What is an essay?

In the past, the essay has at least five paragraphs; the introduction, at least three supporting paragraphs, and a conclusion paragraph. Some teacher had a very specific way they wanted the essays to be done. I had a teacher who wanted a five paragraph essay, and each paragraph had to go with a certain pattern. Within each paragraph, it had to be a topic sentence, concrete detail, two commentary sentences (repeat the concrete detail and two commentary a few times) and lastly a conclusion sentence.

There are different types of essays. Research, debate, and probably what most teachers want from students when they want papers (?). To me, essays are a little more formal than other types of writing. Throughout elementary and high school, essays seem to be a lot of points compared to other assignments. It used to be that essays took a long time to write. A class can easily spend a whole month under the guidance of a teacher (ok, so the teacher sets the due dates, and the students drag their feet to meet the deadline) to produce THE final copy of an essay to be graded. When writing an essay, there is at least one draft, before the final version. It is always important to keep track of the information gathered for the paper, because there has to be a works cited page at the very end (with proper citation throughout the paper).

For me, writing an essay really depends on what I am writing about. In my middle school, we used to have an overarching topic that we work off of for the whole school year. There would be papers, projects, and one major oral report that count for a large part of our grades (depending on what subject is involved, mostly English and sometimes science or history). One year, the topic was family history/immigrants. For one of my major papers, I interviewed my uncle, and wrote about what it was like for him growing up. It was really interesting to learn and write about my uncle during his teenage years. The teacher allowed us to present the information we gathered however we wanted to. I chose to write in my uncle’s perspective, giving people a glimpse of what he did outside of school. So far, that is my favorite writing assignment any teacher has given me, because it gave me a chance to see what it was like growing up for him.

The definition of essay by American Heritage is: “An essay is a short literary composition on a single subject, usually presenting the personal view of the author. Something resembling such a composition: a photojournalistic essay. A testing or trial of the value or nature of a thing: an essay of the students’ capabilities. An initial attempt or endeavor, especially a tentative attempt.” I think another way of seeing it, could be any type of paper in which a person approaches the challenge (of writing the paper) with the best effort they have.

I guess the definition really widens what an essay can be.