Volume CXXXII, Number 8 November 8, 2002 f

Not writing the academy off
GENEVIEVE CREEDON
COLUMNIST

I am not a professional academic, and I cannot quite consider myself a writer, but I do write as a way of engaging in life, and I do engage in academic questions seriously. And it bothers me that students here do not fully and personally engage in academics, because my academic pursuits are intensely personal-a means of understanding my surroundings and myself better. I do, however, understand that it is difficult for most students to see that their academic work actually does have personal implications, and until now, I have blamed it primarily on the students, on our generation, on societal norms.

But the fault, I'd like to suggest, may rest at least partially within the academy itself and its failure to engage and teach personal writing-autobiographical, personal essays. Over the course of the past few years, I have done a good deal of reading about the debate surrounding academic and personal writing, and the place of personal writing in an academic setting. I have also done a good deal of writing about the question, especially as it relates to my position and investments as a student, deeply committed to writing and academic pursuits.

I have been trying to connect with people here who engage the necessity for personal investment in academics, and I have been very frustrated by an academic standard that ignores the personal implications of scholarly work. I do recognize the importance of critical and analytical work within the academy and by no means wish to downplay it. I would, however, suggest that personal writing informs academic writing and explains the necessity for its existence in ways that nothing else can.

Bowdoin is a college at which there are essentially no writing classes. The catalogue's listed courses comprise English Composition, which provides "practice in analytical and critical writing," and creative writing courses in poetry and fiction. Creative Non-fiction, a course added to the selection this fall, avoids the mention of personal writing in its description, emphasizing instead "the tool box of good writing." Students in all writing courses must be admitted on the basis of submitted writing samples, except for English Composition, which enrolls students "with permission of the instructor." Access to these courses is at least restricted. With 1,650 students, the college only offers two writing classes per semester, each capped at fifteen students.

We do not teach, nor do we encourage, personal writing. On the surface, this tactic aims to make students recognize academic writing as serious, critical work requiring practice, learning, and teaching. The problem, however, with not teaching personal writing is that it leaves a gap.

If Bowdoin does not teach personal writing in an academic setting, it essentially does not teach students why they should care about their academic work. By not teaching personal writing, the College, and indeed the academy, does not give students a reason to engage in the academic debates and struggles that it actually wants to foster.

This failure to provide a means for students to experience the genuine importance of academic debates creates the prevailing attitude that students do academic work for a grade, or because they "have to." The result, then, is the exact opposite of the academy's aim to teach students that they should invest personally in academic pursuits that allow them to gain knowledge in different fields in order to understand the world and situate themselves within it more effectively.

Ironically, by trying to make students take the academy more seriously, the systematic separation of the personal and the academic fails to successfully engage students. The disregard for personal writing, that, in fact, can be analytical and critical, actually upholds the image of the academy as an impersonal place that students turn away from to focus their attention on social and extracurricular activities (with more or less value) that seem more personally significant. The college and the academy then become seemingly irrelevant places through which students have to pass to get a job or go on with the rest of their lives.