I’ve read thousands of essays. Not an exaggeration. As someone who’s spent the better part of a decade in academic writing and editing, I’ve encountered every conceivable interpretation of what students think an essay prompt is asking for. Most of the time, they’re wrong. Not catastrophically wrong, but wrong enough that their entire response misses…
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I’ve spent the last eight years working in legal consulting and academic research, and I can tell you that case analysis is one of those skills that looks deceptively simple until you actually try to do it well. Most people think it’s just reading a court decision and summarizing what happened. That’s not even close…
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I used to think repetition was just something that happened when you weren’t paying attention. A careless mistake, the kind of thing that marked you as a lazy writer. Then I realized I was repeating myself constantly, and not always by accident. Sometimes I’d circle back to the same point because I wasn’t confident enough…
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I’ve read thousands of essays. Not an exaggeration. As someone who’s spent the last eight years working in academic writing spaces, I’ve encountered everything from the genuinely brilliant to the aggressively forgettable. The short-form essay sits in this strange middle ground where constraints become either your greatest asset or your worst enemy. There’s no room…
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I’ve read thousands of scholarship essays. Not an exaggeration. When you’re on selection committees or you’ve spent years coaching students through the application process, you develop this strange ability to predict what’s coming in the first sentence. Usually it’s something about overcoming adversity or a pivotal moment that changed everything. Both valid themes, sure, but…
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I’ve read thousands of essays. Not an exaggeration. Between my years teaching composition at a state university and then pivoting to freelance editing, I’ve encountered conclusions that made me sit back and think, and conclusions that made me wonder if the writer had simply run out of energy. The difference between these two categories isn’t…
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I’ve read thousands of essays. Not an exaggeration. In my years working with students and reviewing submissions for academic journals, I’ve encountered hooks that made me sit up straighter and hooks that made me want to close the document immediately. The difference between the two isn’t always obvious, and that’s what fascinates me about this…
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I’ve read thousands of essays. Not an exaggeration. When you spend years teaching, tutoring, and editing student work, you start to notice patterns. Some essays grab you immediately. Others feel like walking through fog. The difference almost always comes down to one thing: the topic sentence. A strong topic sentence isn’t just a requirement. It’s…
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I’ve been staring at blank pages for longer than I’d like to admit. Not because I don’t know what to say, but because I know exactly what needs to happen between the first word and the last one. A short essay isn’t a miniature version of a long one. It’s a different animal entirely. It…
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I’ve spent the better part of a decade writing satire, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that it’s one of the most misunderstood forms of writing. People think satire is just being funny. They think it’s about making jokes at someone’s expense or being deliberately provocative for the sake of it. That’s not…
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