thank you Tudor for justifying my angst. I couldn’t believe the essay when I read it today in the Cord. horrid. absolutely horrid.

All of the “read essay” links point to the Sadowski essay. As much fun as it was to read your annotations, I don’t want to read them three times! Where are the other damn essays?

hehehe. copy-and-paste is the devil — the links are now fixed ;). sorry about that.

wtf? How on earth is it fair that someone got $750 for writing that?

UGH.

“The possibility of the reason for the high level of volunteerism at Laurier is due to the small, community-esque atmosphere”

WTF? You’re right! That title doesn’t even make sense….aaaaargggghh.

I just read her “essay”. She honestly won 750 dollars for that? Is this not some kind of joke?

they got paid for those? ayayay…the first prize one actually seemed to be the worst one

Holy shit, I think I may have suffered permanent brain damage reading those essays… particularly the first and third prize ones.

I think I understand now why my last minute shite often nets me marks in the nineties.

Winners are always relative. Perhaps these essays were the best of the crap submitted. Did the people complaining submit their own essay?

Sweet christ in heaven. These are godawful. They seem remarkably familiar to the writing style of any student who suffered from participation in the double-cohort years of Ontario’s education system. Or as it is popularly known, Double Cohort-esque Riting Sinndromme. Fraser’s would have been awesome if he’d used another metaphor to describe volunteer encouragement, like brainwashing instead of fertilization, although that’s pretty funny too (WLUSU puts shit in your heads, kids!).

Fraser’s essay works well as satire — it’s funny as shit if you don’t take it seriously. He deserves to keep his money for making me laugh!

Making fun of these essays is inconsiderate and mean. OBVIOUSLY the competition wasn’t that stiff, but why beat up the participants about it? Why don’t YOU submit an essay next time. I can’t understand why people waste time bringing others down over trivial things. OK - the papers they wrote may suck, but why not get pissed about the fact that not enough people contributed to the competition, rather than publicly ridicule those people who participated. It’s all in good fun people - lighten up, and stop raining on the winners’ parade.

Making fun of lame essays IS fun! Maybe your comments will encourage the essay writers to take some writing classes. (My writing is not so hot, maybe I should take some refresher courses my damn self!)

Yes, it is mean to make fun of sucky essays — I’ll admit it. However, the winners can console themselves by buying something nice with the prize money. At the end of the day they’re richer than I am and they don’t have to give a fuck. But if they read my comments, maybe they can submit better essays next year.

My goal wasn’t to insult the individuals who won, but to critique the overall level of writing. The contest was a failure — it’s that simple. WLUSU rewarded silliness rather than competence. And I suspect that they overlooked essays that were more nuanced (e.g. essays that might have suggested that volunteering at Laurier is a cult) in favour of feel-good essays about “community.” Indeed, the essays on the second and third place are *much* stronger than the essay that finished first (which makes me question the judging).

Also, I’m a fan of stating the OBVIOUS: if essays sucked, we should say so (even if people are uncomfortable with it).

Okay, I’ll see if WLUSU will let me submit an essay next year, as a former WLU student.

On another note, today was Laurier Day, and I’m sad to hear that no one was out giving out fake tours and informative pamphlets. As proof of my conditioning to Laurier Day action, I walked up to a tour here at Mac the other day and was just about to launch into a spiel about how they should not come to school here before I realized that, wait, I’m at a GOOD school now! What a concept.

I DID submit an essay. I worked at it for quite a while (ie. not the night before) AND I had it someone look it over TWICE!

I’ll be the first to admit that my idea was not all that original, but I felt that I had to pander somewhat to the particular audience I was writing for. Apparently I didn’t pander enough. Apparently I spelled things correctly and used complete sentences and coherent arguments. My bad.

There were, to my knowledge, at LEAST 11 submissons to the contest. I think it is embarrassing that the Academic Issues Committee and WLUSU would print that as their winning submission. It’s horrible and I feel justified in my criticism and I am glad I’m not alone. $750.00 …. ridiculous.

“Also, I’m a fan of stating the OBVIOUS: if essays sucked, we should say so (even if people are uncomfortable with it).” - Tudor

Tudor,

I couldn’t agree with you more. You could sugarcoat your feelings for Katie’s sake or the sake of these writers, but who really benefits from that?

After re-reading your blog several times on this subject, I don’t see how you are actually making fun of the writers? You state why the essays are weak, and explain why. As far as I am concerned, you haven’t made fun of anyone; just provided good constructive criticism.

However, I would like to know how WLUSU marked these essays? What exactly were they looking for?

