Cause and effect: If we don’t work on academic writing skills, then academia remains inaccessible.    

Academia is often described as inaccessible due to the challenges people face with academic writing. Academic writing is expected across all disciplines in university and there are style expectations such as APA, MLA, and Chicago style citations. These citation requirements are meant to create fluidity and ensure that students do not plagiarize. How often are students taught to write academically? Both in undergraduate degrees and graduate level education students must write academically, but what happens when students don’t have the tools to write academically? Academic writing courses should be mandatory at both the undergraduate and graduate levels of education.  Student success seems to hinge on whether they can articulate properly and write at an academic level. Why are students expected to have these skills without proper education in said skills?

I have been thinking about what makes an academic writer and in the twelve weeks of this course I still maintain that it is not an easy question to answer. Is it someone who writes academically or someone who defines themselves as a writer? Is it all of those things? I have a lot of questions.

It has been a few years since I finished my undergraduate degree, and academic writing was not mandatory for me, and looking back perhaps I wouldn’t have been so stressed out about my essays if I had felt like a writer or had a writer identity. Now in this graduate level writing class I work so hard to meet course expectations and still often I wonder if I’ll ever have a writer identity.