Many of my students undoubtedly consider themselves to be bad writers. They have little to no confidence in their writing abilities and second-guess every sentence they create. As Mike Rose puts it, they have “a growing distrust of their abilities and an aversion toward the composing process itself” (389). Thus, alongside their small confidence levels, my students don’t want to spend quality time accomplishing their writing. As I mentioned in my blogpost from last week, they are “lazily efficient” with their writing process and ignore the time and creativity that can and should be implemented into their writing assignments.  

These students have been trained to write for a singular audience: me. Their professor or instructor or teacher. My students write what they think I want to read, and this damages the creative process that envelopes writing. Rose claims this to be a problem as well in the stereotypical writer: “This keeps Ruth from toying with ideas on paper, from the kind of linguistic play that often frees up the flow of paper” (394). Up until now, their writing experience has always been targeted for someone else. They wrote essays to their teachers and for scholarships and SATs but haven’t been given the opportunity to write creatively for themselves and explore non-rubric-oriented writing. As our English 101 curriculum allows for risk-taking and creative writing, I’ve been encouraging my class to try this, to try this new type of writing without borders. But I haven’t been able to sell this idea so far.  

I remember John telling the class that he encouraged his students to approach their research questions with the idea of risk-taking. He wanted them to try something new, possibly even something that might seem “inappropriate” or weird. I really admire this pedagogy and want my students to feel that English 101 is a safe space for them to take risks with their writing. So how can I do this? How can I expect to revert a bunch of “rules” that my students have ingrained in their heads for decades? According to Rose, “Students can be trained to select to ‘know which rules are appropriate for which problems’” (400), and this is exactly what I hope to achieve. It would be preposterous for me to teach them to always ignore the rules, to always take risks in the writing, and to always write creatively, because frankly, I don’t want to see them fail Biology for writing a lab report in this fashion. In reality, I want them to try to unlearn some of these rigid writing techniques that they are so accustomed to. And I wholeheartedly believe that this is possible, I just worry that this unlearning of rigid writing rules may take longer than the quarter allows.  

When my students sit down to write, I think they probably say to themselves, “How can I write this quickly while still getting the complete grade?” And I can’t blame them for this, because who doesn’t enjoy relaxing over doing homework. But what I’d like, and what I hope to achieve by the end of the quarter, is this: my students will sit down to begin a writing assignment and ask themselves, “How can I write this in a way that is fun and exciting? How can I make this assignment enjoyable and unique to my own interests while still fulfilling the prompt?”