3 Writing Myths
The previous chapter looked at writing in college but exploring some of the myths and misconceptions that students regularly bring to a college writing classroom is important. These myths are often obstacles to success in college writing or other college classes. This is not a complete list of myths and misconceptions, as that would take an entire book. As you read, consider the myths and misconceptions you bring to the college classroom and how they were formed, and consider how many of the myths listed you can relate to.
MYTH #1: YOUR WORK MUST BE PERFECT BEFORE YOU TURN IT IN
Lies and slander, likely brought to you by Big Grammar. If you are hyper-fixated on perfecting a document, you are likely increasing your anxiety and building fear around the writing process. Instead of turning in a document that would have received a grade of 80%, you freaked out and submitted nothing, earning a grade of 0%. Now, you have the “guilt” surrounding a missing assignment, the new stress of building back your GPA, and the concern that you are perpetuating a negative cycle that you have experienced before in other contexts. Don’t let attempting the perfect get in the way of achieving the good.
MYTH #2: I’M THE ONLY ONE STRUGGLING
Don’t gaslight yourself!! Chances are, a large chunk of students in the classroom feel confused, stressed, or otherwise concerned about their work…even the “A” students…especially the “A” students. Rather than focus on all the ways you might be messing up, take steps to grow your confidence. Chat with your peers to see what sort of knowledge you can build together. Speak with your professor frequently to better understand the course and assessment process. This type of communication is necessary to ensure a productive classroom environment, and it will go a long way towards easing your nerves.
MYTH #3: ESSAYS ARE THE MAIN FORMAT FOR COLLEGE ENGLISH CLASSES
Essays and traditional “research papers” are not always the standard format for all written work at the university level. While your instructor is your primary audience, learning to write for other audiences and in various genres helps better prepare you for successful communication outside of the classroom.
For instance, consider your favorite meme – What makes the meme funny to you?
The humor likely comes from the combination of the image within the context of the film, TV, etc., that the image is from, as well as the appropriate text. You may not realize it, but the meme follows conventions that differ from the typical essay or text message. This is a genre of writing and rhetoric.
As a student, the genre you have the most experience with is likely essays, but not all essays follow the same conventions or rules. A research essay will differ from a book report, and both will likely differ from an expository essay. All genres have sub-genres; as with any writing, they also have conventions. Here is a brief list of genres you have likely encountered:
- Essays
- Books
- Poetry
- News articles
- Social Media
- Emails
- Text messages
- Letters
- Memes
- Magazines
- Active Reading or Class Notes
Although these are all writing pieces, you cannot approach them similarly. All writing has some form of introduction or opening, a body portion, and a conclusion. Still, an email is not the same as a text message. We have yet to discuss the importance of the audience. If you need to text a close friend, the assumption is that you will use a tone appropriate for that audience. In other words, you likely would not text your parents or grandparents in the same way you text a friend because they are different audiences.
What is our point? You will be writing and creating projects outside of just essays. While you may not write in that genre after college, the knowledge you gain by working in multiple genres can help you successfully learn to transfer knowledge and skills in writing and other projects and disciplines.
Here are some genres you may encounter even as a first-year student:
- Listicle
- Academic Literature Review
- Book Review
- Rhetorical Analysis
- Infographic
- Script
- Lab Reports
- Active Reading Notes
MYTH #4: I HATE GROUP WORK AND WON’T USE IT AFTER I GET INTO MY CAREER
Love it or hate it, collaboration, or what students call “group work”, is one of those things that you will come across throughout your lifetime. While collaborations can get messy, technology and our global landscape make working as a team easier and more likely to occur. Collaboration is a valuable skill, whether you are working with other parents to put together a class event for your children or put together a presentation with a team at your job. Yet, students often try to get through “group work” without trying to learn how to divide and conquer the work and play to each other’s strengths to turn it into collaboration. True collaboration and cooperation often take a backseat because students think, or hope, that this will be the last group project they will ever see. Chances are high that you will collaborate in the future, so practice good cooperative techniques while you can, and do your best to be a good team player. Take this book you are reading- this is a collaborative effort amongst several TAMUCC faculty members, each serving an important role. This book is the product of “group work”.
