Throughout high school and before that, essays were evil. They were stifling and formulaic and had to be pounded out in 45 minute blocks of time for AP tests. No one ever had any fun writing an essay.
When I came to college it wasn't any different. There they were, now called "papers", which I think is a better name.
I took Intro to the Essay because it was mandatory, I knew I wasn't going to like it because it was just going to be a continuation of the same old stuff.
We started off by reading Seneca and Montaigne, and I started to realize that I was wrong. These were not boring, these things had their own voices. I learned the French verb essayer, which means "to try". So, an essay is a piece of writing in which one tries something. To explain this or that, to convince people, to explore one's own thoughts.
That was astronomically more interesting.
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