There is a reason (learn, learn, learn)

Starting college is a heady feeling. New school, new people, newfound freedoms, all of these things make starting college an exciting time. One of the first shocks most students receive is how much writing is required in college. If you haven’t seen this reflected on your course syllabuses or heard it from your instructors yet, you will before the first year is over.

The nature of college writing is vastly different than you may have experienced in high school. It is certainly different from the types of communication you see on a daily basis. In college, you will be required to make a claim or statement (called a thesis statement) and defend it with logic, facts, and expert opinion. It is unlikely that you had to do this, or do it as thoroughly, in your high school English classes.

Much writing in high school involves your personal response to other people’s writing and opinions. Similarly, most public communication strives to appear reasonable and well-supported, but it often falls short. We’re bombarded by advertising claims that seem to offer a supported argument (“Is gas mileage important to you? Our car gets 24 miles per gallon on the highway. You should buy our car.”), but those appeals to our pocketbooks are far more shallow and narrow than the types of writing and issues you will be asked to consider throughout your college career.

Why is there so much emphasis on writing in college? There are two primary reasons. The first is that writing is a great way to demonstrate your understanding of a topic. The slow, in-depth nature of the process gives you time to develop a clear, coherent response to an issue or topic. The second reason is that writing is a way of learning. Writing is far more than just putting words on paper. In college, when we speak of writing, we’re talking about the entire process from researching a topic and working to understand it to developing a clear, well-supported response to the issues involved in that topic.

Helping you navigate the requirements of writing in college and understand the value of writing beyond school is one of the main purposes of this blog. In the coming weeks, we’ll address some of the issues that make college writing such a challenge and such a rewarding experience. We’ll investigate what academic writing is, why everything seems to be an argument, and why this isn’t such a bad thing after all. We’ll look at how to evaluate sources and discuss some of the differences between what you are being taught about writing and arguing in college and how things happen in “the real world.”

Future posts aren’t written yet, so feel free to use the comments section of this blog to ask questions and propose ideas for discussion. Being engaged in the conversation is another exciting and important aspect of being in college.