Experimenting with Writing

Our reading this week, “The Novice as Expert: Writing the Freshman Year,” opens up with a story about the freshman experience at Harvard University, and some advice the President of the university, Neil Rudenstine, has for the incoming students. He says, encourages them “to write a great deal… and experiment with different kinds of writing- because experimentation forces one to develop new forms of perception and thought, a new and more complex sensibility” (Saltz and Sommers 3). President Rudenstine believes that when a student becomes familiar, comfortable, and confident in their writing, their ability to feel or perceive emotion grows.

When President Rudenstine says that writing students will “develop… a new and more complex sensibility,” he’s saying that they will be able to better understand their own feelings. Writing can be a tool that can put your thoughts in order, improving their clarity. In a learning community it is important not only to be able to translate your thoughts into words on a page, but to understand what others are saying when they write.

The idea of experimenting with different kinds of writing is a great idea, and one that has been discussed in class and in our readings. If students are exposed to several types of writing, the subject might not seem so compartmentalized and confusing. Just getting students to not dread writing the in first place is obviously the goal, and maybe if we introduced it to them differently the exercise of writing wouldn’t be so strenuous.