IT'S REALLY IMPORTANT
Mr. Brock goes crazy over MLA formatting. You can only write in MLA format. He has it as a part on his rubric. Speaking of rubric, always look at the rubric. It's super important you have no idea. If you follow that rubric you'll get a pretty good grade. Mr. Brock never tries to make the essays super complicated, but they're not easy. It is a college class, after all. Don't try to do these essays in one night. You've all done that before but it most likely won't work for these essays. Take time on them. Please cite your sources. Never forget sources and always use them. You could fail an essay because you didn't use sources or cite them correctly. But even with all this information, Mr. Brock still doesn't want you to fail. If you screw up on these essays, he'll let you rewrite them.
Grading
These essays count for a lot of your grade. If you fail one essay and refuse to rewrite it, it can drop you a whole letter grade, which sucks. But also these essays give you room to voice opinions that you may never get to voice in class or have time to voice. It really does help. These essays also give you experience with what college essays will be like, and the grading, which is helpful. One more thing is that it's basically a way to show Mr. Brock who you are and how much you care about his class.
Why you should do them
Mr. Brock usually uses the essays to let you talk about your opinion and for him to grade your writing skills. It's usually something political like why this is better than that or something similar. He also never makes you write on one topic. He'll give choices. They're still in the same ballpark, but it's never one set prompt for all students. This is super handy. It gives you a lot more room to write, and voice what you care about. Plus, from my experience, you get better grades cause you have a bit of room to choose.