Dear Graduate School,
I’m afraid that you have been spending too much time perpetuating your own myth. You laboriously teach me to write pseudo-critical essays rapidly, and then you give me a timed test in which I must write not one but two pseudo-critical essays as a sign that I am a successful graduate student. But under what circumstances other than graduate school would I ever need to write eleven pages of air in three and a half hours? (In any case, speed is a preposterous component of composition.) Nevertheless, I thank you for validating my growing suspicion that my writing skills are becoming honed for nothing more than bowing to your conventions.
Sincerely,
A Casualty of the Cause
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