"T he trouble is that essays always have to sound like God talking for eternity, and that isn't the way it ever is. People should see that it's never anything other than just one person talking from one place in time and space and circumstance." --Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It's the end of the school year, and my students all have essays to write. Many of them also need to fix a research paper. Meanwhile, last night I couldn't sleep, and felt the need, inspired by something on Facebook yesterday to look up the part of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance where the narrator quotes some assembly directions: "Assembly of Japanese bicycle require great peace of mind." (p. 146) I got caught up in the book, again , and read on to the part around page 156 where he is explaining how the rules of writing seem to have been made up after the fact, and "became convinced that all the writers the students were su