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English essays

So I probably have one of the weirdest views ever concerning work. Like most people, I'm never the first to woop when we're set an essay or feel elated when we're set some questions in German but unlike most people I do actually enjoy writing essays - especially English ones - once I get started.

Essays: It's a way of expressing yourself that has been thrust upon academia and thus has a rather tedious ring to it. They're not all boring though, you may hate the rigid structures and the subjective, hard-to-follow criteria you have to hit but the actually writing of essays is an exploration, it's an expression of opinion or a development of ideas; it doesn't have to be boring and basic.

I think it's mainly due to the fact that I love books probably more than anything else (a little over-exaggeration there - but I would be a happy person to simply receive books for my birthday or something like that, whereas to some people that prospect is simply horrific) and the fact that I get to write words about them that essay writing is rather enjoyable for me.

Now I know that sometimes "the fact the author used the word 'blue' meant he/she was feeling incomparably depressed" isn't always true but I think the fact that we can read something and interpret it in so many different ways is really fascinating. The mere fact that we can look at a piece of text and muse to why they wrote that - even if they wrote it that way with no particular reason in mind, the way we can interpret it is really interesting to me.

Writing essays is just one of the ways we can discuss books and topics surrounding books. My good friend Georgia (@georgiaadepp) wrote an EPQ (basically a 3,000 word essay on anything you like) discussing whether Shakespeare should be adapted to suit a modern audience - I not only really enjoyed reading her essay but it was really nice to talk with her about it to; we wouldn't have had the conversation had it not been sparked by her topic for her EPQ.

My main point it, I guess, that whether you love writing English essays or hate it, it's a great way to explore a text and really think about it. That might be fun for you, or a completely horrific and tedious prospect but I think they're great!

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