HS essays, how tall did your teacher need the boots? How thick was the BS?

[Disney1fan2002]

LOL!

I hated writing essays. Hated it.

The essay usually needed to be a certain number of words, or pages. Repeat, repeat repeat, that was my motto!

Tell us why George Washington crossed the Delaware.

Why did GW cross the Delaware? GW crossed the Delaware because......

That is usually how my essays would start out.

 

[Tigger_Magic]

In HS I learned and in college I perfected the good old "longhorn" paper.

A point here... and a point here...

And a LOT OF BULL in between!

Several times in college I inserted a line -- If you read this line, I will buy you dinner. -- into the paper. I never had to buy any professor dinner.

 

[Miss Jasmine]

Oh I LOVED, LOVED, LOVED writing essays in high school and college, especially essay TESTS. One time in high school I got a C on an essay test just for my creative BS (my teacher told me so ). I can't remember what happened but I had no clue on the subject.

 

[CheshireVal]

I didn't get really good with the BS until I got to college and majored in English. Then it became second nature to me since my whole college career was just essay after essay after essay.

My classmates and I used to joke that if you threw the magic phrase "fraught with ambiguity" into any paper, it would mean an automatic A. And it usually worked!

 

[Parkhopper]

That is so funny. We have been struggling with our DS11's teachers for the last 2 years because they WANT him to BS and he doesn't. He writes with perfectly formed sentences that are clear and concise, spelled correctly and punctuated properly. It is driving his teachers CRAZY that other kids will "vomit" a page and a half of material and DS will get two perfect paragraphs out. I maintain that it will serve him best in the end because if he DOES ever learn to "vomit" like these teacher want, his college professors will have a field day with the red pencil writing "redundant" and "unneccesary" I just cannot believe that his current teachers actually WANT him to BS!

Suzi

 

[Miss Jasmine]

That is so funny. We have been struggling with our DS11's teachers for the last 2 years because they WANT him to BS and he doesn't. He writes with perfectly formed sentences that are clear and concise, spelled correctly and punctuated properly. It is driving his teachers CRAZY that other kids will "vomit" a page and a half of material and DS will get two perfect paragraphs out. I maintain that it will serve him best in the end because if he DOES ever learn to "vomit" like these teacher want, his college professors will have a field day with the red pencil writing "redundant" and "unneccesary" I just cannot believe that his current teachers actually WANT him to BS!

Suzi

College professors enjoy the BS as well, or the nicer way of putting it, they like them FLOWERY.

In my experience, the only place the BS does not fly is reporting (hard journalism) classes, and a few other communication classes. I have a Public Relations degree, but I like it call it a BS in BS.

 

[BeNJeNWaFFLe]

This is too funny!

I majored in Computer Science. I am an engineer, english is definitely not my strong point. My essays in high school were full of BS. Term papers were the worst. You had to meet page and word requirements. I found the best way to do this (without using a huge font) was to just use random quotes from your sources. Then I would explain that quote using about 3 drawn out sentences. I always got A's on my term papers. I guess my teachers liked my BS.

In college for my senior project I had to write huge, specific planning documents stating everything I was doing with my senior project. The entire thing was a joke. My group BS'ed the whole thing. My professor used to give us outlines to use. There were section names in bold and then a description under it of what to put in there. We found a few places that the professor must have written while drunk. I mean total gibberish. So to read a drunk passage, you must get drunk yourself.

 

[Bob Slydell]

Oh I LOVED, LOVED, LOVED writing essays in high school and college, especially essay TESTS. One time in high school I got a C on an essay test just for my creative BS (my teacher told me so ). I can't remember what happened but I had no clue on the subject.

Same here!! I once aced an English essay test on a book I never cracked open.

 

[tar heel]

One of my favorite professors in college had a bull ink stamp. If it was getting too high, he would stamp red bulls on a paragraph, section, etc. When he was nearing retirement, he donated the bull stamp to a student organization that did a charity auction. Someone bought it and gave it back to him, so he donated it again the next year.

Writing was always my stength, plus I took his introductory-level class when I was a senior, so I never actually saw any bulls on MY essays!

