By JOELLA COX
Sheridan High School Student
Editor’s Note: The Sheridan Student Column is brought to readers by Sheridan High School’s 10th grade English class, taught by Abby Williams.
“You will have 40 minutes to write an essay relating to the prompt given. Blah blah blah. Start.” In every classroom around America, kids are forced to write essays, book reports and articles, and I’ll be honest, I don’t enjoy writing. I’m not horrible at it though, but I’m not great; I just need lots of time to think.
I’m someone who can read like no other, but if told to write an essay in a class period, I will struggle. I have sat in an English class and stared at a blank screen the whole class trying to find the words to start. When I was told to write this article, I freaked out. Where do I start? What should I write about? This whole thing brought too much stress. Then it hit me: The pressure to write in school is overwhelming and should be taken less seriously.
Now here’s the thing: I’m an artist, not a writer. I spend most of my time with a brush in my hand and paint all over my arms. That’s what I love. Writing and painting don’t go together. Artists don’t spend their time writing a 5,000-word essay. They spend their time painting, sketching, sculpting, or creating. No one expects them to write a five-page essay over their piece. Writing in that sense is not applicable to their situations.
In adult life, most workplaces won’t need you to write up an entire essay in one sitting. Now don’t get me wrong here, offices, English jobs, and some businesses might expect that of you. In that circumstance, I agree that you should know how to write, that you’ll need to know how to properly write a sentence, paragraph, how to spell, proper grammar and most importantly, how to properly formulate an email or text. My point is that the adults in my life have never been told to write an essay for work. They write reports, but never an essay. It’s just not an applicable skill to take with you.
People will tell you it’s necessary for college. College courses will expect you to write an essay for the class; it’s a requirement. After college though, what do you do with all those writing skills you acquired? Nothing. You let them sit and rot. I asked my parents the other day how to cite a source in an essay and they told me they genuinely had forgotten. Neither of them has had to use those skills in a long while, proving that it’s not useful after you finish schooling.
This is why writing isn’t something that should be so heavily pushed. For some professions, it’s just not a needed skill. Though it is a skill that in small portions is good, such as writing an email to an employer, it’s just not practical to force students to sit and write an essay in one class period. Essays are pointless. Instead, I believe we should teach how to communicate in ways that would be practical and useful for students after school and in the future, such as grammar and proper formatting; instead of harsh timed essays, we should be prepared, practically, for the real world.