When an Essay Refuses to Behave

I was surprised by how Walwicz openly challenged the university system and the strict rules of academic writing—how she dismantled the idea of a formal essay. From experience, I am so used to essays being strict, polished, and logical, as these were always presented as the standard for what makes a text well-written. Yet here was a piece that refused to follow any of that. It felt alive and unpredictable, implying that academic discourse hides vulnerability behind polished arguments. Reading it was so fascinating and so unlike a typical essay—it felt less like I was reading and more like I was eavesdropping on someone’s private stream of thought, with all its stops, repetitions, and side comments. Moreover, the way she compared quoting others as a form of “gossip” caught me off guard because it made me rethink how much authority we actually give to sources in academic writing. 

What intrigued me most about the essay was its style of writing. To me, it felt like a performance in itself, like the text was part of the message. It didn’t just say she was resisting the rules of writing—her essay, itself, was the resistance. Reading it felt like being inside her head, full of interruptions, abrupt cut-offs, doubts, and bold claims. Thoughts layered over thoughts, putting into writing the way a creative mind truly works, not neat or polished, but raw and alive. The piece constantly shifted voices. One moment she’s quoting high-level intellectuals like Cixous, and the next, she slips into a personal tone saying, “Daddy tells me” and “I wear a pink dress now.” Reading the text felt like listening to real-time thoughts; it was as if the process of thinking was unfolding right in front of me. That sudden shift of voices from academic and professional language to intimate and childlike tones was jarring. It was messy but deliberate, and I loved it even though it confused me at first. Chaotic as it seemed, there was still an order hidden beneath all the mess.

What disturbed me in Walwicz’s essay was the implication of duress. The university was described as coercive, training students much like how institutions control psychiatric patients. Her idea of students as “docile bodies” felt unsettling because it suggests we are not truly free in how we think or write, only shaped to follow rules. Moreover, it was uncomfortable to see education being compared to coercion—that our individuality is lost in the process of being disciplined. The metaphor of the pink dress—the debutante being presented to society—caught me off guard, seeing that it frames academic writing as a kind of performance or initiation. To me, the pink dress symbolized vulnerability—like being dressed and put on display without choice. This made me consider how much of school is really about fitting into roles rather than freely expressing thought. What disturbed me most was that I could relate—the feeling of wanting to write authentically, but fearing that stepping outside the convention would mean failure or dismissal