Welcome to the Essay Meta

Did you catch that? Aschenbrenner isn’t just writing a report — he’s writing an opinionated narrative, where he explores and tests out an idea that stands outside the consensus, and tries to get you to see the world his way.
Essays are not about using five paragraphs (or more, as an adult) to prove a point. Rather, they began as an effort to try to find the truth. Michel de Montaigne’s *Essays*weren’t an effort to argue a prebaked thesis. Rather, they were an act of sensemaking, growing out of his commonplace book — a way of trying to extract meaning from different quotes, ideas, and stories that he had encountered. Some of the Essays are coherent, others less so. But they were far less certain than the approach that gets you a 5 on the AP English exam. [2]
Together, it means that the essay format isn’t just an argument. It’s a guess at what might be true.