We would research a topic or person and write about them. Once again, we were not allowed to be unique in our writing or think creatively or critically. That’s when I was taught the five-paragraph essay. As noted in Gray's article, the five-paragraph essay harms students' writing. This writing format is detrimental because it does not allow students to express their own ideas about a topic. This does not allow for any creativity or uniqueness in an article. In tenth grade, I wrote many assignments for my English class, but never got a single A. I was led to believe that my writing was weak because I couldn't relate to what I wrote. I had no emotional connection to the research papers I had to write, and that made it harder for me to write them. I had grown up not being allowed to think critically, and as a result my high school assignments lacked creativity and depth.