by Michael King

Created on: January 15, 2010   Last Updated: January 16, 2010

It sounds peculiar doesn't it? Education making you worse at writing, the very thing one would assume would benefit the most from exposure to the schorlarly world of academia. However, this is not the case. Some people leave college without the natural talent with which they entered, they graduated as robots, mechanically typing away with a word formula that they were taught over and over again.

You can learn all the vocabulary, grammar and complexities you want, but if you, as a writer, lose your uniqueness you will fail as a writer; to be a successful writer you need to be open minded, relaxed and passionate. Complex grammar and lexis can come later.

Colleges often teach mechanically. They drum into you a method of writing an acceptable essay. For most colleges aim only to see a high pass rate, not high passes. An essay writing technique can be taught that will allow a student to race away and produce a long and informed essay or prose writing that will pass any exam board, apart from the public.

The problem here is that the public do not want to read good writing, they don't want a good book, they want a great one. They search for a book that you can't bear to put down, not one you will enjoy at a reasonable level. Here the colleges can ruin you, once you've accepted their way of writing it is so hard to go back to your own unique styles.

The solution here is not to avoid college, for its benefits are clear for all to see, but instead to go into it mentally prepared. If you have clear ambition to be a great writer then college will help you, but for it to help you, without inhibiting you, you must enter prepared to ignore many of its teachings. Lap up every piece of juicy knowledge it can give you, every bit of grammar and every new word you encounter. However, be ready to switch off and ignore them whenever they start lecturing a writing style, for your style is your own, not theirs.

Alternatively, the better the college, the better the education, roughly, better colleges tend not to fall back on teaching style, but content, something that you will be grateful for for the rest of your life. The most important message of all is to be yourself through college, not what someone else wants you to be.

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