This essay may not actually, in the most technical sense available, "pass" as a submission to the "Essay 3: Zuihitsu/ Hybrid" assignment.
If you are interested in financial compensation for your loss, feel free to contact us at 1-800-THIS-AUTHOR-IS-PHYSICALLY-ALLERGIC-TO-UNDERSTANDING-BASIC-DIRECTIONS. We are taking the time and liberty to inform you of this upcoming inconvenience not only as a hook for the first line of this essay, nor to plead "ignorance of the literary law" during its grading process, but rather to provide a reference point based in where said essay is coming from, and where it plans on going for the remainder of its duration.
As we're sure you've found in your time as an academic instructor working at [REDACTED], [REDACTED]'s famous claim of a "gradeless" curriculum in the traditional sense (ie. a lack of letters or percentiles) may hold up in the previously mentioned technical sense (excluding the GPA our final evaluations get translated into during the grad school application process), however, most of the expectations and requirements professors hold in their classrooms act as a sort of "pass/fail" grading system anyway, though the unique teaching philosophy shared amongst them and facility tends to inspire only two genuine points of grading criteria: "Is the assignment complete in provable effort and its entirety?" and "Does it follow the awarded instructions?"
After countless scouring on the internet, our class notes, the description and examples left in the Canvas page, and our memory of class the day you explained it, we have come to the dreaded conclusion that this essay may not fit the second criteria.
Our continued rough-drafting is committed, rather, to the hope that our confusion on the nature of the hybrid essay, the actual difference between Zuihitsu poetry vs Zuihitsu essay writing, the necessity of following a particular theme or idea throughout, the assigned process behind this essay, each supposed segment's expected length or whether this portion's subject matter qualifies it as an actual part of the essay, or even the correct way to separate each section, will somehow act in the spirit of Zuihitsu literature: Following the pen wherever it leads you.
Wish us luck, dear reader.
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I found the same kind of fun in the animal diary that I find in all our in-class hands-on work: Obvious, self-explanatory, and buried deep within the depths of the most artistic/freeform aspect of the activity. Like clockwork, it requires me to brush away the specks of uncertainty in the directions, my withered hands revealing the big, bright label plastered on top.
It reads exactly how you imagine it reads: "See!! See, look, I told you I was here! You were so focused on making sure this assignment helped you towards your next essay, you thought you wouldn't have room for me, but here I am, idiot! You're having a good goddamn time drawing a funky little platypus, and it's all thanks to me! Leave your thank you on the way out, ya dumb bitch!"
Apart from the question of why this metaphor requires a labeling gun with such long stickers, one has to wonder what disgusting alleyway all that distracting stress crawled out of. The supposed safety net of my professors, generally speaking, knowing what exactly they're doing (those PHDs don't exactly just pop into existence one day) does quite little to sway this approach to learning in all its hypervigilance. I've posited many theories over the years, tangentially and never allowing myself the time for a full conclusion; It could be the looming threat of how little time I have to devote to brainstorming how to attack my assignments, maybe the unshakable internal insistence (blame capitalism or the public schooling for that, either's a fine scapegoat and the "why" is too abstract to help me in the middle of class) that learning has to be productive towards a traceable later goal, instead of myself as a whole and an academic (if I have nothing tangible to show for my efforts, how can I be sure I even followed the directions correctly?).
The most troubling option, embarrassing as it is for someone who claims to prioritize her career as a writer above all else, is that I'm simply trying to justify using the skills and techniques as they are given to me, in hopes that the results they wield in class are shiny enough for me to actually use them outside of the class.
I do wonder if I took the animal diary this seriously when I first encountered it. My memory flickers under the winds of time, but I'm leaning towards no.
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It does, of course, come to my attention what asking for clarification on the instructions could do, but the things classification has done in the past (make just as little sense as before, confuse me further, led my mind even farther from the intended understanding, you know the drill) brushes the thought away.
Years of fractured, sprawled out education has taught me my best approach for tasks I'm not fully sure about is to set my concerns aside and simply go with what I think is best, consequences be damned!
(And by damned, I mean, as I'm sure you guessed, professionally dealt with at a later date.)
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Maybe the apologetic, justifying tone gives me away, maybe it's the heavy overarching theme in this freeform-style essay, but I should confess that my current thoughts are mixed in the way they always are. Half are swirling around the task at hand and what little attention I can pay to it (as always). The other half is the on what I really wish I was writing (ie. what I am always thinking about, somewhere, way in the back): Whatever nonsense my brain has deemed flashy enough to name my current hyperfixation (The Stanley Parable at the moment I'm writing this, though I'm sure it'll have changed by the time I come back to edit this).
That latter half, of course, brings me to the conundrum I've left out to dry ever since I labeled myself a writer. I want to spend this entire essay rambling on about this stupid little video game, and it's two stupid little main characters, and the actually brilliant way they need each other more than the narrative itself needs them in one blog-style expository essay, well underneath 750 words. But that just won't work, in the same way that what I wish I was writing even more than that (fiction, prose in particular) won't work either.
In the simplest of terms, that's not what this assignment is about. And in order to actually learn, to grow as a writer, I can't just write what I want too. I have to write what I need to.
YOU ARE READING
And the lights are not fluorescent, and there are no words on the page.
Non-FictionMy final portfolio for one of the creative writing courses I took based around exploring the creative nonfiction essay in its many literary forms, with any and all identifying names or signifiers censored out. (Note: The author's preface was written...
