About Jared

What is it about compare and contrast essays that makes them so difficult to get started? Maybe it’s having to juggle two different subjects in one essay. Usually you set your sights on one topic and tackle it directly. However, with a compare and contrast essay,...

A group essay assignment can feel a bit like some kind of morbid social experiment. Several strangers are forced to work together on a project that’s generally recognized as being more easily done alone. Will they find a way to work together, or will they...

Getting a graded paper back from your prof can be a frustrating experience. You get an essay back from a teacher with a grade written clearly across the top of the paper, but little is written elsewhere to indicate why you received that grade. There’s no real...

J.R.R. Tolkien was grading a stack of college exam papers one summer day when he came upon a blank piece of paper tucked among them. He wrote on it the first thing to pop into his head: “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” Over the next 20 or so...

Less is more, they say. Which, to be honest, kind of bothers me because it’s inherently incorrect. Less most certainly is not more—it is less. However, there are times when having less is better. So for the sake of accuracy, let’s say this—less is better…sometimes....

The end is the beginning is the end. Or so it constantly seems when writing an essay. As soon as you think you’re finished, it’s time to examine, revise, and rewrite. The end of your first draft marks the beginning of your second. The beginning of your...

Hello there! Welcome back to the Kibin blog. Our goal here at Kibin is to educate you on the art of writing. We do that in several ways, including awesome editing services, a deep database of essay examples, and this blog. Our focus on the Kibin blog is to explain...

As you know by now (for I tend to remind you ad nauseam), the thesis statement is the most important sentence in your essay. It’s the backbone of your paper. In other words, it’s the star around which your ideas orbit, the bread crumbs in your essay...

There have been exactly 18,312 words written here at the Kibin blog on the subject of the argumentative essay. Think I made that number up? Well, prove it. We’ve written so many blog posts on the subject because it’s by far the most common essay assignment...

On the west coast of Taiwan, just north of Taichung City, there is a place called Gaomei where the setting sun takes all but an inch of water with it out to sea. There, you can take off your shoes and socks and walk into the wetland, feeling the wet clay work its...

There’s an easy way and a hard way to do just about everything in life. However, the things most worth doing are almost always more difficult. For instance, it’s hard to go to school, work a job to pay for it, and then come home and study at the end of it all....

What does it really mean to be boring? We can all point to a moment that was boring. And we’re quick to recognize a new one when it presents itself, but what are the criteria for something to fall into that category? When I worked as a cashier at a grocery store...

In Greek Orphic tradition, Thesis, the goddess of creation, is worshiped for creating all of the matter we see in the world today. In the academic writing world, it feels as if we are often worshiping her ourselves. I mean, your thesis statement is kind of like...

Some of the greatest figures in our human history have been rule breakers. There were the American revolutionaries who refused to pay their taxes without being represented in the British parliament. There was Nelson Mandela who joined the African National Congress...

When I was a six-year-old kindergarten student, I decided (and my parents somehow permitted me) to take a box turtle I found in my backyard to school for Show and Tell. As I rode the bus to school, I was quite excited to show my classmates my new pet. The turtle...

On a magical Saturday afternoon in the mid ’90s, my family and I made a trip to the nearest Circuit City to buy our first home computer. I remember it well. The salesman in his red polo shirt saw my corn-fed parents and thought he might feed them a few lines...

The year 2016 was pretty crazy, wasn’t it? It was the year of the summer Olympics in Brazil, where Michael Phelps won his 13th individual gold medal, breaking a record that was set by Leonidas of Rhodes in 152 BC. The Chicago Cubs won the World Series that year,...

Edward Lorenz was a mathematician and meteorologist at MIT who created a complex mathematical model nearly 60 years ago to study weather and air patterns. His hope was that the research would lead to accurate long-term weather forecasts. However, in 1961, the idea...

Travel. Adventure. Exploration. There’s so much to learn out there for those who go looking for it. André Gide once wrote: “Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” Of course, nowadays it’s a little less...

I absolutely love film. But I don’t absolutely love bad films. So you can understand why I appreciate good film critics. They essentially save me from wasting my life in two-hour increments. Although critics can be quite critical (read: negative) at times, they...

Don’t you just love when the name of an essay is straightforward? A classification essay is an essay in which you classify something—anything—based on shared characteristics. You can classify people, things, or even ideas. Your subject will represent a broad...