One If You Really Hate Your Reader - Blog Posts

i remember hearing about the college app essays as a kid and how much time people spend on them and so starting in 7th grade, I would practice writing proper essays, like 10-15 pages EACH. I did this like all the way through highschool because I figured that was what I would be expected to be able to write, and then I first looked over the commonapp questions and they’re like, a couple hundred words on the vaguest prompt that has ever prompted. like, i understand there are administrative reasons, but I was so godamned shocked because everyone had called them essays, which to me meant a complete piece of writing??, and ig i just ran with that assumption as a kid? I feel like that’s pretty reasonable, is it normal that people struggle so much to write a few pages? Is this an American thing?