F you to Essays

Seth Hornbrook

ENG 102, G2

25 Feb. 2011

No Original Thought

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. A professor once told me if I was having a hard time starting a paper that I should start out with blah, blah, blah, just to get the words flowing and the writing starting. So one day I decided to think why I needed this technique to begin with. My conclusion was a thesis driven essay. You never know where to start. An academic paper that has a thesis is so strictly structured that it sucks the very life out of your paper. Add in the fact that you need quotes from multiple sources and you might as well throw your pen away because you aren’t creating any original thought. It is just high school all over again, regurgitating information. But this paper is for an English class and therefore needs a thesis, so here it is. Thesis: Academic papers that are thesis driven and source driven, negate any possibility for original thought. There it was. Did you see it? Now let’s get to the paragraphs that back up my thesis argument.

It’s always good to have an argument, an idea, a thought. These are the things that bring light to new topics, stir controversy, and change life. Then why must we have the thesis? According to my professors, it is your argument, that you then need to back up: a focal point if you will. Organization is essential in every platform, but a thesis severely limits your ability to be creative and to be original. A “proper” thesis is only one sentence. What if you wanted to explore a larger topic? Well too bad! You can’t. You must stick to the formula and be a drone like everyone else.

Now for the most important part: sources. Why get sources to back up your thesis you may ask? Good question fellow scholar! The reason is because you have already turned your once blank sheet of paper full of the possibility for creativity, into a thesis driven, unoriginal essay. This point is proven when you have to find sources that “back up” your argument. If sources even exist that reinforce your thesis, then you are obviously not the first one to think of this and there for wasting everyone’s time by saying the same thing again, and probably less eloquently than the original source, because the original source has to be “credible.” Can’t be some quote from “Nature” magazine because that specific publication doesn’t list its sources.

Credible sources, leads me to my next topic sentence for my next paragraph that is designed to add another point to support my thesis. Did you see the topic sentence? It was the first one. That’s where it has to be, formula and unoriginality and all that. So – credible sources is a nice way of saying, if you don’t have a PhD and weren’t published in some snobby publication, then your ideas are worthless. I don’t care if you are a genius and have a blog that receives 18 million views a day. Nope sorry, you’re not credible. I can’t use your brilliance to make my paper shine. Are you kidding me? No, sorry fellow readers, I am not. You must have a “credible” source.

Okay, so here we are at the conclusion. This is the part of the formula where we further regurgitate all that we have said previously, tying it in to our thesis. Why is this necessary you ask? Well it’s perfectly simple my dear reader. The assignment was to write an argumentative paper: with a thesis, topic sentences at the beginning of each paragraph, each paragraph lending support back to your thesis, with each paragraph having credible sources to help validate your support for your thesis. The next step in that assignment formula is the summary. But if I have the ability to summarize all my thoughts into one nicely and well written paragraph, why did I go through all that hassle of writing the whole paper? Well dear reader, you’ve got me. I don’t know. Seems like if you have such a firm grasp on what you want to say that you can succinctly say it all in one paragraph, why waist everyone’s time with the other paragraphs? But wait, I have digressed and neglected to make my summary: Having a thesis driven essay only confounds the writer into writing on a small topic instead of expanding with creativity and scope. This is further compounded by forcing the writer to find credible sources that have already said the exact same thing as you. And in so finding them, you have wasted yours and everyone else’s time because you have not shown an ounce of creative or original thought, because someone else much more qualified than you has already said it. So stop typing write now, turn in your regurgitation of stagnant ideas and writing, and receive your grade for the assignment. Congratulations, you are now a sheep. Follow that herd blindly and you will get exactly where you are meant to be, nowhere.

Work Cited

Hornbrook, Seth. “From his Brain.” Mostly the Right Hemisphere. First Edition. Ed. Seth Hornbrook. Washington, 2011.