”Wow, by the time I’m 21, I’ll be graduating out of college and go right into a new job” …I sighed in amazement while graduating high school. Four years later and I am currently in my sophomore year. Little did I know that the transition from high school to college is a sudden leap in which as a young independent adult student one is expected to know how to express their work as clear and concise as when they present themselves in front of others in order to attain their audience’s interest.
But let’s rewind to that splendid moment when school was out but the real phase of being an independent college student kicked in. Confused as anybody is during their freshman year, I was moving up, down, left and right just as I was told to be ready for the new semester, classes … checked.
I enrolled in an interdisciplinary studies program which consisted of taking three different types of writing courses during the semester. One of these was Justice and the Individual. I thought it was fascinating, the name just stood out to me, it scared me but also excited me, without the slightest idea of what I was going for.
Since I can recall I’ve always been one to explore, whatever it’d be, I’d take the risk of experiencing it. Optimistic about myself, like an enthusiastic child, I walked into that classroom filled with students, trying to be the best version of myself. A few lessons in, I was comfortable with the material, nothing too complicated to understand. We even took a field trip to a penitentiary all the way in Pennsylvania. A few more lessons after that and my comprehension of the material seemed to be off. I knew I had to invest more time in it, so I fixed my problem. For every reading, I carried a red pen, a black pen, and my iPad. While I read, apart from taking notes I circled any word that I didn’t understand and looked up its meaning on my Merriam Webster app. Problem solved. Afterwards, group presentation day came and I had to go in front of the classroom. I remember all of those eyes just staring right at me, and all I could get was one word out. A problem that I am still working on. (I’m currently taking a speech class)
But my main issue was the day that I received my draft paper back. After having to write an essay about how justice played out in an individual’s life. A broad enough topic that I learned to narrow down well enough to suit what I wanted to discuss. To my surprise, when I reviewed my paper it wasn’t the content the problem more than was the number of grammatical errors my professor had circled and underlined for me to correct. On every page the amount of red ink to me seemed overwhelming, for that I thought it looked pretty stupid when compared to my classmate’s next to me.
I couldn’t help to feel ashamed, and at the same time really frustrated for the fact that they were simple mistakes. I didn’t understand why the big fuzz because that paper seemed to have had been inspected to its core for any mistake. Hearing my professor say that I needed to “go to the writing center for help” left me feeling in distress. I had always succeeded in my past writing assignments, in fact, English had always been my favorite subject. All of the sudden I had just been hit with trying to remember something that felt I had learned a while back.
Walking into the writing center felt humiliating. For the first time in my school years, I felt like a failure as a writer. I was introduced to the term “Academic” and to complement it “writing”. I considered it to be writing that good writers formed with the use of fancy words. But, as it has turned out, it seems to be that the term needs a whole class dedicated for itself. It suddenly hit me, that what I had done in the past was during high school, and a lot of my work consisted on the expansion of an idea. This was now college.
As Lennie Irvin describes in his essay, What Is Academic Writing? pg. 8, “Academic writing is always a form of evaluation that asks you to demonstrate knowledge and show proficiency with certain disciplinary skills of thinking, interpreting, and presenting.” I want to add stress to this last word because that is where I found that my problem lied for this assignment. The way in which my paper was presented to the reader made it invaluable as a piece to qualify as academic. I probably considered it a mistake of last-minute importance, but not knowing how to correct it ended up affecting my entire piece of work no matter the quality of points I had raised. I’d like to use the analogy that Irvin, (pg. 10) makes when comparing the stance of a college student to that of a courtroom. One as a writer, acts as the lawyer who’s laying out the case for your jury (the readers), providing them with all of the necessary facts supported with evidence, in order to make a convincing case. According to Irvin, it captures two important things about academic argument “1. the value of an organized presentation of your “case” and 2. the crucial element of strong evidence”. While I couldn’t agree more with this statement, I would also like to add this scenario. Suppose that the lawyer has all the substantial evidence needed to back up his claims, but while presenting his argument he fails at making it appealing due to his poor choice of language, fast-talking pace, or lack of voice projection, in a way that can overall almost confuse his jury, pretty quickly it can turn into a lost case. What I am trying to bring forth here is that presentation is just as equally important as the content of the information you are trying to deliver. Consider it another way; a smart a person might have many great ideas, if they cannot formulate these into well-ordered words they would fail in getting their ideas across, think of it as the grammar of communicating without paper. Yes, grammatical errors are made all the time, but a good writer is able to go over its work and reread it as many times in order to make sure they are getting their message across precisely in a way that’s almost impactful when they see it on the page both for the writer and the reader.
Therefore, apart from all that academic writing encompasses, I am still learning to express my work. It was a while before I was able to step foot in another writing class, and today I find myself in one that I feel is vital for me. I consider it the introductory course I long needed in order to gain a better insight of my work. Academically speaking, I’ve realized that I’m not as good as I probably was, without the practice, I’ve lost a lot of the skill I possessed while in high school. I currently stand at a point that when trying to develop a certain idea, I often end up in trying to express too much or merely able to expand it out. Overall, I consider myself a writer of average quality that is able to achieve the core of the assignment. I don’t aim for perfection because regardless of how I may formulate my work in order to suit the satisfaction of my reader’s individual critiques, they will always have something to say. This only leaves it to note that everyone who’s able to read my work will always evaluate it differently. But because of this difference, what I am aiming for them to have in common is the first impression I am able to transmit to them, by delivering a message simple enough to understand supported with the knowledgeable skill that a good academic writer possesses and imprints in his paper as he formulates his sentences.