Balance Stuff!!

Well, for me writing in High School was explained in moris code. I was sure that there must be a way to do it, and I assumed that it was the way the teacher explained that it should be done, but then realized when the students, who to me had written some obscure essay, were praised, that what the teacher said she expected from us, was not really what she expected at all. It wasn't until I spent two years as a missionary teaching people with wide ranges of education about my religion, that I began to understand audience. Upon returning to school, and sitting down to write my first essay for 2010, a task that took many more hours than I thought it would, I realized that my professor, though a very informed and open minded person, was expecting me to pretend that he was well informed on every topic except the one I was writing on. I also decided that when he said clear and concise, what he meant was "even though I am your professor, and I know everything about what you are about to write, you need to explain, define, and give examples, just like you did when teaching the people in Ecuador." So when I wrote my paper on Miles Davis, even though I knew the professor knew who Miles Davis was, and that I knew that he had probably listened to more of Davis's music than I had, I still had to explain that Davis was a trumpet player that helped to introduce Jazz Fusion. And that Jazz Fusion was a mix between the jazz of that time period, and the rock n' roll of that time.

Also, because I still have more time to write, I learned that my professor wanted me to be bold and confident. He didn't want me write a thesis like, "Because I am a stupid college kid who still enjoys watching Full House and has just barely begun studying Miles Davis, I think that Miles Davis is probably the almost greatest trumpet player to ever live in the 1990's." He wanted me to pretend I was smart, almost arrogant. He wanted a thesis like, "Miles Davis, a trumpet player from the seventies and eighties, is the best trumpet player to ever live." And then of course, he wanted me to prove it with other bold statements like, "Louis Armstrong was good, but all he could do was blow really hard into his trumpet." And, "Dizzie Gillespie, though a prominent trumpet player, could not hit the high notes like Miles Davis could."

So, for me, I decided that I would write like I knew it all, and do it clearly, as though I were talking to someone intelligent, but uninformed on the topic I was writing about. As a general rule, I think this works in almost all cases.