Okay, I think I just wrote the worst essay I’ve ever written. In my entire life. And I think it will remain as the worst essay that I will write in my entire life. I was born [at some point in the 1900s], and I will die [sometime in the 2000s], and within that time, the worst essay I will have written was written in December of 2022. It was so bad, honestly. The worst.
So let’s get a bit of background here. During some year in the 1900s, I was born. And that was all fine and good. Then eventually I worked at an insurance company [I won’t say which (there was a gecko involved)], and I didn’t really like it. I didn’t like my life. So my plan was to transfer to a branch in another city, and then somehow get a new job for some environmental company [I was becoming an environmentalist]. As I was preparing for the move, a public health crisis broke out. I started working from home, which was okay, but I started to really really hate that job. So I quit, and I went back to school to study environmental science.
It’s interesting, and I hope to do some good in the world. But you gotta take some general education courses in order to get your degree. I took one course that fulfilled two different requirements at once. Smart! The class was called “Understanding Evil” and it was a philosophy/religion type of class, which is fine, but it was fuckin horrible. I honestly want to just make an account on ratemyprofessor.com just to give this guy the lowest amount of stars possible. Zero, probably. Or maybe one. Or maybe it doesn’t even use a star rating system. But he fuckin sucked. What a complete asshole. He sucks!
Anyway, I had one final essay due, and I was kinda getting ready to write it, but I was also kinda starting to drink. Just a few drinks, I thought, but then all of a sudden I was in the eleven o’clock hour, my vision was a little bit blurred, and I was angry. The essay was due at 11:59 PM, so I typed furiously, like what I’m doing now, as if there were some deadline for this blog post. There isn’t. I could literally never write another word ever again if I wanted to. But I won’t do that!
And who the hell knows what I was even talking about in that essay?!? Something about the difference between evilness and badness. I was just writing random shit. I think I even mentioned Rocky at some point. As in Rocky Balboa. The boxer. The Italian Stallion, if you will. I was just throwing figurative shit at the figurative wall. I don’t know if anything even stuck. And even if it did, it’s still shit.
Then it was 11:56, and I was doing the works cited page. Of course this professor is one of those that DEMANDS, under penalty of death, that you use the Chicago style of citation. NOTHING ELSE WILL BE ACCEPTED. Is this really what we want in our world? Do we need to be that serious about the citation style? I accept that it’s good to cite your sources and not plagiarize and all that, but does it make the essay bad if I use MLA instead of Chicago style? No. It was bad because I was drinking and writing it in the last hour and I didn’t give a shit about the class. Just imagine a scientist peer reviewing another scientist’s paper and they’re like, “Yeah, great paper, intriguing stuff, well-done research, but it was in MLA, so we should throw it out.”
I submitted the worst essay of my life at 11:58, and I’m glad to be done with it. I’m ready to move forward with my life, you know? The bigger point is that hyperfocusing on technicalities, like citation style or font or margins, is basically worthless. It’s not important in gauging intelligence. It’s like Jeopardy. I love Jeopardy, I watch it all the time, but this whole “answer must come in the form of a question” thing is kinda ridiculous. The point is to test the player’s knowledge and their abilities to quickly solve clever clues. This added rule accomplishes nothing. The ability to answer the clue should be everything. Here’s a clue from the category “9-Letter “F” Words”: This nine letter word describes Jeopardy’s question rule. What is frivolous?
Lefty Forrester 