Students in writing classes have often written practice papers and received them back from their teachers, with each mistake systematically exposed by the teacher’s red ink. Although many teachers mean well, the school system’s methodology on training their students how to write have created some worrying trends. Rather than focusing on teaching students how to write well, it seems that many teachers simply teach students how to not write badly. It’s only natural for people to focus on identifying mistakes. For most readers, errors jump out at them, leading many to compulsively mark them to make them known to the writer. But rarely will most people think to point out what is actually working well in a student’s writing. A good piece of writing may read smoothly, but many readers do not consciously pick up on techniques that are working well to where they can make specific comments. As a result, students that feel as though they are always criticized by their teachers for their mistakes may fail to see the point of writing at all, and begin to drift away from it entirely.

Such an attitude leads to the exact opposite of the instructor’s intentions. Teachers want to see their student’s writing grow and improve, which is why they mark up their student’s paper with their mistakes. But from a student’s perspective, their inability to write without having their work torn apart makes their writing ability feel like a weakness – something to be afraid of, or even to be ashamed of. What they don’t realize is that their writing is one of the most effective tools that they will be able to utilize. Being able to write allows for people to reach out to others in ways that are beyond what they can comprehend. Teachers know this, and want to see students doing well. But while showing their students various grammar rules and essay samples is helpful, teachers should emphasize instilling students with an internal desire to write. Students should be encouraged to take what they’ve learned in school and express themselves in writing outside of the classroom.

The idea of developing a writer from within can be likened to passing a flaming torch – in this instance, the flaming torch symbolizes a writer’s spirit. Teachers want to pass their knowledge of writing to their students, so they can take what they’ve learned from the classroom and apply it outside of class. Students should be able to receive the torch from the teacher, being able to use what they’ve learned to give them what they need to succeed in their writing endeavors.

But why is encouraging an autonomous outlook of writing so important? I believe that even if a student is taught how to write, it won’t matter if they never actually use it. A student that is only taught how to write when tied down and forced to may not be able to appreciate the inherent qualities and opportunities that writing can deliver. Here are a few benefits:

Transmission: Writing has the benefit of being able to be easily dispersed. Through writing, students can utilize their abilities to respond to situations. One of the more notable forms of writing comes in the form of online media journalists. These people cover various real-world events, or simply share their opinion about a topic. A powerful short story or essay can spread across the globe to strangers across the globe, changing the thoughts of people that come into contact with your ideas.

Progression: Writers can wrestle with different aspects of a topic while they’re writing about it. One thing people say about writing is that the people reading it may learn from your words, but it is the writer themselves who grows the most from the experience. Writing usually involves some research, or some form of internal thought when it comes to constructing an article. By focusing on topics that the writer personally cares about, they will grow from the experience and become more knowledgeable in that area. The people who read their words will also grow from the experience as well!

Discussion: Writing allows for others to develop their own ideas on a topic. For those that write about any given topic, it is inevitable for someone to stumble across your work, whether randomly or through a recommendation. This allows for writers to essentially interact with the people that stumble across their articles. One saying that I’ve heard from my News Literacy teacher was that “Every piece of writing is a response to something else.” Writers can foster discussion about nearly any topic, influencing their audience with their own point-of-view and expanding the mindsets of their readers.  By doing so, information can pass down from the writer to the reader, which can take what they’ve gotten from your writing and pass it down in a myriad of other forms.

Writing can be a powerful tool in the hands of a skilled writer. Those that masterfully use their abilities can express themselves in a way that resonates with their readers, influencing how they perceive elements of the world around them. It is this ability that teachers should desire to manifest within their students – which is why choking their internal writer’s spirit with endless micro-corrections will only stifle their creative spirit.

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.  

One business-related article adapted from the works of Bovee and Thill called The “You” Attitude and Reader-Centered Writing pointed out a notable trend of writing that I had not directly considered. To put it simply, the article discusses the idea that regardless of how an article is crafted or assembled, the single most important aspect of any writing is the reader, and no one else. Now at first glance, this may seem simple enough, or perhaps even a no-brainer – of course the reader would be the most important! Who else is going to be reading it? But what I had not considered is that this single fact permeates through each and every kind of writing – not just business – and that in order to accommodate, different genres take on different trends to best suit their readers.

