The 40 Minute Essay

Last week I was overloaded with essays. I had a 7 page Screenwriting treatment to work on (more on this in the next update), a huge Asian History paper, a music assignment and finally a philosophy paper. One of them was going to have to get the shaft in terms of my attention. I chose philosophy- not because I don't enjoy the class, but because I am well versed in philosophy and figured I could cook up a reasonable 4 page essay in a short period of time.

In between classes I dove into my room and in 40 minutes I had typed what I thought was a pretty damn good essay.

I was wrong.

My professor laid into me harder than some of the biggest hits I've taken in hockey. I'll quote a few of the better items.

In reference to a lengthy discussion I misattributed to Socrates.

"NO!!! THIS IS THE WRONG ANALOGY."

In frustration with one of my later claims that I also misattributed to Socrates he simply put a huge X through half of one page.

Later he emphasized how stupid I was:

"BUT this is NOT [the right] argument!!"

At the end of the paper he re-emphasized what a piss-poor job I had done:

"3 big problems here: You have not really made [any] point.

You have mistakenly included the wrong argument... and failed to work out the [right] argument.

Your arguments do not [answer the question of the paper]."

In short, I got rocked and deservedly so- my paper sucked.



(Note: this is dangerously close to the sort of blog posting I hate about people's personal lives- I realize this. However, I'm in the midst of working on a screenplay, which I will detail late and honestly thought my professor's comments were humorous. - Greg)