While searching for something else today, I ran across a web site [which I will not name, for obvious reasons] which offers "war essays" and 100,000 essays on other topics. I grew up in a day when you had to write your own essays. At least the teacher knew that you had at least read it. Even if you copied it mostly from books, you at least had read the material. I was not a great student in high school--I was bored with the teachers and afflicted with almost terminal sloth. I did get excited about math and I had a great math teacher in high school. He had the personality of a pirana, but I think he got that from his students. The lower levels of math--algebra I--which "ordinary" students took were basically a zoo, but as we got into the more rarified atmosphere of advanced math, analytical geometry [as it was called then], and calculus, the classes got smaller and smaller and more fun.

Back to the web site. I was no saint in high school, but I had too much confidence in my own ideas to ever have stooped to borrow and essay from someone or to copy one. For better or worse, the ideas I wrote were my own. That is still true.