Writing and Academic Communities

Writing as a Conversation

Even if you’re in your first year of college, you’ve probably already noticed that professors like to talk.  

At least where their academic fields are concerned, professors have opinions about pretty much everything.  And whether they’re biologists, musicologists, or art historians, they're generally quite happy to share them.  

In fact, at the heart of it, this is really the purpose of academic work:  to maintain a sustained and spirited conversation around an evolving set of ideas in order to move them forward.  Professors kind of disagree with one another for a living.  That’s the whole idea of an academic conference, for example – a few days when scholars in a given field assemble to discuss and, likely, argue a little over whatever they’ve been thinking about lately.  

So What’s Writing Got To Do With All This?

Despite all the talking we’ve noted, though, writing is the primary currency through which academic knowledge is exchanged.  It’s the main way academics both develop and present their ideas, as well as the main document of their scholarly participation.  

In fact, it's the way they conduct this ongoing conversation we've been talking about.

It may seem odd, but even at academic conferences, after participants often travel great distances and rearrange schedules so they can meet face to face, the custom is actually for participants not to talk exactly, but to read papers to one another.  These readings are usually followed by a brief Q&A-style exchange, but seldom do presenters deliver unscripted remarks.  The papers given at especially important conferences, what's more, are often published later in print form as “conference proceedings.”  

Professors give TED talks and appear on podcasts, sure, but the main form of academic work has always been and continues to be writing – dissertations, journal articles, books, book reviews, encyclopedia entries, even scholarly blogs.

So, with this in mind, you probably won't be surprised to hear that becoming a college student means you should expect to do a lot of writing.  We think this expectation is a great thing – something that should seem an exciting part of authentic learning, a chance to develop ideas that matter to you alongside others who are interested in the same topics.  Of course, we're writing teachers, so it's probably not surprising we feel this way.  Still, we think we understand what's special about writing as a form of intellectual work that makes it matter so much in college, not just to people who teach first-year writing like us, but to academics generally.

Writing and Thinking

So what is it that's so special about writing?  

Writing encourages some intellectual values that are fundamental to the academic enterprise:  reflective thinking, logical precision, and creative insight.  It gives thinkers a place to articulate and revise ideas, refining them into something they believe in deeply and connecting them to other thoughts they develop along the way before they communicate them in finished form to others.  

Media theorist Walter Ong, who argued famously that the defining moment in human history was the invention of writing, talked a lot about this:  imagine what it would be like if you could only speak your thoughts, never write them down, if you had to hold them in your head constantly or run the risk of forgetting them and all their nuances.  Writing gives us the chance to find just the right words for our ideas, then leave those ideas alone for a while, think about some other things, come back to our original thoughts, and figure out what the connections between them all are, as well as where to go next.  

Whatever we choose to think about, that is, writing gives us the chance to get it exactly right.

We hope this evolving set of resources – and all the writing you’ll do as an Oswego student – will help you practice getting it exactly right in this way.  Exploring, articulating, and refining your ideas in writing is one of the most important intellectual skills you’ll be asked to develop at college – maybe the most important.  We understand writing as a sort of intellectual adventure, an opportunity to develop and deepen insights, and we hope you will too.