With hopes of best preparing students for the workplace or higher education, colleges across the nation provide students with a wide variety of courses. Each class is like a single, mechanical tool that students acquire, in the hopes that they can use the complete set of tools they’ve earned over their college experience to tackle future challenges. But not every kind of tool is given the attention it deserves. When it comes to the field of writing, not many classes emphasize its importance. Yet, many jobs out there (most of which aren’t even writing-focused) require a noticeable amount of writing skill – students unable to utilize the limited writing skills taught in school could leave them wanting in the workplace.  

One article written by Barbara Schneider and Jo-Anne Andre entitled, “University Preparation for Workplace Writing” enlightened me on the prospects of student’s perception towards their future careers. The article interviewed a set of college students in order to find out their thoughts on the school’s preparation for their field of work. Many of them expressed dissatisfaction with their school’s preparation, stating that they found trouble adjusting to their work environment. Others were able to relate what they learned to their new job, but expressed concern with learning a new genre of writing on the fly.

As you may already know, professional jobs out there are very interconnected, in the sense that what gets carried out in one location goes on to affect someone else. Business deals, collaborations, and other logistical work are all handled by extensive, genre-specific documentation. When it comes down to it, there’s going to be a lot of writing. Yet, many colleges only provide the bare-bones amount of education to most students when it comes to writing effectively. This lack-of-preparedness can cause trouble when it comes to adapting to this writing-based paradigm.

To explain this problem simply, let’s compare a student’s writing ability to a fancy, mechanical tool. Now imagine if this tool had different modes that let it alter its shape to solve a particular problem.  College writing is like being shown how to use its basic function a few times, but not delving deeper into most of its other modes of operation. These students, uncomfortable with the intricacies of this tool, are then expected to solve difficult, real-world problems that require intricate knowledge about its function.

This lack-of-knowledge can affect a student’s confidence. Many of the students interviewed in Schneider’s article were doubtful in their ability to match the quality of work of their peers. This fear is well-founded, as employers have noted the trend of significant writing deficits in student writing. Yet, students have spent years in school gaining knowledge and skills. Many of the skills, as random or impractical as they may seem, do in fact help develop students into better critical thinkers and analysts. For example, many classes often expect students to take information they provide and use them in new or abstract ways, whether it be physics, math, or chemistry. Though much of the information learned may not be applicable as is, the abilities gained from the classes are more important.

Basically, if each tool provided to the students has to be used differently in order to function, then when the student is given this fancy tool with an assortment of modes, then in reality a fair amount of these options should already be known to the user. Although the intricacies behind each and every mode may not be apparent, some of them should be. And students should already know how to adapt and develop their writing to match the standard that this mode of operation entails.

The ability to adapt to situations is probably the most important skill of all. It’s what college is all about, when you really think about it. Students have to take an assortment of seemingly non-related courses, and are expected to produce quality work in all of them. If they can survive that, then they should be well enough to handle workplace operations. What these students need isn’t more instruction-based exploration of this tool. Rather, they need more hands-on practice before they transition to the real world. This fear and doubt students express comes from the fact that many of the tools they receive are used in isolation – feeding the notion that their natural abilities only work in specific situations. These students may then perceive themselves to be inadequate and find themselves struggling, when this problem simply stems from a lack of experience with the specific genre of writing that they are doing. These deficiencies can weigh the student down, forcing the quality of their work to suffer. But if colleges allowed easier access for students to pursue and practice their skills while still learning them, students would have an easier time relating their natural abilities to a new style of writing.