I was thoroughly drilled in the infamous
five-paragraph essay (affectionately known to us as "Bing, Bang, BONGO") in high school and it served me well all through college. It's not really suitable for more free-form essays, such as informal blog posts, but it does get you accustomed to the need for structure. There's approaching your point in a more roundabout way and then there's meandering around without any sort of point at all and the latter is not an essay anyway really wants to read.
"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons