My strategies/rules for academic writing are:
- Avoiding binary thinking is more than looking at two sides of an issue.
- When it comes to research, academic sources are the way to go--sometimes.
- Revise, Revise, Revise. But do it differently every time.
Avoiding binary thinking is more than looking at two sides of an issue. Although I feel like I am generally good at listening to and understanding other peoples’ points of view, this semester I realized that there is much more to thinking critically than that. At some point people need to understand that everyone probably has really good reasons to think or believe the way that they do, but in order to get anything accomplished we have to be able to think outside of the media-portrayed binaries. I think that my annotated bibliography and synthesis outline really show how I have been able to strengthen this skill this semester. In my synthesis essay I found two articles that really didn’t seem to be agreeing or disagreeing. But I still was able to find ways that they connected to one another. I talked about how both sources recognize the importance of defining sustainability because I realized that both sources defined the term just a little differently. This difference made it possible for me to see how my own views on sustainability were based on my understanding of the concept of sustainability. Thanks to my two sources, that understanding deepened. My annotated bibliography also shows that I was able to avoid binary thinking more completely because, although I have sources that take on the two most common sides, I also have other sources that helped me to look at the issue from even more angles. Most people talk about whether sustainability is possible or not, but I found sources that also talked about how sustainability affects economics and culture—something I’d never thought of before.
In college it’s going to be important for me to continue to avoid binary thinking because in my major it’s really important to be able to understand a lot of different perspectives about things like art and literature, politics, cultural and social values, etc. I’ve already seen in some of my classes how my own opinions and perspectives have grown because I have been willing to see the value in other people’s values. For example, I don’t particularly like British literature, but I realized that there are still important reasons to understand its history and relation to American literature which I like more. And, even though I don’t like literature half as much as film and architecture, literature definitely has an important place in my study of culture and identity.
When it comes to research, academic sources are the way to go—sometimes. Because of our class discussions and the research I did this semester, I learned that academic sources are really good to use but that sometimes it is important to incorporate other types of sources as well. This was a bit difficult for me to learn because I’d always kind of thought that academics were the people who knew everything and that they were the kind of thinkers and writers that I was supposed to be trying to emulate. But I learned while taking this class that not all academic writers are very easy to understand or well-organized in their thoughts. I learned that for background information or suggestions about how to solve a problem, other sources like government websites or research conducted by credible non-academic sources are easier to understand and sometimes more relevant than the academic sources. I learned too, however, that academic sources are really good to go to when I need to problematize an issue or to look at something from a different perspective. Academic sources are also very helpful for finding credible sources and for learning how a lot of people are responding to an issue—but without necessarily having a political agenda which can sometimes make people’s arguments and thinking biased.
I know that understanding the different kinds of sources, their strengths and weaknesses, is going to be really important for me in future research in college. However, I think that this rule is most important to me because of the person that I want to become. For a long time I thought that I wanted to be the college professor that would “mess with” young people’s minds and stretch their critical thinking to the point that they could feel the rush I do when thinking deeply about life and the world. I also thought that my thoughts were so original, intense, and profound that people should be not only willing to read what I have to say about things, but that they should be able to appreciate my thoughts and my stylistic choices at the same time—the way I’d been trained to do in English class. But I realize know that people have more going on in their lives than to bow down before my awesomeness. There is a huge responsibility on my part to tailor my ideas and my presentation to my purpose and audience. If I don’t do so, then I’m missing the whole point of communication!
Revise, Revise, Revise. But do it differently every time. I’ve always been pretty confident of my writing ability. I got good grades on my papers in school, I don’t have too many problems with spelling, and I know how to avoid most of the grammar rules that I don’t understand. The fact that I can have some fun with my writing, that I know how to turn an alliterative phrase rather nicely, also helped boost my confidence. However, in this class I began to realize that there are many other ways that I can improve my writing that don’t have very much to do with conventions, but that have a lot to do with making my message clearer for my readers. Obviously these reflections are not examples of that, but I have learned how to avoid wordy sentences and to revise not just for grammar or spelling errors, but for a lack of repetition and transition that will help my readers know what I’m talking about. I’ve learned to look out for the homonyms, pronouns, and prepositions that I use a lot and that can really make my writing worse than I want it to be.
Hopefully in college my professors will read enough of my papers to recognize this added effort I’ve decided to put into revision; if not, I suppose I’ll go back to giving them less than revised assignments—a guy has to have life after all and cannot spend all of his time in college revising papers. But when I really need to sit down and put my thoughts into words, I’ve learned that it will be important for me to break up the process more than I usually have done in the past. I have to get my thoughts out into words in a first draft, then figure out if those words clearly explain to me what I wanted to say, then figure out if my words and sentence structure communicate what I want to say to my audience as well as I’d like. It’s a lengthy process, but something well worth the effort—especially if I really think that my ideas are that important that I want everyone to be able to understand and appreciate them.
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