Once I realised this, I began to introspect various kinds of writing. Despite the countless different forms of writing that are out there, each writing genre attempts to cater to the reader in their own way. I mentally pictured this like some sort of butler adapting to whatever requests came from the master. Or, in literary terms, genres of writing were adapted and refined over time from whatever trends were noted.

I first began to think about the kind of writing I normally studied. Medical journal writing has its own trends that set it apart from most other kinds of writing. Notable elements include a rigid structure in terms of display, abstracts that summarize an entire research project with just a few paragraphs, extensive note-taking and citations for experiment-related events and properties, precise terminology, and a reliance on graphs and charts to convey information along with words. Though I initially thought some of these elements were a bit silly and could easily be done away with, I realised that each of these elements exist to serve their reader. And in the case of medical writing, their readers – their expected audience – would likely be comprised of other scientists and professionals.

The rigid structure of a medical journal article served to make it easy to find relevant information quickly, without needing to read through an entire document (journal articles can be pretty lengthy!). Additionally, with the way that most scientific endeavors are carried out, having a set standard is important for obtaining the necessary funds to begin a project. Abstracts would be useful to anyone who stumbles across the article – online or in print – and wishes to get a glimpse of it to see if it’s worth reading. The detail to experimental note-taking and conveying the individual steps helps other researchers that wish to use the findings of a particular report as a launching point for their own experiments. Finally, using charts and graphs along with text allows for readers to visualize the findings of an experiment in multiple ways, making it easier to comprehend. Each trend has a specific audience it caters to, and thus the genre does it fact serve the reader.

I then began to think of other kinds of writing aspects that could influence writing patterns. One of the biggest factors involved accessibility. The more people made up this “audience”, the more kinds of people it would reach. Essentially, genres that affected a wide scope of people had a large likelihood of being written so that the everyday man could understand it easily. This makes sense of course, as the writing is being written to the reader – thus, it serves the common denominator so that the largest amount of people will benefit. For genres that serve a significant amount of experts, often times separate articles would need to be crafted to provide information to people unaware of the intricacies of  it. Thus, writing always served the expected audience, even if they differ in expertise or education.

But when it comes down to it, all writing is meant to convey a point to the reader. A person within a work’s expected audience should be able to read an essay or article or other form of writing and get meaningful information from it. The transfer of ideas and meaning is what writing’s all about. Thus, writing shifts in order to enhance this transfer of information. Because at the end of the day, when it comes to writing – it’s all about you.

When it comes to writing, there are many different genres that one can choose to read. Yet, each and every kind of genre requires conscious effort when being constructed. From skillfully creating an engaging novel, to crafting an air-tight argument for an article, to even arranging a poem with deliberate, meaningful prose, each category of writing has its own trends and style. But where does this drive to conform to a particular style come from? What intrinsic value comes from adapting one genre’s trends into your own writing?

As someone who studies medical writing in particular, I sometimes question the reasoning behind some of the trends within the field. Sentences are often crafted with precise, unambiguous terminology, with frequent uses of symbols and abbreviations to refer to specific kinds of objects or matter. Many kinds of medical journals are often filled with reports of a scientist’s work, with little emphasis placed on captivating the reader and drawing them into the work directly. Instead, the majority of people that will understand and benefit from the paper are those that are already interested in the author’s specific topic. For those uninterested in the topic, most medical journals do little to persuade the reader otherwise. Many other kinds of writing styles stress engaging with the reader above all, which makes looking at this kind of style seem off-putting at times. But thinking about it closely, I’ve realized that this kind of style does have notable benefits, ones that justify and align with the genre’s reason for existence in the first place.

Medical writing, like all other forms of writing, serves to communicate a message to its audience. This fundamental aspect of writing can be lost on people who do not understand the trends behind it. Since many advances in medicine come from years of collaborative research, it’s important for scientists to be able to identify precisely what kind of research took place, and what methods were used. Scientists often take information gained from these projects and perform them many times, in both similar and different scenarios, which helps to get a better understanding of the topic. This kind of scientific rigor explains the focus for such precise, jargon-filled language between professionals. Writing medical reports requires the author to report what was done during the experiment, as well as the results obtained. Only towards the end of the report can the author examine the results and use reasoning to suggest causes and ideas. And it is these ideas that are likely to be the least scientifically accurate or precise parts of the paper. Therefore, medical writing would de-emphasize these parts, as they do not synergize as well with the spirit, or purpose of the genre to begin with. An emphasis on reasoning and thought rather than results would likely result in many writers creating arguments for the importance of their research, regardless of the factual solidity of their claims.