 

[simba928]

LOL. Most of our essays didn't have to be a certain number of words. A lot have to be like at least a page long. The last essay I wrote for history had to be a page long. Mine was 3/4 of a page long....double spaced. And most of it was BS. LOL.

I had a teacher and his theory on essays was... and I quote..."Essays should be like a woman's skirt. Long enough to cover the subject, but short enough to keep my interest." He got an aplaud from the guys in the class after that one. Yes, we had a lot of *interesting* teachers in my school. LOL.

 

[Kitty 34]

I loved writing essays.....better than any lab entry any day!!!


Gosh, I wonder how my 7th graders feel right now. I just assigned a 5-paragraph essay today!!

 

[Crankyshank]

I loved writing essays. My friends were amazed at how easily I could churn out 20 page papers at the last minute thanks to my bs ability.

I got a little silver shovel pin at the senior awards banquet from my history teacher for being the best BS artist.

 

[ducklite]

Hmmm, I loved reading and writing essays, seldom added any "BS", and always got "A"'s on the first draft. It's no wonder I gravitated towards journalism. Of course I actually write more flowery "BS" now than I did in high school. My editor loves the stuff, and so do the bands I write about and their publicists.

The only time I struggle is when a band is bad, but I think maybe because of a sound problem of someone's sick as ooposed to truly sucking. So I don't want to trash them, but can't be too glowing. In that case it's spin city time. I've only had one review that was such a thrashing on a band that my editor refused to publish it. And I think there was some politics behind that anyhow.

Anne

 

[Sparx]

I love essays. I'm really good at pretending I know what i'm talking about. Give an interesting point, repeat myself. another point. some creative jibberish. one more point. and finish off with some 2 dollar worded mumbo jumbo. maybe I should be a politian.

 

[Cindy B]

I love reading and writing essays as well. One of my favorite courses in college was a World Civiliazations course which consisted of 5 15 page papers. These papers were the only grades in the course. I of course, got an A!

Currently, my education course is very full of essays, classroom observation reports and other writing assessments. I am used to it and LOVE it!

I would prefer writing essays any day of the week before a multiple choice exam!

 

[barkley]

i managed to write a term paper in 10th grade that i used for EVERY term paper requirement for the remainder of my highschool and college career (the key is to select a general topic that a good opening paragraph can justify as applicable to the particular course requiring the paper ).

i did small revisions over the year (this was in the days prior to computers so it always had to be retyped) but by and large it remained untouched for 8 or 9 years.

it consistently earned a-b grades, and the only negative comments i got (towards the last few years) was that my cited source material was "a bit dated" (um, yeah-they were all from around my 9th grade year ).

i knew a guy in college who was famous for bs'ing his way through essays and term papers. i always warned him that at bare minimum he should at least find real periodicals and books for the citations. well-he p'o'd a professor one semester, and the professor had one of his teaching assistants check out all the references cited. the professor ended up flunking him for the entire class for falsifying the supporting documentation (he almost ended up getting kicked out of college when he was stupid enough to try and argue that none of his other teachers had ever had a problem with his methods of research-they pulled every report he had submitted for the current semester and found they were all bogus too i think he went into used car sales ).

 

[monarchsfan16]

This is too funny!

I majored in Computer Science. I am an engineer, english is definitely not my strong point. My essays in high school were full of BS. Term papers were the worst. You had to meet page and word requirements. I found the best way to do this (without using a huge font) was to just use random quotes from your sources. Then I would explain that quote using about 3 drawn out sentences. I always got A's on my term papers. I guess my teachers liked my BS.

One of my professors last semester actually told us that a great way to lengthen our papers was to add long quotes. If the quote is more than 4 lines it gets all sorts of special treatment that takes up even more space. While I was happy to hear that idea, since we were in the process of writing a twelve pager on a Native American/pirate novel , I was really surprised to hear it come out of her mouth.
I am the absolute queen of bs. My roommate hates when we have to write papers for our honors seminar (at least one a week) because she's a nursing major and as a science geek, well...she just doesn't have that art. And then there's me. I learned bs with the first major paper I wrote (5th grade...10 pager hand written ) and have only improved upon it. Generally speaking it's the papers I don't bs that don't go very well