MYTH #5: MY INSTRUCTOR WON’T READ MY WRITING ANYWAY, SO WHAT I WRITE OR SAY IS POINTLESS
Oh, but we do. Your college instructors DO read your writing and give some form of feedback. So, write with the understanding that we are reading your work and expecting you to read our responses. It is not just your major assignments; even low-stakes assignments, like journals and discussions, can get feedback.
You can’t just be passive; you’ll have to take an active role in this class. You will have to ask and answer questions, give feedback, and let us know if you don’t understand something or if something has gone wrong.
What is our point? Writing in college is a professional relationship between you and your instructor. Since clear, respectful communication is the key to any good relationship, work with your instructor to achieve the best possible outcome; even if it may seem scary at first, it gets easier.
MYTH #6: I WON’T BE WRITING MUCH IN MY MAJOR OR MY JOB, SO I DON’T REALLY NEED THIS CLASS
We live in a fantastic time where writing, language, and communication evolve faster than we can keep track of. Indeed, you may not be writing essays or traditional “research papers,” but writing is so much more than that. Like many things, you will get out of it what you put into it. Still, university writing courses help prepare you to analyze your audience and communicate appropriately, read and analyze text, follow prompts and detailed instructions to complete complex tasks, plan projects and meet deadlines, and understand style and genres in a way that allows you to transfer that knowledge to other projects as you work your way through college and beyond.
MYTH #7: WE WILL ONLY BE USING MLA FORMATTING
MLA is still the standard at most high schools, but MLA is just one of many styles. Depending on your chosen field, you may work in multiple styles simultaneously. You should dabble in a few unique styles before you graduate, and your field of study and career will decide which of those styles you will work in the most. A few are linked below, along with a citation generator to help you explore.
- Chicago
- APA
- MLA Style | Modern Language Association
- Scientific Style and Format (councilscienceeditors.org)
- 📖 MyBib – A New FREE APA, Harvard, & MLA Citation Generator
MYTH #8 DEADLINES ARE SUGGESTIONS, AND IF I TURN IN SOME WRITING BY THE END OF CLASS, I WILL STILL PASS
Procrastination is not new, but there is a growing myth among incoming students that getting an assignment or project in by the end of the semester, no matter when it was due, will result in a passing grade. Some students even try contacting professors to turn in late work after a semester has ended. Students have contacted me at the start of the next semester to try to turn in assignments for a class that doesn’t exist anymore because they thought they couldn’t fail it.
You most certainly can fail a college class by not meeting the requirements.
First, this is not acceptable college/professional behavior. I want to assure you that the deadlines are real and missing them can result in a poor or failing grade.
Second, some classes have assignments that are essential to the course, and even if you turn everything else in, if you miss that one assignment or project, you will still fail.
Third, many students look at the “little points” (assignments worth 5-10 points) and skip them because they don’t seem big enough to matter; however, in many classes, those little points can add up to multiple letter grades, so if you skip them, you could end up with a very low grade or failing.
What is the takeaway here? Don’t let other students lull you into a false sense of security with tales of instructors who take all late work without penalty and give out good grades like candy. Check your syllabus, talk with your instructors, and pay attention to those requirements and deadlines because it is possible to fail a university course. Also, know who to contact in case you have a legitimate need for an extension on your assignments, and do it as soon as possible:
MYTH #9: I CAN WRITE WELL AT THE LAST MINUTE WITHOUT ANY PREPARATION
In-the-moment class pieces and writing prompts during exams leave little room to explore the writing process. They can give you the impression that there are good writers who write without planning, and the process just happens.
The truth is that these types of writing are practices and procedural in nature. Many students are familiar with them and take comfort in this familiarity. The five-paragraph essay is so commonplace that you can write one without much planning or thought. This can reinforce the idea that you do not need to brainstorm, draft, revise, and edit; however, most writing takes time, practice, and exploring what works for you, especially depending on the project or genre. This also means that a one-size-fits-all approach to writing isn’t a thing.
MYTH #10: AI CAN WRITE ALL MY ASSIGNMENTS AND FUTURE WRITING, SO WHY BOTHER
It is true that AI is making strides and that we are not sure what the future holds, but as of right now, this is not only unlikely but also considered cheating. AI does offer some unique strategies for brainstorming and finding research gaps. However, universities and professionals alike are still trying to decide what determines the ethical use of AI. Unless your instructor has an assignment that calls for the use of AI in its creation or the syllabus says otherwise, create your projects yourself. (The same goes for having anyone else write your work; it is considered cheating and can result in a 0 or worse.)
