Writing Essays As A Way Of Learning

I struggle to write essays because I don’t know enough about any particular topic. I am no expert in anything. Heck, English isn’t even my first language. Facts slip through my mental fingers like water. I recognize the broad outlines of ideas but struggle to articulate their nuances. This creates a persistent sense of intellectual impostor syndrome. My brain bounces from one idea to another, and I can barely remember anything substantial about any of them.

I feel very dissatisfied with my depth. I feel shallow. It’s almost like I can’t speak the language that seems to come so naturally to others. I watch people construct elaborate arguments or explanations, and I marvel at their ability to stay with one train of thought, to build idea upon idea into something substantial. Their minds seem like well-organized libraries where mine feels like a pile of sticky notes blown by a fan.

As a child, I spoke too quickly, rushing through words as if afraid the thoughts would evaporate before I could express them. “You sound just like your aunt,” my parents would say, invoking a relative nobody took seriously. Strange how shame travels from childhood to adulthood. Even now, twenty years later, when excitement accelerates my speech, that familiar tightness returns to my chest, a physical reminder of the fear that nobody will take me seriously.

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Joan Didion once wrote that she didn’t know what she thought until she wrote it down. For her, writing wasn’t about transcribing pre-formed ideas but discovering what she actually believed. When I first read this, something clicked for me. Maybe my scattered thinking isn’t just a flaw to overcome but a specific way of processing information that needs a different approach. Maybe writing isn’t just recording thoughts but creating them.

The word “essay” comes from the French “essayer” — to try, to attempt. Michel de Montaigne, who invented the form in the 16th century, wasn’t showing off what he knew but exploring what puzzled him. His essays were experiments in understanding, not demonstrations of expertise. This is profoundly reassuring to me. The essay, by definition, doesn’t demand mastery; it invites curiosity. It doesn’t require conclusions; it values the process of thinking itself.

Writing an essay feels like walking into a dark forest without a map. The first steps are always tentative. You start with a naive opinion, the surface understanding that first springs to mind. But as you write, something shifts. You realize how little you actually know. This awareness is uncomfortable but necessary.

Writing is a form of thinking, a method of learning that makes demands that passive reading doesn’t. When I just read about a topic, the information washes over me without resistance. I can nod along, feeling like I’m understanding everything. But when I try to write about it? That’s when all the gaps in my knowledge become painfully obvious. Writing doesn’t let me hide from what I don’t know.

There’s a specific kind of learning psychologists call “insight learning” — those lightbulb moments when seemingly disconnected pieces suddenly form a pattern. Unlike gradual, incremental learning, insight learning happens in flashes. Essay writing creates the perfect conditions for these insights to occur. Something about the sustained attention, the attempt to articulate what you only half-understand — this primes the mind for breakthroughs.

When you write, you’re creating what cognitive scientists call an “external representation” of your thinking. Your thoughts, once on the page, become objects you can interact with differently than when they’re just swirling around in your head. You can arrange them, connect them, question them. This process transforms chaos into structure, especially valuable for minds that naturally resist organization.

When we write essays, we build mental models that stay with us. The connections forged between ideas become pathways in our minds. This is why writing can feel like watching a room gradually illuminate. What was shadowed becomes clear. What seemed isolated becomes connected.

Essays also create a peculiar time dilation. In conversation, we’re swept along by social momentum. Writing, however, lets me linger indefinitely on a single idea, turning it over like a curious stone found on the beach. This slowing down is essential for deep learning. The educational philosopher John Dewey understood this when he wrote about “reflective thinking,” the process of dwelling with uncertainty rather than rushing to premature conclusions. Essays institutionalize this dwelling. They give permission for the meandering exploration that genuine learning requires.

I’m beginning to think essay writing might be the most valuable learning tool precisely for people like me who struggle with conventional academic approaches. The essay doesn’t demand that I already know; it invites me to discover. It doesn’t require me to be an authority; it asks only that I be thoughtful, curious, and honest about what I do and don’t understand.

Beyond the immediate benefits to my thinking, essay writing connects me to a tradition of thinkers who have used this form to make sense of their experiences. From Montaigne to Didion, from Baldwin to Woolf, from Emerson to Zadie Smith — I’m in conversation with others who have used writing as a way to clarify their thoughts, to understand themselves and their world better. This sense of connection matters, especially for someone who often feels like an intellectual outsider.

Through the practice of essay writing — this regular attempt to make sense of my thoughts on the page — I’m gradually reframing my relationship with my mind. What I once saw as limitations (distractibility, breadth over depth, quick transitions between topics) might actually be strengths in the right context. Perhaps my natural tendency toward connection rather than concentration has value I haven’t fully appreciated.

Maybe the goal isn’t to transform into someone else, someone with a more orderly mind who can focus intensely on a single subject for years. Maybe the goal is to become a better version of who I already am — someone who makes unusual connections, who moves between different domains with ease, who approaches questions from unexpected angles. And maybe the essay, with its tolerance for digression and association, its embrace of the personal voice alongside the intellectual exploration, is the perfect form for this kind of mind.

As I sit here, struggling to articulate thoughts that seem to change shape even as I reach for them, I feel something I rarely experience elsewhere: a kind of peace with the way my mind works. Not because writing has fixed my scattered thinking, but because it’s given me a way to work with it rather than against it. A way to learn that accommodates my particular strengths and weaknesses, a way to create meaning from the fragments I collect.

In the end, that might be what writing essays is teaching me beyond any particular content: how to be at home in my own mind, with all its quirks and limitations. How to learn in a way that works for me, rather than fighting against my nature. How to find value in the attempt itself, regardless of the outcome.