High School Crowd
When writing turns from boring? to exciting !
While writing in high school we were taught strict five paragraph formatting: an opening or introduction, the body of the essay, then on the to concluding paragraph, this can get boring very quickly. Expectations at college levels can be much more demanding, is this anything to be afraid of? Of course not. You will work towards focusing on the structure of writing but also catering and shaping the writing to appeal to the intended audience. By the end of your four yea
rs of writing, this will be a walk in the park.
You will be asked to research on your own and to find creative ways to deliver the message sounds interesting? It can be, defining your genre and intended audience will be a great way to get started. Look at writing at the college level is more of an architecture course, you already have set the foundation and structure of the building in high school, now it’s time to work on the pretty final finishes.
Working through the process is a lot like building a house. Slowly and methodically, you start with a good base, get your thoughts down on paper. Most would define this as an outline, call it what you want. After you have your thoughts written, work on establishing your plot, then expanded upon each of your ideas. Before you know it, your paper writings will already be at college levels.
So let’s take a look at some basics of writing. In “Inventing the University” by David Bartholomae my take away from his writings is that you must understand your audience. As stated by “A writer has to build bridges between his point of view and his readers” p-9. By building a bridge, you are establishing a way for your writings to connect with the reader. Finding common ground across a wide audience is an excellent way to “build the bridges”. As noted in Writing across the university by Fiona Glade, “Participation across Curriculum” the purpose of writing is almost always defined by someone else. p407 While I have to agree with this thought process, I honesty thought we would be in class writing about a topic that we would pick. I can think of a few topics that I could write endlessly about. This has been more challenging for me as not only are we writing about topics chosen by faculty, we are asked to break down the readings, look past the storyline, and write about the approach, and methods used.
I can tell you in the few weeks of this course WRT-105, which this course will not cover all that will be required to be successful in writing in the “real” world. Your writing will continue throughout your professional career. I have spent the last 15 years writing in a technical environment, Genres don’t really pop out of technical writings. My challenge was that the professor would pick topics, find ways to define the task. College writing courses are not as simple as pick a topic that you love and starting writing stories. So far I have focused on the structure of the reading rather than just its content.
Being away from high school for twenty years has brought on its own unique challenges for me. As I referenced above, I was taught basic essay composition, this course already has opened my eyes and let me get a 360-degree look at different ways of writing.
So how do you get better at writing more at college levels? Practice, find more opportunities to write, lean on your peers, ask for some support by having them proof read your work, and proofread some of their writing. The biggest thing is to be open to constructive criticism.
Therefore, after reading this short bog, I hope that this will put you at ease as you start off your college life. Remember prepare yourself for the next level of writing. Utilize your final years in high school to adapt to college level writing. You will value the time spent now preparing it will make a difference.
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