On Essays
The Truest Sentence It is pretty frustrating when you can't speak, and an essay is a way to speak of my thoughts.
The word "essay" comes from the French word essayer, meaning "to try."[^1]
I hated writing essays starting from the fifth grade when they were first introduced to me. Partially because my handwriting wasn't neat—unlike my appearance—but also because I couldn't explore my ideas clearly. I never had a perfect score from any of my essays; I always had some kind of grammatical error or couldn't define my ideas at all.
It is pretty frustrating when you can't speak, and an essay is a way to speak of my thoughts. Therefore, I could tell I couldn't talk properly. But now, looking back to my essays after writing one almost every day, I really learned that an essay is about learning and practice. It is in the name: to try.
[^1]: Michel de Montaigne: The French philosopher (1533–1592) was the first to use the term Essais for his writings. He chose the word to emphasize that his writings were merely "attempts" or "trials" to capture his thoughts, rather than definitive, dogmatic truths.