Reflections on University Writing

Read a novel. Pull a theme from it. Get some quotes. Tada! This was the general model of paper-writing that I was taught in high school. It was rather simple and straightforward, almost like a geometric proof. Because academic writing in general, especially collegiate writing, is quite different from the high school model, University Writing attempts to bridge the gap from high school to college. I’d argue, having been decently exposed to the demands of collegiate writing, that it actually does so quite successfully, albeit mainly in principle and not in implementation.

First, what are the points of divergence between the high school and college model of writing? The most obvious point is that the sphere of academic writing encompasses much more than the literary sphere of novels and poems, which is what essay-writing is generally confined to in high school. University Writing thus forced me to write about currently relevant and important issues, whether it be Obamamania or the environmental movement. Instead of the high school model of writing, which only included two actors—the text and me—a third factor was introduced­—the audience. I was taken aback at my teacher’s critique of one of my papers on the Columbine shooting. “The stakes,” as he loved to say, “weren’t there.” Columbine was old news. Why should the modern reader care about it? Good writing, I learned, is never a private endeavor.
But neither is it solitary. My teacher further commented that the Columbine shooting had been rehashed so many times. I had to provide a new angle, a perennial difficulty for writers since virtually every topic has already been written about in some form or another. To stand alongside numerous voices and make your point is a daunting and frustrating project.

This is where University Writing steps in and offers tools to cope with the complexity—the Lens, the Conversation, and the Research Essay. The Lens essay provides a model of applying an existing theory to reality, the Conversation is a model of coordinating overlapping theories to focus on a set of questions, and the Research Essay is a model that combines all of the above with additional field data. These approaches embrace and utilize the overwhelming diversity of existing ideas. In order to meaningfully contribute to public discourse, one must build on existing ideas. Essays in high school were straight-up arguments. Essays in college are explorations and conversations between ideas. Innovation, then, stems not so much from offering a new theory as from recombining old theories in a new way to look at something, such as a red, plastic beer cup, which is what my friend, BQ Quigley, did for her anthropology class.

“I just wrote a Lens essay last week,” Quigley, now a sophomore, said. “I took two anthropological theories to analyze red, plastic beer cups as cultural objects.”

“Two theories­—doesn’t that make it a Conversation essay?” I asked.

“I think it might be. That is an example of something that needs to be clarified,” she said.

Indeed, I remember being quite confused over the relationship between a lens and conversation essay. In fact, I was quite confused about the point of University Writing in general when I was taking it. Strange criteria, formulas, and ways of thinking were flung at me without adequate explanation of not just what they were but why they were necessary. Although University Writing ought to expose first-years to the fast-paced demands of college academics, a “bit of stability and direction,” as Quigley puts it, would be helpful, instead of an “onslaught of cultural, random-assed articles and ideas of, like, a Lens essay.” 

“For example, when introducing a seed text,” Quigley suggests, “teachers should be clear on how they want students to use it instead of just throwing it at them and saying, ‘This is rich­—here’s Google.’ If you give us the most convoluted thing, be clear. Give a step-by-step example of how to take one small example from that convoluted reading and explore it.”

So here’s a suggestion for teachers: Quality over quantity, please. If a weekly exercise or reading doesn’t accomplish much, adapt it or ditch it. Spend more time on past essays. (I relied heavily on them to write my papers in order to have a concrete model of what a “Conversation” or “Research” essay was.) Focus less on chugging through the material in the curriculum and more on clarifying the purpose of the exercises and readings. Without the big picture in mind, the barrage of assignments and readings can easily feel disjointed and useless. The need to explain the big picture, that these ridiculous essays are actually useful tools to deal with the complexities of the academic arena (and perhaps of life), is what motivated me to write this article. So, particularly for all you first-years, I hope this helped.   

The author is a Columbia College sophomore.

Tags: Opinion, Sarah Ngu, Core, University Writing