Friday, January 13, 2012

Essays, Essays, What is the Deal?

I have been writing A LOT of persuasive essays lately.. O_o And on all sorts of amazing topics(!) For instance, this morning, I wrote a nice lengthy five paragraph essay on the subject of minimum wage (not the most interesting topic if I dare say so myself.).

Minimum wage. Minimum wage. I don't really know anything about minimum wage. So I suppose it was nice that they gave me two sources on it. But it wasn't nice that the two sources opposed each other! (And I have use both sources in the essay.)

Ah, such is the nature of studying for the College Composition CLEP exam. I'm taking it on Tuesday (hopefully). The exam offers equivalent credit of a Freshman college writing course. There's a multiple choice section and two (TWO!) timed essays. Hence the reason why I've been writing so many essays.

Both essays are persuasive in nature, but one is dependent on prior knowledge and the other, as I mentioned above, requires you to cite the two given sources, using both in text citations and references at the bottom of the page. Anyone up for MLA, APA, or Chicago citations? We're serving them for lunch.

The first persuasive essay (30 min.) are actually not too bad. My only problem is that I am not all that logical of a person sometimes. Anyone who has actually talked to me for a long period of time, spent the night at my house, or witnessed my fits of giggling and laughter can attest to this. Sometimes, logic just goes out the window. And I like it that way. Unfortunately, I can't do that with these essays. Fortunately, I've been practicing lots and lots and lots! My style is good; it's just the arguing that needs a bit of polishing.

So yesterday, I spent like an hour just outlining the stupid things. I gave myself four minutes to come up with as many arguments for or against the topic as I could. Topics like, "Should welfare be abolished?" "is Romantic love a poor base for marriage?" "Do team sports develop good character?" "Should cigarette production and sale be illegal?" "Is privacy the most important right?" and so on and so forth with all manner of difficult topics! Some of them were rather enjoyable, however, and I may, or may not, go back and write the essays to go with some of these outlines... Or maybe I'll just ship the outlines away to mail friends who don't really care, just for the heck of it... Who knows?

At this point, I am feeling pretty confident about the test. My grammar and writing style are excellent; it's just coming up with those points! I will keep practicing. I will pass this test!!!

Shoot me an email if you want to read/critique some of these essays; I can always use the help. =)
dameesh_95 [at] yahoo [dot] com

Oh yeah, Did I mention that it takes up to six weeks to get my results back? Eep! o_O

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