Essays

"...unlink journalism, which exists primarily to present facts, the essays transcend their data, or transmute it into personal meaning." ~Joyce Carol Oates.
I think the writing exercise we worked on in the class on Tuesday would be constrewed as an essay. We were assigned to write about an important moment in our past. I consider this an essay because it was a factual event which holds great personal meaning to us (the writers). Personally, I think that the fact that we all switched papers so someone else could finish our work is irrelevant. It could still be considered an essay, because an essay must have personal meaning, and even with different people working on the same essay, they are all still incorporating their own personal meaning to the work. Essays must maintain their truth, however, which would make this argument debatable. But I'd consider Tuesday's in class assignment to be an essay.
"The essay is, and has been, all over the map. There's nothing you cannot do with it; no subject matter is forbidden, no structure proscribed. You get to make up your own structure every time..." ~Annie Dillard.