Open up your google docs account and find someone on a nearby computer who wants to have their essay writing talents pitted against your own. Both open the first document saved in your accounts, click 'tools', then 'word count'.
Youngest starts, and chooses a category in which they think their essay is likely to excel. Whoever's essay is lengthier/more complex/harder to read in the chosen category wins the round. This means the highest number in all except the 'Flesch Reading Ease' category, which goes down as the text gets more complex. Whoever wins gets a point and chooses the category on the next document. You play until one or both of you have gone through all your documents.
This game is genius because it introduces skill to the standard top trumps pot-luck. All the wins are the hard-earned wins of an essay crisis, rather than statistics for some bullshit car or simpsons character you didn't even build/create. Knowing your opponent also adds a new dimension; my paragraphs tend to be made up of a few, lengthy sentences, but my vocabulary is a polysyllabic smorgasbord of erudite lexiphanicism. Anyone who knows my style will target the 'average sentences per paragraph' but steer well clear of the 'words per sentence' or 'characters per word' categories unless they've got something to prove.
Most importantly, google docs top trumps translates your long, tedious and hitherto wasted hours of essay-writing into a fun and worthwhile game. Finally, there's a point to doing a humanities degree.
Robin
you're mental.
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