The ability for scientists to be able to use reasoning and logical thought is an important skill for them to have. But these skills are even more important for those who are trying to become scientists. I’ve come to realize that these trends matter even more for people who are intending to someday join the culture sometime in the future. By understanding the reason behind the way scientists write the way they do, we can become more understanding of their values. The natural way to respond to an incredibly foreign style of writing is to reject it, as they are likely too difficult to comprehend. But once sufficiently analyzed and understood, one can break into a genre of writing and begin to create wonderful pieces of their own. Those who are not-yet a professional in a certain field, but wish to do so someday, benefit the most from analyzing pieces of genre-specific literature. By doing so, they can gradually eliminate the barriers that separate them from that style, and begin to assimilate that style of writing into their work.  

When it comes to various high-end, technical careers such as medicine or engineering, not many people would associate these jobs with something like writing skill. They’d probably dismiss it as something unimportant, or not vital to the profession. Many people are only exposed to most professions through its front-most appearence, so the inner machinations of any particular job may not be readily apparent. Because of how far companies can reach in the modern world, there needs to be a constant managing of different facets to keep everything running. Thus, skills that are important for one kind of engineer, for example, may not be enough when said engineer needs to perform other tasks for a company.

An article written by Jon Leydens titled: Novice and Insider Perspectives on Academic and Workplace Writing: Towards a Continuum of Rhetorical Analysis argued that the act of writing was an inherent necessity to nearly every modern profession. This article also equates the revelation of this idea to the audience like pulling a curtain that kept a device’s inner workings hidden from the public eye. This article wrote primarily in the field of engineering, but I would like to expand upon these ideas in more detail in the medical profession.

One of the major factors within this article had to do with the idea of persuasion. Leydens argued that persuasion was a common factor in many different kinds of writing, and that a skilled writer would be needed to create documents and articles in a way that addressed this principle. Persuasion is a very universal concept; the act of one entity attempting to sway you over to a particular side, or to convince you to support a particular product or brand are common manifestations of this principle in your everyday life. Researchers and biological specialists commonly create extensive written works on a particular topic. Regardless of what the subject is, the idea of persuasion will always exist within a piece.

Medical writers are often taught not to misconstrue data, or in clearer terms, not to mislead their audience. Those that conduct research or have access to research-related documents will have an abundance of data to sift through. High level, scientific medical writing is not meant to be persuasive in a direct way. Many people can tell you how misleading online article titles can be when it comes to giving the reader an idea of the overall message, since the creator of that article entry wants to attract as many readers as possible. Unlike internet journals, many medical research articles display bland, sometimes tediously long, but always accurate titles. Medical researchers value the compilation of data and thorough introspection on a subject, as the data reported back will likely be more useful than its overall conclusion. However, there isn’t a complete and utter lack-of-interest to the idea of persuasion – no matter how small, journals allow writers a section towards discussion, where they can come up with their own conclusions based on the data that they have gathered. The synopsis of data can persuade readers based on the integrity of the report and firmly established evidence. Consequently, a poorly written article will fail to persuade anyone due to a lack of care in presentation or ideas that do not resonate with the data being displayed.

Why are the opinions of writers important? It’s a very simple reason – as experts in a particular field, writers can have their own viewpoints on a particular subject. Being an expert allows them to perceive certain issues that may not be obvious to most people. Thus, their opinion can be highly valuable, and should not be casually dismissed. Therefore, opportunities are given for writers to make their ideas known. A medical research may briefly discuss how a particular aspect of a drug may interact with certain people depending on their environment, or how a remedy may be improved upon based on their data and intellect. Persuasion in medical writing is convincing other people that the data you’ve compiled makes a case for a particular sort of action. This is especially important to business-related researchers that are designing a drug or new kind of technology, as their opinion can highlight key flaws with a particular product that may need to be addressed. A truly neutral piece of medical writing that simply compiled data and nothing more would be worthless, as their would be nothing to act on. People need these articles to possess a form of agency, or some inner meaning that encourages a particular kind of action over another.

