Writing A Hamurger

Writing and myself have a very rocky history. It started when I was in elementary school with the introduction of the "hamburger essay". There was also an "umbrella essay" and some other pictographically described sort of essay, but I honestly do not remember what they were for.

Image from: Sara Domguia

It took me a very short amount of time to realize that if it wasn't a picture book, or at least an interesting story of some sort, then I was not interested in the slightest. Every assignment was a power struggle between myself and the english language, with my blithely unaware teachers and frustrated parents caught in the middle and catching the blame. Looking back, I now know that without some of the basic writing knowledge that they imparted to me, I would not be anywhere near the writer that I am today. For that, I am grateful. Unfortunately, their insistence that this hamburger shaped mind-numbing monstrosity was the most important of all tools and must therefore be mastered above all other things, was not quite so helpful. At some point it stopped being "Write a persuasive/narrative/descriptive essay." It simply became, "Write an essay." So I would sit down and make a page of bullet points and sort them out into three slabs of over processed meat, shaped into neat little circular ideas, thrust between two conveniently available buns of thought, and served up to my instructors with as few sassy condiments of personality as I could muster.


When I actually turned in my work, that is.