academic essay is still the way to go? If real essays are all about us thinking out loud, I guess this blog post CAN be considered as a “real essay” as well?

So what’s interesting? For me, interesting means surprise. Interfaces, as Geoffrey James has said, should follow the principle of least astonishment. A button that looks like it will make a machine stop should make it stop, not speed up. Essays should do the opposite. Essays should aim for maximum surprise.

According to the writer, and I kinda agree, the most valuable ingredient in your essay is its surprise element. All of the essays that I did in Uni, I shamefully admit, have been written on subjects that I am most comfortable with. I have never went beyond the familiar zone of my subject to find a surprise factor that even I myself never knew. I am a very curious person, I like to find out about stuffs, but when it comes to assessments, I am more of a “just get it done with” kinda person.

Perhaps I should venture more into my chosen subject for my next academic essay.

Speaking of uni, the people from my class were responsible for coming up with symposium questions for this set of reading. One of the questions raised by a fellow student tingled my curiosity and I decided to research more about it.

Has modern technology made writing better, or worse?

This article about social media and writing surprisingly relates back to this reading. The writer stated that social media makes for better student writing. All the reasons behind why it is so all goes back to the first quote that I posted on earlier on. Just as inviting people over forces you to clean up your apartment, writing something that other people will read forces you to think well, and write better.

So yay, more reasons to spend time on the social media.