Word: essays
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...reasons he suggests--that the assumption is so cosmic that it might be accepted. It is rarely "accepted" we aren't here to accept or reject, we're here to be amused. The more dazzling, personal, unorthodox paradoxic your assumptions (paradoxes are not equivocations), the more interesting an essay it is likely to be. (If you have a chance to confer with the assistant in advance, of course--and we all like to be called "assistants," not "graders"--you may be able to ferret out one or two cosmic assumptions of his own seeing them in your blue book...
...discussion of the various methods whereby the crafty student attempts to show the grader that he knows a lot more than he actually does, the vague generality is the key device. A generality is a vague statement that means nothing by itself, but when placed in an essay on a specific subject might very well mean something to a grader. The true master of a generality is the man who can write a ten-page essay, which means nothing at all to him, and have it mean a great deal to anyone who reads it. The generality writer banks...
...check the operation of a vague generality under fire, take the typical example, "Hume brought empiricism to its logical extreme." The question is asked, "Did the philosophical beliefs of Hume represent the spirit of the age in which he lived?" Our hero replies by opening his essay with "David Hume, the great Scottish Philosopher, brought empiricism to its logical extreme. If this be the spirit of the age in which he lived then he was representative of it." This generality expert has already taken his position for the essay. Actually he has not the vaguest idea of what Hume really...
...ESSAY...
...list also includes procedures some departments already follow, such as East Asian Studies' requirement that concentrators write a one-page essay each term reviewing their accomplishments and goals and Social Studies' requirement that seniors compile an intellectual bibliography...