Rant

Image by Ravages via FlickrI just needed a little place to rant for a few minutes. I'm not sure if this is going to be more about the drag of working on group papers or the writing expectations I've run into at GMU; both of these things are bothering me right now.

So here's the deal: I feel like I am a pretty good scholarly writer (yes I realize my blog posts are pretty lame usually, but my writing for school is clearly different). But since I've been writing papers for my grad program, I feel like they want me to write with a different tone than what my undergrad experience guided me towards. Obviously, to my reasoning, grad writing should be better in some way than undergrad, but I'm not sure that's been the case so far. My profs want things like subheadings to make the papers clearer: what kind of scholarly paper requires bullet points to break it down??? The same prof wanted our papers to be written in first person. Seriously? It just made me cringe to write an analytical paper about arts managers in the field and have to word stuff like: "I got a lot out of my interview with Mr. Jablow." Blech. But that's what she wanted.

And from the group work I've been in, everyone seems to write colloquially, with short and unvaried sentence structures. Not to mention serious issues with using the same words in close proximity, starting sentences the same, using weird-- dashes and things. This is graduate level writing people! I don't care if you're writing on some ambiguous topic like describing different management styles or what art means to different people, it can still be written well!

The thing that gets me so worked up, is not that I think I write better than everyone here (obviously an exaggeration- I'm sure there are good writers in the program- I just haven't read their work yet), but that the crappy writers are making me feel like I'm wrong! Whatev.

I guess this is mainly stemming from small things that have led up to this group paper we're turning in today, for which an older lady in my group pretty much outright criticized my writing style, and completely re-worded my entire section, as well as deleted large parts... Without any editing comments or even highlights or any other considerate things (which the rest of the group and I did) to show where changes were made. We were rehearsing for our presentation which is also today, and when I was practicing my part, she said to me, "you know, you don't talk like that at all, but you really are wordy in your writing..." ummmmmm serious? DUH I don't write like I talk, YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO for these kinds of things. Can you imaging if I turned in a paper in the same voice as this blog?? Yes, I use different voices in my writing, and yes I try to be more eloquent in papers that I seem to think merit higher writing... LIKE GRADUATE LEVEL RESEARCH PAPERS. That bothered me. Screw her. I am so done with this group project. Gah!

I feel better now. Thanks.