Seriously. Everybody. It is practically a rite of passage. After riding the high of being the head honcho of your high school, it takes one annoyed glare from an upperclassman to realize that you are at the bottom of the food chain again. Freshman year is a time of overpriced textbooks, questionable life choices and the collective eye-roll of upperclassmen who suddenly forget they were just as clueless mere months ago (Fall semester sophomores are the WORST for this). You clog the hallways, ask too many questions and still think your high school finessery can get you through college.
To be honest, professors aren’t exactly thrilled either. They stare at essays with the same energy as a weary TSA agent scanning a suitcase that just reeks of bad decisions. They know what’s coming: the same predictable five-paragraph format, the obligatory “In conclusion” that does anything but conclude and the sheer, unwavering confidence in the phrase “throughout history.”
Can we really blame freshmen for this? I mean, they just got here. No, not entirely. The real villain is First-Year Composition (FYC) courses and the outdated misconceptions that haunt them.
The Great Freshman Writing Myth
For decades, universities have clung to the laughable idea that one semester—maybe two if they are feeling generous—is enough to teach students how to write for any academic discipline, any future job or any apocalyptic scenario where society collapses and the only way to communicate is through MLA citations.
Writing studies powerhouses Douglas Downs and Elizabeth Wardle call this the myth of the universal academic discourse—the belief that there is some mystical, all-purpose form of writing that applies everywhere. Yeah, no. As I have mentioned before, writing is not a neutral, plug-and-play skill. It changes depending on the discipline, the audience and the context. Still, universities keep peddling FYC courses that act like they can teach students to “write for college” as if “college” is a monolithic, one-size-fits-all experience.
It is like trying to teach someone how to swim by saying, “Just move your arms and legs. That should cover pools, oceans, rivers and maybe lava if you’re ever in a bad situation.”
So, what do students do? They treat writing as a series of technical hurdles instead of an actual mode of thinking. They write to survive, not to engage. The “formula” for “good writing” is memorized like a cheat sheet for an exam they don’t care about. Then, professors wonder why every essay sounds like it was written by a mildly sophisticated robot (and, nowadays, there is a good chance it was).
The Cycle of Bad Writing Instruction
Wait, it gets worse. Wardle’s list of writing program nightmares points out that most FYC courses are run like underfunded chaos machines. Here’s the recipe (see if it applies to a college you know!):
- Hire an army of adjuncts and grad students at the last minute.
- Give them barely any training (if any) in Writing Studies.
- Pray. Have faith that they somehow teach students “good writing” in 15 weeks.
- Act surprised when student writing remains a dumpster fire.
Imagine this approach used in any other subject. Picture a university hiring random grad students from, let’s say, Philosophy and History, and telling them:
“Hey, we need you to teach Principles of Engineering to freshmen this semester. You took…some science requirement, right?”
It is safe to say that no Engineering department in the world would ever allow that. In fact, there would be a witch-hunt for the person responsible for finding new hires, where they would be fired, then snubbed by every higher-ed employer. Still, for some mysterious reason, that slapdash hiring process is literally what happens in composition courses across the country. This results in anguished professors in other disciplines throwing up their hands and asking, “Why can’t freshmen write?”—as if FYC failed them. In reality, it was never designed to do what they think it should do in the first place.
I Lost Sleep Over the Oxford Comma Once
If you ask a professor why they hate grading freshman papers, they will probably groan something about “bad writing.” Okay, cool. Just like their vague red-ink comments, I must ask:
“?”
which is Grader’s Glossolalia for “what do they really mean?” Are students failing to construct arguments? Lacking rhetorical awareness? Misusing disciplinary conventions?
No. Most of the time, their complaints boil down to petty grammar issues—comma splices, run-ons, sentence fragments, the dreaded “their/they’re/there” mistake. A freshman could write the most thought-provoking, nuanced analysis of a text, but if they drop an “irregardless” in there, some professors will act like they just committed a federal crime.
University of Chicago’s English professor emeritus and linguist Joseph Williams’ would “snigger” at these professors. In his work “The Phenomenology of Error”, he points out something hilarious (not really) by being hilarious (actually): People don’t actually notice most grammar “mistakes” unless they are actively looking for them. The minute a reader switches into error-hunting mode, suddenly every tiny deviation becomes a national emergency.
Williams even exposes the hypocrisy of self-proclaimed grammar enforcers—the same people who scold students for using “which” instead of “that” will happily violate their own rules without noticing. Even legendary grammarians like E.B. White, co-author of The Elements of Style, make “mistakes” in their own writing. Guess what? Nobody cares.
But when a freshman does it? Suddenly, it’s proof of the downfall of literacy.
This obsession with grammar is never about writing quality; it’s about power. It is a way to maintain a hierarchy where some people’s writing is taken seriously and others’ (especially students’, especially freshmen’s) is dismissed outright. It is a convenient excuse to avoid engaging with what students are saying by focusing instead on how they are saying it.
This is exactly why first-year composition fails so many students. Instead of teaching writing as a context-dependent, meaning-making process, it teaches grammar as if it is some objective, unshakable law of the universe. Students learn to fear mistakes rather than experiment with language. They obsess over “proper” formatting rather than understanding the rhetorical needs of different audiences. It seems as if academia forgets the reason Formalist education has been declining for decades.
Now, I love grammar. When I was a kid, I was a huge grammar nerd. At a young age, I recognized the power of grammar. There was something so fascinating to me about the English language and its conventions — so fascinating that I have reread my own copy of The Elements of Style numerous times and competed in grammar competitions (yes, they exist, and I would WIN). I still have this love for grammar. However, you will never catch me acting like Kyle Wiens in any context. I would consider being called a Formalist a slur. I would fight any and every Formalist educator wielding their axiology inappropriately, even in actual grammar classes.
If we actually want students to improve as writers, we need to stop policing their grammar like the FBI and start teaching them how writing works in different contexts. At the end of the day, an extra comma is not the real issue. The real issue is treating writing like a set of static rules rather than a tool for thinking and communication.
Let’s Not Fail Our Freshmen (They are Already Dealing with Enough)
Wardle and Downs argue that instead of pretending FYC can teach students how to write in college, it should teach them how writing actually works. In other words, we need to stop treating writing like a set of universal rules and start treating it as a discipline with content, theories and real research.
Instead of forcing freshmen to churn out yet another pointless argumentative essay on whether cell phones are ruining society, why not have them:
- Research how writing functions in different fields
- Conduct auto-ethnographies on their own writing processes
- Read actual scholarship on writing instead of treating it as a mechanical skill
This shift—often called Writing About Writing (WAW)—forces students to engage with writing as a subject of inquiry. It replaces mindless hoop-jumping with actual understanding.
And maybe — just maybe — it would stop professors in other departments from treating freshman writing (or writing as a whole) like an unsolvable mystery.
. . .
Look, freshmen aren’t hopeless…well, not in the academic sense. They are just victims of a broken system that does not treat writing as a lifelong learning process.
If professors hate the way freshmen write, maybe it’s time to rethink how writing is taught rather than blaming 18-year-olds for not magically absorbing rhetorical theory through osmosis.
Maybe freshmen aren’t the problem. Maybe — just maybe — it’s the way we teach them.
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