by Lauren Bender, Art History I vividly recall my first experience receiving feedback on my writing, when I proudly showed my father my first five-paragraph essay and asked him what he thought. A lawyer by training and a perfectionist by nature, he enthusiastically marked up the essay with a red pen, returning it to me…
by Michael Stefanou, Geography I have never considered myself to be a strong writer. Throughout high school and into college, writing was something that I would try to avoid when possible and was never fully confident in my work. It has always been a long and often difficult process for me to get my thoughts…
by Will Shine Success in higher education and life itself, as many of us came to believe, was contingent upon ‘good writing’—that is writing well (never good). When I was a freshman in college, I was required to take a writing-composition class. Now this wasn’t some sort of unique prerequisite for bad writers; unless you’d taken…
by Max Barnhart I’d like to think of myself as a good writer and a good writing instructor. Although I don’t engage with long-form student writing regularly in my position as a biology laboratory teaching assistant, I do spend a substantial amount of time each week reading and editing writing from graduate students in my…