The Secret Superpower

James hung back after class until everyone had left the classroom. He timidly approached my desk and asked, professor, is there any way I can do a project or some other assignment instead of that research essay? I hate writing, and I am no good at it.

If you think this seventeen-year-old freshman is unique, you would be wrong. Ask many college students about writing, and you will get a combination of responses like it sucks, a waste of time, writing is pointless, just throwing some BS on paper to make the professor happy, or it’s just busywork.

I teach in the front lines of higher education: Community College freshman & sophomore students in a major metro area.

I have reached one embarrassing conclusion. The education system has brutally failed to teach the value of writing.

I shout it from the front of the classroom in my humanities classes, and now I will write about it here.

The reason students need to write well is identical to why I need to push my writing, and you too. It is a human thing, not a school thing.

Here are the three things I told James why he needs to write that essay.

He needs to mentally wrestle with himself. Struggling and straining to communicate in writing is a requirement to grow intellectually. No matter the topic, genre, or purpose, writing is a battle between you and yourself to be understood.

The pen is mightier than the sword is an over-used cliche, but there is immense power in articulating meaning in the world that we experience and feel.

When the most tragic, fantastic, or awe-inspiring things happen to us, or we mentally imagine that thing, whatever that thing may be in our brain. The value is lost if we can’t pull thoughts from the brain and place them in words on paper.

I’ve been around enough to know that if James can learn to formulate coherent arguments, layout ideas, and articulate proposals successfully, he will be…

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