14 May DID THEY, FOR EXAMPLE, KNOW WHAT I HAD TAUGHT THEM ABOUT THE LIGHT AND DARK SYMBOLISM IN CHAPTER 18 OF THE SCARLET LETTER?
How Do I Write a Text for College? Making the Transition from High School
Writing
by Patty Strong
Writing is thinking. This is what we teachers of college writing believe. Hidden
inside that tiny suitcase of a phrase is my whole response to the topic assigned
me by my colleague, Jonathan Silverman, one of the authors of the textbook you
are currently reading. Knowing my background as a former teacher of high
school English, Dr. Silverman asked me to write a piece for students on the
differences between writing in high school and writing in college. I have had
some time to ponder my answer, and it is this: Writing is thinking. Now that’s not
very satisfactory, is it? I must unpack that suitcase of a phrase. I will open it up
for you, pull out a few well-traveled and wearable ideas, ideas that you may want
to try on yourself as you journey through your college writing assignments.
Writing is thinking. I suggest that this idea encompasses the differences between
high school writing and the writing expected from students on a college level, not
because high school teachers do not expect their students to think, but rather
that most students themselves do not approach the writing as an opportunity to
think. Students might construct many other kinds of sentences with writing as
subject: Writing is hard. Writing is a duty. Writing is something I do to prove that I
know something.
When I taught high school English, I certainly assigned writing in order to find out
what my students knew. Did they, for example, know what I had taught them
about the light and dark symbolism in Chapter 18 of The Scarlet Letter? Did they
know precisely what Huck Finn said after he reconsidered his letter to Miss
Watson (“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? Could
my students spit this information back at me in neat, tidy sentences? That’s not to
say I did not encourage originality and creativity in my students’ writing, but those
were a sort of bonus to the bottom line knowledge I was expecting them to be
able to reproduce.
College writing is different precisely because it moves beyond the limited
conception that writing is writing what we already know. In college, students write
to 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, because
it is the physical and intellectual act of writing, of moving that pen across the
page (or tapping the keyboard) that produces the thoughts that become what you
have to write. The act of writing will produce the thinking. This thinking need not
produce ideas you already know to be true, but should explore meanings and
attitude 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 the
wind of ideas. Practical matters are of importance here, too, so I will address
some points that as a college student you should know. First, your professors are
not responsible for your education—you are. While your teachers may in fact
care very much that you learn and do well in your coursework, it is not their
responsibility to see that you are successful. Your college teacher may not do
things you took for granted like reminding you of assignments and tests and
paper deadlines. They probably won’t accept your illness or the illness of a loved
one or a fight with a girlfriend as legitimate excuses for late work. Sloppy work,
late work, thoughtless work, tardiness, absences from class—these things are
the student’s problems. Successful college students accept responsibility for their
problems. They expect that consequences will be meted out. Successful
students do not offer excuses, lame or otherwise, although they may offer
appropriate resolutions. Successful students understand that their education is
something they are privileged to own, and as with a dear possession, they must
be responsible for managing it. If you wrecked your beloved car, would you find
fault 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 probably
want to write better and more maturely than you have in the past. To do this, you
must be willing to take thinking risks, which are writing risks. I read an interesting
quote the other day that I shared with my writing students because I believed it to
be true and pretty profound. The American writer Alvin Toffler wrote that “The
illiterate 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 you
come to the university for your “higher education,” you must be willing to unlearn
some old things and relearn them in new ways. That is probably true for just
about every academic subject you will explore during your university career, and
it is certainly true about the writing courses you will take.
Writing is thinking. Writing will lead you toward thought. Your college writing
teachers will expect more of your thinking, thinking you have come to through the
process of writing and rewriting. In order to get where you need to be, you must
relearn what writing is. You must see that writing is not duty, obligation, and
regurgitation, but opportunity, exploration, and discovery. The realization that
writing is thinking and that thinking leads to writing is the main idea behind this
book—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 the
teacher, not just to prove something to the teacher in order to get a grade, but to
uncover unarticulated pathways to knowledge and understanding.
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