Writing Lessons I Learned From My English Degree
Brutal advice given by academics changed the way I write
I went into my English Literature degree thinking I was great at writing essays, teachers at school had told me I was good at writing and I consistently received high marks on essays. Oh boy, was I in for a big shock. Who knew that there was such a large gap between high school essay writing and academic writing?
It was no longer viable to string together an essay laden with a few fancy words, in a basic structure, with a few vague quotes taken from a novel. I was soon to learn what I thought was eloquent writing was actually badly formatted, poorly researched and filled with advanced vocabulary that I didn’t really understand.
My first assignment at university was an essay that analyzed three poems. I thought ‘great, I did loads of this at school, I can just form some vague ideas about imagery and metaphors and the job will be done!’
I actually look back and cringe at that initial assignment, I even dared to say that the stanzas (younger me had the cheek to use the word ‘verse’ and was given a big reality check by my lecturers) in a poem about a painting, were formed in squares because they were made to look like picture frames. What sort of basic, childish comment is that, especially to be…
