Academic experience

Does writing essays make you smarter?

Assessments for all the modules in International Studies and Political Science department at the University of Birmingham consists of three methods: in-class presentation, two or one assessed essays each term, and an exam in May/June.

The interesting part, is that the essays, with mostly prescribed titles, are supposed to stimulate students pursuit for knowledge, invention and ‘original thinking’. But what does it really come down to?

The essays are mostly reproduction of already available knowledge, i.e. books and articles from the library. The only trick is to paraphrase the reading in such way, it won’t count as plagiarism, or at least it wouldn’t appear as such. After consulting the problem, which I personally find quite disappointing, with fellow students at UCL, Manchester University and other, we concluded that: a) mark that you obtain from your essay in 80% depends on the ‘academic workshop and skills’ that you have, much more that on what you really know. This means you can actually get a comfortable 2.1 with no substantial knowledge, as long as the structure and techniques used are advanced enough. Conclusion b)  the term ‘clearly creating new knowledge’ used in the Undergraduate Marking Scheme is vague, and in many occasions impossible to achieve. Conclusion c), which is not really rocket science, is that after first two paragraphs of your essays, the marker already knows what grade you will obtain. The difference between good (2.1) and excellent (1) essay seems to be quite blurry, especially looking at number of my feedback forms where I had many ‘excellent’ but apparently not enough to get me 70, but only 69 points.

All things considered, I understand that my work may sometimes lack the edge to be a 1st, but is very close, what has a stimulating result in me working harder. On the other hand, pursuing the ‘new knowledge’ often ends in a disappointment, especially in a 2000 words essay where you don’t have the time and resources to, for example, go out on the streets and perform a research on 1000 people. Hence, as you base your essay on existing literature, any initial ‘new’ idea that you had, finds out to be already discovered by precious research, and moreover already criticized by another.

Final point to make is that majority of students choose the exam questions covering the essays they have worked on, hence not really learning anything new.