schmerica | (no subject)

I have come to the realization during the last few weeks that while I am a good writer, I write completely sucktastic papers (I'm using "papers", throughout this entry, mainly in the sense of analytical essays and to a much lesser extent, research papers -- I don't have any problems with the various other types of writings my classes require). The papers are well-written in the sense that I write sentences are paragraphs that sound good and are put together well -- but this does not, really, make the papers themselves any less sucktastic.

This saddens me. I mean, my high school never bothered to teach me anything useful about paper-writing (beyond the "introduction, body, conclusion" basics), and god knows 10th grade honors English was a mixture of pointless test preparation and grading by the "out of a hat" method. But it disturbs me slightly that I've managed two years at SRC without substantially improving. (You would think -- or I would think, at least -- that writing and thinking workshop would go over, at least briefly, the sort of writing that we'd be spending a great percentage of our time on and that many of our high schools didn't cover at all. But not so much.)

I'm been lazy about it, too, because it's mainly only hurt my grades in seminar classes -- but even the other ones could be better than they are. And this does not bode well for my future academic plans.

Something to worry and think about over the summer, I guess. Along with trying to remember and cover all the French I haven't spoken or thought about since December.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I feel like I should apologize on behalf of my profession.

Unfortunately, more and more, people like you, who can put together sentences and paragraphs, get lost in the shuffle simply because there are so many who can't. Do you have a sense of where it is that your papers are falling down? Is it the analysis, the use of sources?

Also, fwiw, if your future academic plans include grad school, most programs do start out with a research methods course that involves discussion of writing. Sometimes they suck, but they can be very helpful.

I think I know what you mean, minus the two years -- I feel like pretty much all of my paper-writing skills I learned in the first two years of high school. Since then it's been...bleh. I know I can't structure, but no one's taught me how, and we spend more time in seminar arguing over whether writer X was a feminist than on improving our papers.

I probably wouldn't bitch about sem so much if I felt like it had given me anything in the way of paper-writing skills.

Hopefully that makes sense/does not piss you off.

You have free license to talk about SRC and not upset me for the next week, because you are going away and are sad.

That's sweet, but I don't really need it.

We must go see X2 when we return!

Big old Amen to that. I still feel the same way, and I'm in grad school -- the first class I took outside my department asked for a discussion of the significance of the results, rather than just a statement of statistics, and I panicked. I no longer know how to do that, and I wasn't very good at it in the first place. Of course, during Fresh Comp, when I theoretically could have found out, I still thought I was hot shit like I was in high school, so I didn't bother.

Very glad to hear some grad schools offer such a course. Mine don't, and it sucks.

It's a very unsettling feeling, definitely. And you know, I get along perfectly as is, but I don't think that will last forever. Stupid concentrated effort required.