[double tap]

My sister was saying she'd gotten away with this for a long time. The standard way of presenting your thesis argument, etc, and constructing an essay? Greek to both of us. We both just stumble through trying to be convincing until we reach some sort of wrap up.

Oh god, I still have this. It's kind of embarrassing sometimes, since theoretically my job is basically constructing arguments.

The standard way of presenting your thesis argument, etc, and constructing an essay? Greek to both of us. We both just stumble through trying to be convincing until we reach some sort of wrap up.

I was telling someone this just this week. I was always good enough with language to sound like I knew what I was talking about, even if there wasn't much there there.

This is also why I write fiction.

I write in an inverted pyramid style for journalism, so I usually want to get it all out in three paragraphs.

Thank goodness for rambling style columns!

I am a very, very lazy student.

I remember inverted pyramid style!

We had the five paragraph essay style totally drilled into us in middle school and high school. We would never start writing before writing an outline. I know several people who went to my high school who got to college and had no idea how to write essays any other way -- when they got assigned 10 page papers to write, they ended up writing them as five really long paragraphs.

My sister was saying she'd gotten away with this for a long time. The standard way of presenting your thesis argument, etc, and constructing an essay? Greek to both of us. We both just stumble through trying to be convincing until we reach some sort of wrap up.

This is so me. I was a disaster in university. Every paper was started the night before it was due and almost all were handed in late. I had so many "reads like a first draft comments." Occasionally, in the midst of panic and sleep deprivation, I would do something pretty smart, but that was rare. Also, because the non-existent arguments just petered out, my essays were always short of the required word count.

Theatre school was the only place I had any discipline. That was because the schedule was so punishing (six days a week (if I was lucky) and almost always a 12-hour day), I didn't dare slack off.

Oh God yes, save me from the five-paragraph essay. I have to drill it out of my students. It’s a good foundation for younger kids to learn, though, so I don’t advocate not teaching it--it’s just a bear to un-train.

Totally appropos to this conversation, it's National Day on Writing.

Oh God yes, save me from the five-paragraph essay. I have to drill it out of my students. It’s a good foundation for younger kids to learn, though, so I don’t advocate not teaching it--it’s just a bear to un-train.

All of our teachers told us to use it for the essay portion of all the AP exams, so none of the kids at my high school had to un-learn it until college. We'd been using it for the writing portion of the state tests since eighth grade or so.