Thank you for sharing your experience! It is so interesting to have insight from someone who attended international schools — have you read The Smartest Kids in the World and How They Got That Way? It is an interesting, story-driven discussion of different school systems and what’s working/not. I’ve been reading it lately and have been interested in what’s different from US universities (the book focuses on K-12, mostly).

Anyway, I don’t understand the obsession with word counts, either. No one likes them! Not even writers! Obviously, at some point we have to learn how to condense and expand and word counts can be helpful in providing guidelines, but that’s what they should be — guidelines. Not restrictions. Otherwise it produces sh*t like students entering random words in a white font to inflate the word count.

Thanks for weighing in and for reading!