MYTH #11: I DON’T WRITE
This is highly unlikely. In fact, studies show that students engage with text more often now than at any point in history. So much of what we do is online or on our phones, so if you text, email, respond to social media posts, or even create AI prompts, you are engaging in writing. Transferring that to more academic or career-related writing requires practice and preparation. You can do it!
MYTH # 12: ACADEMIC AND TECHNICAL WRITING TAKES AWAY A PERSON’S VOICE AND CREATIVITY
While it is true that academic and technical writing have more rules and conventions than writing a poem or a short story, they still retain creative elements and the author’s voice. It is impossible to remove yourself from your writing entirely since your word choice, tone, and the focus of your piece are yours.
If you take a picture for an art exhibit, what you choose to include in the frame of that photograph and what you decide to exclude are creative choices that tell a story. This is often called the “I within the Eye” (or lens) in art. It is the same with academic and professional writing.
If you write an argument focused on the TAMUCC Campus’s Cats’ Positive Impact on Student Morale, you will be the one framing the piece and controlling the message, even if it isn’t a fictional piece. It would not be the entire picture; however, it would be just your narrative.
Case in point: the issue with the campus cats has multiple sides. Maybe you love them, and they make you happy, and you think students benefit from them. What if I were to tell you that there are bird enthusiasts who feel differently about the campus cats? If I were a bird enthusiast, I would write a very different piece because I would frame the conversation in a way that shows how much damage the cats have caused to the campus bird population. This would be my framework and narrative.
No matter what you write, academic and professional writing cannot remove you from your piece because your narrative and framing keep you embedded in the work.
MYTH # 13: GRAMMAR IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ASPECT OF GOOD WRITING
We have names for people who gleefully correct other people’s grammatical errors-none of them nice-and there is a common stereotype we have of a teacher bleeding all over students’ essays with a red pen. While you may have had a teacher who did just that, and you may have anxiety about writing because of it, grammar is not solely the most important aspect of good writing. We’d even encourage you to not think about it too much until near the end of your process. Instead of thinking about grammar in terms of good or bad (which makes a writer feel that they are good or bad), it might help to think about it in terms of effective versus not effective. Grammar is a tool for clear communication and effective writing; what it is not is an indicator of your intelligence, nor is it the main criterion by which your worth as a writer is judged.
MYTH # 14: GOOD WRITERS ARE BORN THAT WAY
Stephen King, Shakespeare, and Walt Whitman are all giants in literature. They are generally regarded as some of the best writers of all time. We may even consider those people in our classes who seem to write effortlessly (or at least more effortlessly than us) as being born good writers. Rather than thinking of writing as a God-given talent, it might be more helpful to see it as a skill set that can be constantly refined. The more we write (and read), the more risks we take, the better we get. We might never be on the level of Stephen King. Still, we can most assuredly improve our communication skills given the space, time, and effort.
MYTH #15: PROFESSORS AND PROFESSIONAL WRITERS ARE PERFECT AND WRITING IS EASY FOR THEM
Reality check. We are only human. We make tons of mistakes, some of which you might find as you read this (#not_perfect). Writing is hard. Writing quickly or making it seem easy takes a lot of work. What you often see is years of practice and a life spent writing and reading, and even then, we can struggle.
It is a love-hate relationship. I tell people I love “having written”, but I don’t always like the process that is writing. Even now, I struggle with motivation, ideas, phrasing, and second-guessing rules that are constantly changing, and whether I am being too formal or casual in my style. I struggle even more when someone asks me to write in an unfamiliar genre or a large project that I have never done before. Some days, I would rather spend all my time looking up how to write in the genre and read samples than sit down and start, but I know that is just noise. It sometimes looks like we can do “all of the writing things” because we have disciplined ourselves to push through the noise (even if it takes some extra coffee and a kick-start from a colleague or close friend).
So, when we assign you another crazy writing piece, please think of us as that friend giving you a kick-start and telling you to start writing and push through the noise. When we grade your work, think about it like giving it to a friend who wants to share ways for you to improve and grow. We have all been there. We do get it. We want you to succeed…now, where did I set my coffee?