Who were they looking for? Someone who appeared to be an intellectual equal to 90% of their membership.

this is great. however, perhaps what we are missing is the fact that these people are now wealthier than us, bullshitting their way through an essay really pays off! its what we do most of the time an essay in school comes up anyways? we bullshit our way through essays, the only difference is - these bastards got paid and we didn’t. if anything we should laugh at the entire situation. im sure all three of the writers were laughing while they were writing their essays, so lets laugh with them. ha ha ha ha ha.
about 2 months ago i found out about the opportunity of writing an essay on volunteering at laurier, but i couldnt bring myself to having to bullshit that much - laurie, alyson, and fraser props for being the bullshit trio. in all honesty, i think the graders secretly looked for the essay with the most bullshit in it, and then awarded that one first prize. its the only way it makes sense!

Really, I am tempted to say something about that winning essay but to be honest this is Laurier, I mean people what did you expect? Something hard hitting that really got to the bottom of the issue or this crap?

Please WLUSU do this again next year, I really, really could use $750 and I have the best idea for an essay ever…… “WLUSU is Awesome” written out 200 times.

“WLUSU is Awesome” is at least a grammatically correct sentence. Tudor, I loved your comments on these essays - I only wish that I could be that honest with the essays that I have to mark, many of which are at least this bad. And I agree that Fraser’s essay is so over the top that it deserved to win. Whether he meant it that way or not, his essay is hilarious and actually quite a clever satire of the whole situation.

Did the people complaining submit their own essay?

I didn’t, but I hadn’t even heard of this contest until reading this entry…

My goal wasn’t to insult the individuals who won, but to critique the overall level of writing. The contest was a failure — it’s that simple. WLUSU rewarded silliness rather than competence. And I suspect that they overlooked essays that were more nuanced (e.g. essays that might have suggested that volunteering at Laurier is a cult) in favour of feel-good essays about “community.” Indeed, the essays on the second and third place are *much* stronger than the essay that finished first (which makes me question the judging).

Tudor, I question a couple of things here - one, by suggesting that essays were overlooked, you imply that there was an essay submitted that you’ve seen and that you think had ideas that weren’t what the 3 judges (Anthony, Steve and Daniela, the Coordinator of Academic issues) were looking for. What makes volunteering a cult? Can you prove this with fact? This leads into my second point: you completely overlook the fact that some research went into the winning essay - some mediocre writing that’s founded in fact and well backed up may beat some well-written bullshit.

Note that I’m not necessarily defending the organization here, but I think the two things I mentioned are worthy of being considered. (Plus, everything’s grammatically correct…)

How is the first place winner even in university?? The essay is absolutely horrible (as everyone has already said!).

I *hope* the essay was a joke ( I *really* hope!!!).

Dan, it’s a bit disingenuous to ask me if “there was an essay submitted that you’ve seen and that you think had ideas that weren’t what the 3 judges were looking for.” I wasn’t judging the competition so I haven’t seen any of the essays aside from those published.

But even from what I’ve seen, the other two winning essays were more coherent and argumentative than the first one; this is what makes me question the panel’s judging ability.

You also claim that “some research went into the winning essay.” What little research went into it didn’t fit at all within the main argument. I think the point I was trying to make is this: the three judges should not have been looking for their own ideas in the essays; rather, they should have developed some sort of grading criteria.

To settle this argument, I’m going to ask those who submitted their essays to the competition to forward me a copy. I will do my own evaluation of the essays just so we can get a fuller appreciation of what WLUSU consideres to be a good essay.

tudor no one cares for you to judge anyways.
maybe next time god

I had planned to prepare a submission with an empirical bent, and sent requests for information to 6 southern Ontario university student unions. By the submisison deadline, only two had replied: McMaster and Brock. Other schools promised info but never delivered; WLUSU didn’t even acknoweldge my initial email.

My argument was going to be that Laurier studentes volunteer because they have to; that is, almost all forms of community involvement at Laurier are voluntary, not paid, paid a stipend, paid an honourarium, or whatever. Per capita, Laurier has (from the submissions I recieved and based on vague estimates from the WLUSU wbsite) the fewest (at zero) ‘compensated volunteer positions’ that don’t require winning an election, and the most, per capita, ‘pure volunteer positions’.

So, if you’re at WLU and want to ‘get involved’, you’ve got to volunteer. But without a table of data, I wans’t confident enough in making this claim.

greg, you could have scribbled that on a cocktail napkin and spelled your name incorrectly on it and the possibility of the likelihood of your winningness would have been certain-esque.

hahaha! You’re probably right regan. As far as I’m concerned, Greg Smith has the right idea — a topic like this forces you to do a comparative study between different universities.

None of the essays I’ve read so far actually looked outside the Laurier bubble for explanations (and that’s why many of the entries sound like bullshit — “Laurier is community-esque and has spirit”).