The first essay anybody writes is for school. Same here. But the only examples I remember are the ones I wrote at the end, in my A-level exams. One compared Hitler to Stalin. Another, Martin Luther King, Jr., to Malcolm X. I was proudest of the essay that considered whether the poet John Milton-pace William Blake-was "of the devil's party without knowing it." I did well on those standardized tests, but even passing was far from a foregone conclusion.