Reflections on the Essay

I've been thinking about this a lot since Robin asked us to write on "the essay." I read some articles (this one in the NYtimes is relevant and worth a read), used another "new medium," Facebook, to try to crowd-source a discussion on the utility of the essay among my Facebook friends (more on that later), and sought out the syllabi of individuals whose writing I adore (see this one by David Foster Wallace).

But before I get to all that, I'd like to begin with a discussion of...definitions. This feels at once nerdy and ironically appropriate for the stereotyped 5 paragraph essay form. As in, "What do I think about free speech? Well, the Greeks defined free speech as..." But indulge me. Here are the definitions of "essay" from "thefreedictionary.com", which seem representative:

1. (s)

a. A short literary composition on a single subject, usually presenting the personal view of the author.

b. Something resembling such a composition: a photojournalistic essay.

2. A testing or trial of the value or nature of a thing: an essay of the students' capabilities.

3. An initial attempt or endeavor, especially a tentative attempt.

With definition 1, we get the stereotypical version of our 5 paragraph essay. I think we can all agree that not all, probably not even most college writing falls into this category, but some of it does. Here's what some of my friends had to say about this (quoted here anonymously because I did not obtain permissions to take this "off Facebook"). My post asked: "Tell me, facebookverse, what do you think of "the essay" as an assignment in a college course? What has your experience been with writing them or assigning them? Was it a useful exercise? What would you change?":

"As a grad student, useless, I write them while watching tv. At this point in my educational career, I am able to figure out what the prof wants to read, and write it. As a teacher, I think writing assignments should have authentic audiences...." 

"I hate "reflective" or "responsive" essays with a passion as it seems to be all I write these days. This far along in my degree, I'm not feeling like there is much use for them except to have some sort of grade in the grade book."

"From personal experience, I had many great humanities teachers from middle school to college that stressed the importance of structured writing and argumentation through the traditional essay, and I think their doing so helped me succeed through various stages of education."

What to draw from these diverse responses? To use the popular internetspeak of the day, I don't think we say FAIL essay, I think we say FAIL assignment instructions or guidelines. I tend to agree with Robin; it is all in the prompt.

David Foster Wallace identifies this learned behavior in his syllabus (linked above) and presumably attempted (RIP) to counter this tendency in his classrooms, to help students relearn to write (as others have noted):

Let's move on now to definitions 2 and 3 of "essay": a "test or trial," an "initial attempt or endeavor." I find these definitions more thought provoking. What do we want students to get out of "the essay," or, to expand things a bit, any piece of college writing?

I think it is important to have "essays" in this sense -- initial attempts at tackling big ideas. But I think it is also important to give students opportunities to refine these "initial attempts" or "test trials." I think that those of us who have given students rewriting assignments, where they rework a paper they have already submitted, realize that this is a task many students are unfamiliar with because they are rarely asked to perform it -- a "return to the scene of the crime" for some students. How do we clean this up? Make it better?

A few final thoughts in disjointed form:

• I think form or forum matters less than the assignment guidelines, or how we set it up.
• Blogs probably have the potentially to be just as disciplinary (if not more so) as essays. One point that was brought up in my crowd-sourced discussion was the new trend of "forcing" individuals on the academic job market to have blogs for the sake of "professionalization."
• A lot of the criticisms of the essay seem to stem from an over-reliance on "personalized" narratives and opinions that some either find tiresome, pointless, or performed. I think that here we should take Jackie's narrative speech as a great example of how to include personal experiences and opinions in the classroom in a structured and productive manner. I think her assignment avoids a lot of these traps.
• It's not revolutionary, but worth saying: the best classrooms are probably multi-modal, allowing students different ways of participating and expressing their ideas. When I've used blogs as an instructor, I've used them less as an analog for essays and more as a supplement to in-class participation. Not all students are comfortable with vocal expression of more controversial ideas, and that's just fine with me.
• Critical thinking. How to get more of it back into the essay? My personal experience has suggested that rhetorical criticism assignments force students to create new arguments that they have ownership over.

There you have it: rhetorical criticism saves the essay the world. The End.

Just kidding...sort of.