My 10th grade English teacher told me I wasn't very good at writing essays. Well, she didn't use those exact words. It's just that every essay I got back had a D' written in red ink at the top and something about needing to support my thesis statement throughout. She didn't actually tell me how to go about doing that, but when I heard about it later in a college class, I knew I needed to pay attention.

Here are some other things I should have known about essay writing while ascending the ranks of academia.

How to Plagiarize: Unlike today's cut and paste world of Internet plagiarism, plagiarism was difficult back in the day. You actually had to go to the library, get a book, and copy things by hand. That was way too much work for me, so I decided to use my own thoughts and ideas, and where did that get me? Sure, I actually learned the writing process and how to string thoughts together coherently and smoothly-oh, and it also taught me how to communicate clearly and effectively-oh, and it also gave me the necessary skills at the various careers I have had-but I would trade it all in to just to have gotten an A.'

The Emergence of Spell Check: Y did eye waist awl that thyme learning how two spill correctly. If only eye wood have known about spill chick, eye could have saved a lot of thyme doing important thins like playing video games or watching TV. Today, u do knot even kneed too no how too spill when righting an s, eh? I did knot use it won thyme wile righting this hear won. These teachers knead too stop wasting hour thyme with spilling tests!

Just Write a Good Introduction: I can't believe that I actually thought my teacher read all those essays. There's no way! All I had to do was write a really snappy introduction and I would have been home free (other than my 10th grade English teacher who did read the whole thing). Be careful not to write too good of an introduction, though. The teacher might read the whole thing and foil your plan.

How to Use Subject Pronouns Correctly: Me had a lot of trouble making I understood back when me wrote in high school. Luckily, me had a really good English teacher that taught I how to use the correct word. Us worked hard!

Correct Grammar: Why did it never occur to me that everything a writer needed to know about grammar was contained in a 5th grade grammar book? Instead of taking the requisite 5 seconds to actually find out the correct usage of a word, I insisted on handing in essays

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