How Do I Write a Text for College

How Do I Write a Text for College? Making the Transition from High SchoolWritingby Patty StrongWriting is thinking. This is what we teachers of college writing believe. Hiddeninside that tiny suitcase of a phrase is my whole response to the topic assignedme by my colleague, Jonathan Silverman, one of the authors of the textbook youare currently reading. Knowing my background as a former teacher of highschool English, Dr. Silverman asked me to write a piece for students on thedifferences between writing in high school and writing in college. I have hadsome time to ponder my answer, and it is this: Writing is thinking. Now that’s notvery satisfactory, is it? I must unpack that suitcase of a phrase. I will open it upfor you, pull out a few well-traveled and wearable ideas, ideas that you may wantto try on yourself as you journey through your college writing assignments.Writing is thinking. I suggest that this idea encompasses the differences betweenhigh school writing and the writing expected from students on a college level, notbecause high school teachers do not expect their students to think, but ratherthat most students themselves do not approach the writing as an opportunity tothink. Students might construct many other kinds of sentences with writing assubject: Writing is hard. Writing is a duty. Writing is something I do to prove that Iknow something.When I taught high school English, I certainly assigned writing in order to find outwhat my students knew. Did they, for example, know what I had taught themabout the light and dark symbolism in Chapter 18 of The Scarlet Letter? Did theyknow precisely what Huck Finn said after he reconsidered his letter to MissWatson (“All right, then, I’ll go to hell!”) and did they know what I, their teacher,had told them those words meant in terms of Huck’s moral development? Couldmy students spit this information back at me in neat, tidy sentences? That’s not tosay I did not encourage originality and creativity in my students’ writing, but thosewere a sort of bonus to the bottom line knowledge I was expecting them to beable to reproduce.College writing is different precisely because it moves beyond the limitedconception that writing is writing what we already know. In college, students writeto discover what they do not know, to uncover what they did not know they knew.Students in college should not worry about not having anything to write, becauseit is the physical and intellectual act of writing, of moving that pen across thepage (or tapping the keyboard) that produces the thoughts that become what youhave to write. The act of writing will produce the thinking. This thinking need notproduce ideas you already know to be true, but should explore meanings andattitude and questions, which are the things that we all wonder and care about.My discussion of these matters has so far been fairly abstract, caught up in thewind of ideas. Practical matters are of importance here, too, so I will addresssome points that as a college student you should know. First, your professors arenot responsible for your education—you are. While your teachers may in factcare very much that you learn and do well in your coursework, it is not theirresponsibility to see that you are successful. Your college teacher may not dothings you took for granted like reminding you of assignments and tests andpaper deadlines. They probably won’t accept your illness or the illness of a lovedone or a fight with a girlfriend as legitimate excuses for late work. Sloppy work,late work, thoughtless work, tardiness, absences from class—these things arethe student’s problems. Successful college students accept responsibility for theirproblems. They expect that consequences will be meted out. Successfulstudents do not offer excuses, lame or otherwise, although they may offerappropriate resolutions. Successful students understand that their education issomething they are privileged to own, and as with a dear possession, they mustbe responsible for managing it. If you wrecked your beloved car, would you findfault with the person who taught you how to drive?On to the writing task at hand. You will want to write well in college. You probablywant to write better and more maturely than you have in the past. To do this, youmust be willing to take thinking risks, which are writing risks. I read an interestingquote the other day that I shared with my writing students because I believed it tobe true and pretty profound. The American writer Alvin Toffler wrote that “Theilliterate of the twenty-first century will not be those who cannot read and write,but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” And so it is true that when youcome to the university for your “higher education,” you must be willing to unlearnsome old things and relearn them in new ways. That is probably true for justabout every academic subject you will explore during your university career, andit is certainly true about the writing courses you will take.Writing is thinking. Writing will lead you toward thought. Your college writingteachers will expect more of your thinking, thinking you have come to through theprocess of writing and rewriting. In order to get where you need to be, you mustrelearn what writing is. You must see that writing is not duty, obligation, andregurgitation, but opportunity, exploration, and discovery. The realization thatwriting is thinking and that thinking leads to writing is the main idea behind thisbook—the simple notion that the world is a text to be thought and written about.The successful college writer understands that he or she writes not just for theteacher, not just to prove something to the teacher in order to get a grade, but touncover unarticulated pathways to knowledge and understanding.