My Academic Background in Writing

My academic background in writing has stayed, for the most part, completely uniform in expectations and what basis my teachers had for grading. Although each assignment my teachers gave to the classroom was different, the basic standard for the grading procedure was always the same; four to six sentences per paragraph, three paragraphs per paper detailing in each paragraph a separate element of the report, concluding with a thesis paragraph. This assignment is very much like those, except for an additional one or two sentences added to each paragraph and a single sentence thesis statement instead of a paragraph. Many of my assignments were very straightforward, such as simply being told to write an essay about a famous philosopher, probably for the ease of the teacher while grading. The standards between high school and college seem very similar, as I was almost expecting college to turn into a long series of endlessly long thesis and term papers. This is actually one of the first assignments I’ve had with writing in college.

The assignments I’ve had before were usually very short and could be written within a day. My previous class in ART 131 was particularly surprising, as I had expected a long, dozen-page or so paper due by the end of the semester detailing the history of art. The assignment for ART 131 was not a dozen pages but actually around two pages, which seems more realistic. The longest paper I’ve had to write for any class was a three month long writing assignment detailing the Peloponnesian War for my sixth grade history class, which included a cover page and bibliography, completely new to me at the time. With the use of Microsoft Word on every paper I’ve had to write, many teachers would deduct points for simple misspellings, as it would be rather easy to spellcheck and preview before turning in a paper. For this reason most of my assignments, including for this class, are set at a higher standard than most prior to word processing.

Going along with a higher degree of punctuation and spelling than generations before, most of the essays assigned require extensive bibliographies and sources. The advent of computers has improved this field as well, allowing many students to get hundreds of thousands of reliable information with a simple search on a search engine. It’s almost a whirlwind of new grading standards within the past two decades or so that have reworked the mindset of students and teachers alike. While it is hard, it is simply the same level of difficulty our past classmates had worked at, just simply a different way of writing. Most students I knew had a hard time writing essays that kept on point without the addition of dozens of useless sources in their bibliographies, and unable to keep on their theme. Being able to composite a clear and coherent message out of a mound of data is a necessary skill to learn within our current service-sided workforce. New non-traditional teaching methods may be easier in some ways, but are still able to deliver necessary concepts to comply with a modern society.

My education has stayed rather constant throughout grade school to college-level, and has always been assisted with the newest technology, often necessary to compete with teachers high expectations.