I suck at writing essays.

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Seriously. They're structural nightmares, making it impossible for me to get the ideas across coherently. The topics assigned to me just blow my f*****g mind. What's more, they're supposed to be objective, yet my style of writing does not go together with it. In fact, it sucks. Just today, I got assigned to write a five-paragraph essay in which I have to describe what characteristics Harriet Tubman possessed that made her a successful leader and advocate for freedom. The writing prompt also asks: "How would you characterize yourself in comparision to her and her abilities? Could you be as successful in fighting for a cause as she was? Why or why not?"

This is f*****g BS.

So, I'm not the only one who hate essays.

Last edited by Tollorin on 30 Nov 2010, 6:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Essays are a nightmare for me as well. The only thing i hate more than writing essays is reading them in front of class.

Oh I was the worst at essays. But some time after HS I got (almost magically) better at it.
Generally a lot of the assignments are strange though, or feels strange because with AS you're so tied up into your own
assumtions and ideas that it is hard to visualize what people really want you to write... if you try to free your mind of your own associations and try
to look at it with an open mind you might see what they want you to write. They are often trying to push students into writing what they want them to
without telling them straight out. it's infuriating, and it takes practice to "read between the lines" of an assignment.
Another thing you'd want to think about is coherency.
I had major issues with that. I had a tendency to not get how another person would read what I had written. I'd make leaps of logic which were perfectly
reasonable in my own head but which people that didn't have my ideas and knowledge wouldn't follow. I find that is a pretty AS-typical problem.
Not being able to predict other people's reactions.

I $#ck at explaining myself & thoughts in writing. Essays & discussion questions brought my grades down on lots of test. English reports were a nightmare for me. One of the many rezones I never had any desire what so ever to go to college is because all that writing(& lots of other things) can cause me to have anxiety attacks. Those issues are not uncommon for people who are dyslexic & have ADHD thou. I also have a tremor disorder that acts up when I'm nervous or doing something with fine motor-skills & I'm also very nearsighted & reading stuff on paper after a while can give me a head-ache; all that writing & reading plus my OCD issues made it even more difficult for me to do essays & stuff. I generally avoided doing em or did em half-fast. I've gotten a lot better at explaining myself online but I still feel like I'm very bad at it. It can take me hours sometimes to type one post figuring out how to word things.
If you guys have any diagnoses; you might could receive accommodations where you might could have someone help type/write out what you dictate in a way that makes more sense or maybe you could be excluded from doing some of that or the teachers might be more accommodating with that grading

Writing essays isn't so bad for me. Sometimes, I get so into what I'm writing that I exceed the required amount.

There's just 1 thing I have to say: I hate essays!

Writing in my opinion has to many rules and doesnt let anybody be creative

If that's the case it seems like Aspies would be great writers because it seems like we are much better at fallowing rules than expressing our creativity

Essays are a huge problem for me. I barely manage to pass them when I am examined.

I hate essays. A lot. I celebrated when I took my last English exam at school and knew I'd never have to write another essay ever again.

(that didn't quite work out - managed to get through university without being required to write an essay, but had to later for something else)

My main hatred is reserved for people who set essays with word limits. "Write me 4000 words about suchandsuch." I'm sorry - actually, no, I'm not sorry at all - if I write about something I'll try to be succinct, and not pad it out with thousands of extra words of filler. Encouraging people to do that, to write to some meaningless word count instead of addressing the subject - that's appalling. Just Plain Wrong.

Hate formal essays particularly with specified topics and questions to cover. Hated presentations to the class.

Lecturing if you go that route is different.. You are in charge and all I had to do was pretend to be a professor instead of a know it all kid, which was easy because outside I looked adult and on my doofr it said I was the professor.