The amount of importance that writing has in the medical profession can be surprising to those that only think of surgeons when thinking of medicine. But for every kind of pharmaceutical drug, or revolutionary biological technology, or a breakthrough treatment strategy that can save lives, there was a written document that highlighted the benefits of the product or service, as well as careful and deliberate usage of persuasion tactics in order to convince a higher power to adopt the change.

When you think of nature’s natural hunters, which animals come to mind? Perhaps you’ll think of one of many fierce predators out there, like lions, sharks, or eagles. Yet, one of the most remarkable hunters does not rely merely on its physical abilities to survive. Many spiders can use their ability to make long strands of silk in order to build expansive webs. These thin, yet sturdy webs can then entangle unwitting organisms that fly into them, allowing for an easy capture. But you know, many college graduates are also like hunters in a sense – at least when it comes to finding opportunities for work. Their plans for employment often entail using their degree to find a specific job that matches their field of study, then gradually settling into their career and becoming proficient. But why limit one’s options so much? Rather than using their degree to perform a single task, students should stay flexible and adapt the ways of the spider.  

But what worthwhile characteristics could students glean from a simple spider? What valuable traits should these students emulate?

Patience. Spiders that use expansive webs to catch their prey need to practice incredible patience every day. Not only do they need to spend the time to create the web in the first place, but they need to survey it periodically and repair it when it is damaged. Like the spider, students seeking opportunities after college need to spend lots of time seeking out beneficial opportunities. This process can take a different amount of time for each person, depending on their network and methods used. And even after opportunities are found, students should steadily work towards a goal in mind, or at least something they can achieve in the future. Such actions require a lot of time and dedication, and doesn’t always come easily. But practicing patience in one’s professional career can transform one’s path in incredible ways. One other thing about spiders is that, despite utilizing energy in creating their webs, the effort is never wasted; spiders can consume old strands in order to create new ones. Likewise, students should never see their attempts of advancement as failures, even if nothing directly comes out of it. Simply reaching out and putting forth an effort will lead to new opportunities, and any kind of work you do benefits you, even if you later realize that you dislike it.

Versatility. A spider’s web is a creative application of one of its natural abilities. Many spiders have the ability to create silk through the spinnerets on their abdomens. However, only some spiders are able to build webs. These spiders resort to physically hunting in order to get what they need. Many college graduates are like the spider that has the ability to spin webs, but choose to forego it in order to directly pursue their prey. While a direct, premeditated plan-of-action can be effective, it would be optimal to simultaneously build a network and keep your options open as you hunt. In the real world, actions such as reaching out to professionals and participating in miscellaneous events with other people are examples activities that can lead to beneficial opportunities for you. And even if opportunities you could take may not immediately fit in with your expected plans – like a strange, unknown insect getting caught in a spider’s web – they can still be worthwhile endeavors that you shouldn’t quickly dismiss. These experiences can even snowball and lead to an opportunity that you actually grow to enjoy.

Opportunity-seeking. A spider’s web expands outwards to cover many different areas. Like the spider, college graduates should treat their degree with the same level of versatility, expanding the scope of their expertise and what they can accomplish. They should stretch what skills they’ve learned to the absolute limits in order to find as many worthwhile opportunities as possible. Yet, many graduates simply view their degrees as simple, one-use tools. It would be like a spider making a large, expansive web just to use it like a rope, travelling between two specific areas. Instead of using their abilities in the most productive ways possible, they needlessly forego beneficial opportunities to chase after a specific goal. By expanding one’s skill set outwards, graduates will have the opportunity to learn new skills over time, making them more knowledgeable and attractive to potential employers.

By putting all of these characteristics into practice, graduates become self-motivated, adaptable candidates on the job market, looking into many different jobs and opportunities to find something that they can utilize their skills. By doing so, they can steadily expand their own personal network, connecting with other professionals that can lead them to other opportunities in the future. Instead of rigidly hunting for one particular outlook, adopt the way of the spider and let the opportunities come to you.