ENGL685 Journal #1 - Questions About Writing and Freewrite Post

• Pick 2-4 questions about writing you have. Briefly write about why you are interested in these questions. 
• Copy/paste/organize all the freewriting you did during class on 1/14 and make sure it is in your journal.

1. How has the idea of "academic writing" taken shape over the course of educational history to become what it is today? How do we define "academic writing"? If there is consensus, what is it, and how was it formed?
• As discussed briefly in class, what many scholars believe writing to be is a very loose and nebulous category. While it's fine to study these, what is expected from scholars by professors is often a very uniform, technically specific piece of writing. It has limits placed on its tone, format, length, and organization (though admittedly, often the higher one goes up the ladder, the less rigid this format becomes). I would be interested to know when and why these yardsticks came into play, as well as the rhetoric behind how the most common formatting rules are structured.

1. If there is such a thing as "academic writing", is this the most productive means of transferring scholarly information to others? Why or why not? How would one go about breaking down academic writing without getting a lot of push back from the Ivory Tower?
• There are many elements of academia that are not a result of best practice for learners or educators. In Middle and High School, it has been scientifically proven that a start time any earlier than 8:30 am is detrimental to the learning process and student well being. Still, schools continue to start at ridiculously early hours as a result of their history as a part of the factory system.This is what leads me to ask, is academic prose and its structure an aid to the passing-on of information, or a curse? If it is more harm than help, in what way could a compromise be formed where the writing still has structure, but is more accessible to those with less privilege?

FREEWRITE

#1 - What is Writing?) Writing is words on a page that take place in some sort of defensible order. This can be letters, advertisements, notes, and extends out to foreign languages superimposed over others. If you can explain why you wrote what you did, it’s probably writing. Good/bad is opinionist garbage.

#2 - What is Research?) Research is often tedious, and a necessary evil of finding out stuff you wanna know. Academically, one is often expected to properly cite sources, so peers (and not-so-peers) can fact check the heck outta you at will. You gotta do whatcha gotta do, but it’s like kool aid- too much aid and not enough kool.