Writing From the College Student's Perspective

After chatting with a couple of friends this weekend, I learned that it’s pretty difficult for my friends to take certain things seriously, and that not many people actually enjoy writing. Perhaps the not being too fond of writing stems from the three of them being college students, but whatever the case, the insight I received from them was helpful.

One of the most interesting things I found from speaking with my friends was the general consensus that writing made them anxious, and as one person described, “It makes me think of pain.” While this may seem a bit dramatic, I was not too surprised that writing was not well liked, as at this point in our lives all of the writing we do is for assignments or things we more or less do not really care about. It’s not easy to enjoy something that a person is constantly being forced to do, simply to pass a class; and that’s coming from someone who is an English major.

However, I did find that for non-scholastic purposes writing seemed to be more enjoyable for my friends, one stating that “I enjoy writing when I’m inspired, like creatively, but when I’m forced to write about something I’m not passionate about, then it makes me really nervous because I feel like I’m not creating quality work.” This further showed me how much scholastic writing can negatively affect the way a person feels or appreciates writing. Granted, I’ve never been the type of person who completely hated writing, I can still totally understand and agree with where she was coming from; when someone is given an assigned topic and certain guidelines, it can obviously be restricting to that person’s level of creativity, not to mention take some of the fun out of writing that piece.

The last thing I spoke with my friends about was the definition of composing, and whether or not it was different from writing. While they all agreed that composing was different from writing, only one of them was able to provide me with a substantial reasoning and that reasoning was that composing feels more creative than writing, that a person is “sitting down and taking the time to create something.” This explanation is similar to what my group agreed upon in class, that composing seems more purposeful and therefore has more meaning and creativity behind it.