By: Tyler Passanisi

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While reading “What is Academic Writing?” I was first intrigued by the introduction paragraph and how the author, L. Lennie Irvin, already made the reader feel comfortable while talking about college English courses being uncomfortable as first-year students and how students should perceive this class as a gift and make the most of it. After this point, Irvin goes on to explain that your success with academic writing is how well you understand what you’re doing as you write and then how you approach the writing task. I found this interesting because typically in my past English classes, I felt as if the teachers always mentioned how to go about the current essay or paper we were working on rather than really making us understand the material. Irvin then builds off of that point by talking about the different “myths” of academic writing, he mentions that some writers believe they must perform certain steps in a particular order to write “correctly.” Throughout my entire education journey, this was completely true and I still feel frustrated when there’s no prompt or general idea of what to write papers about. Going back to what I mentioned earlier, all of my prior English courses were structured and most of my teachers taught the exact same way, logical and to the point. There were always rubrics to be followed and prompts to be answered, never any free write. All in all, what I took away from this essay was to be able to write more freely and try not to be uncomfortable with doing English papers outside of my comfort zone and be able to understand tasks without having it be understood for me.