The Write Stuff: Critical Thinking, Creative Pleasures

First-year University of Virginia student Lara Jabbour had already become savvy about “conventional academic writing.”

A classmate of hers, Aidan McManus, was looking for something more exciting than repeating the traditional essay format he had learned in high school.

Both chose English professor James Seitz’s “Writing for Life” course for their first writing requirement and found it has indeed changed their lives, and not just improved their communication skills.

“‘Writing for Life’ reinvigorates students’ writing by forcing them to flex writing muscles that they may not have flexed in a long time – if ever – in order to create a piece that effectively describes or contends or explores something,” McManus said. “This makes writing much more rewarding for the students. It reveals that writing truly does shape your life in significant ways.”

English professor James Seitz, who directs UVA’s Academic and Professional Writing Program, wants students to engage in writing for the sake of exploratory thinking. (Photo by Dan Addison, University Communications)

“By ‘writing for life,’ I was able to write for myself: not for a grade, not for a professor, but simply for my own discovery,” Jabbour wrote. “I began to write through my ambivalence, discovering and learning as I wrote, rather than simply writing about something I’d previously learned or been taught. Writing of this sort seemed to slow life down and allow for raw and thoughtful reflection.

“The novel way this course was instructed undeniably equipped my peers and I with valuable skills that will prove to be beneficial both in personal writing and future academic and professional endeavors.”

“‘Written communication skills’ is consistently listed among the top five attributes employers are looking for in new college graduates and job applicants.”

“Written communication skills” is consistently listed among the top five attributes employers are looking for in new college graduates and job applicants. Only the broad categories of problem-solving and teamwork were cited by a slighter higher percentage of employers, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers 2018 Jobs Outlook survey.

Undergraduate students can potentially enhance their livelihoods and become livelier communicators thanks to UVA’s revamped Academic and Professional Writing Program, which aims to ensure that all students have a range of opportunities to develop their writing skills. Seitz, who came to the Grounds in 2013 to lead the academic writing program, has spent the past five years hiring new faculty to help him overhaul and expand the writing curriculum.

Preparing for careers is only half the reason why students should develop their writing ability in college, according to Seitz. The command of writing “has an intrinsic value beyond students gaining a marketable skill,” he said.

What Do You Think?

Writers including Flannery O’Connor, E.M. Forster and Joan Didion have all said some version of the phrase, “I don’t know what I think until I write about it.”

“Writing is the most disciplined form of thinking we engage in,” Seitz pointed out. “It helps develop the capacity for critical thinking – and that’s powerful. It also stimulates imagination, so it’s not just critical, but creative thinking.”

“Writing is the most disciplined form of thinking we engage in and helps students move from a fragmented thought process to a logical progression. ”

- Jim Seitz
director of the Academic and Professional Writing Program

When Seitz gives an essay assignment in his courses, such as “Writing for Life,” he wants his students to start from a place of uncertainty, ambivalence, or confusion even, rather than have an argument or claim already in mind. That comes later, he said.

“We move from a fragmented thought process to a logical progression. The act of writing helps us to reflect on the topic or issues.”

Seitz, who’s been teaching for 30 years, said students are writing in several different venues these days, especially with the explosion of social media, and he covers many of them in the “Writing for Life” course, from descriptive paragraphs to exploratory essays to op-eds.

A similar process underlies each assignment, such as to pick a public issue about which a student feels ambivalent and explore why, looking at the complexity and nuances. In academic parlance, it’s called “critical inquiry.”

If a student takes a position before even starting and argues for it right off the bat, “That’s like building a fortress around an idea they already hold and defending it. It makes for dull writing.

“It’s like America’s political rhetoric these days,” Seitz said.

“When professors do research, they start with questions, not answers,” he said. “I want them to engage in writing for the sake of exploratory thinking. If you’re uncertain, things are going to happen that are unpredictable,” said Seitz, who recently published an article, “Questions We Can’t Answer: The Secret to a Good Writing Assignment.”

Writing instructor Devin Donovan talked about emphasizing writing as a process in these courses.

“We read texts and generate questions, we draft responses, we workshop, we reflect, we reconsider, we revise and rewrite. We might start with an idea of what our essays will be about, but over the course of this process, our writing often surprises us,” Donovan said.

“What I hope it teaches students is that things don’t always go according to plan, and that’s OK. We don’t need to know what we want to say before we start writing; we can write to figure things out. There is value and honesty in uncertainty, and there is something authentic about curiosity as a motivator.”

Writing practice strengthens another ability that will serve students well throughout their lives, Donovan suggested. “When we stick with an essay, or a paragraph, or a sentence – even as it frustrates us or evades easy articulation – we build a resilience that helps us embrace and explore complexity rather than ignore it.”

Added McManus: “Strengthening writing becomes strengthening your handle on life, not just getting an A.”

What a Culture of Writing Looks Like

UVA has always had a first-year writing requirement, but approximately one-third of Arts & Sciences students used to place out of it based on their SAT scores.

Not anymore. Now, all first-year students in the College of Arts & Sciences, School of Architecture, Curry School of Education and School of Nursing are required to take one or two semesters of writing courses. The Academic and Professional Writing Program serves about 3,000 students. (Echols Scholars are still exempt, but the writing program now offers several elective writing courses to this group.)

“Strengthening writing becomes strengthening your handle on life. ”

- Aidan McManus
first-year student

UVA has long had a second writing requirement, as well, that could be fulfilled through any number of Arts & Sciences courses. The Academic and Professional Writing Program used to have only a few advanced writing courses; now it offers dozens of different topics, such as writing about law or medicine, about the environment, about traveling, about science and technology, about the arts or about community engagement. There’s “A Cultural History of Writing,” and “Writing with Sound.” Most classes fill up very quickly. Experienced professors teach all of these courses.

The Academic and Professional Writing Program has grown from four faculty members to 19 by next fall, Seitz said, with five professors tenured or tenure-track. The other instructors are non-tenure-track general faculty with long-term contracts who concentrate on teaching, up to three courses per semester.

Faculty from any discipline, field or school on Grounds also can learn more about the best ways to teach writing through the program’s Faculty Seminar on the Teaching of Writing, a four-day workshop offered annually in late May. Participants can gain valuable experience on how to incorporate meaningful writing assignments into their courses and how to evaluate them. Faculty who participate in the seminar are expected to design or revise a writing-intensive course that they plan to teach within the next two years.

For graduate students who teach first-year writing, the program offers a pedagogy seminar each fall and a series of workshops on writing instruction throughout the year.

It’s all part of “Developing a Culture of Writing at UVA,” a quality enhancement program that the University designated last year as part of its reaccreditation. Every five years, the University must identify an area of undergraduate education to improve and expand. Undergraduate research was the previous topic.

Seitz and Siva Vaidhyanathan, Robertson Professor of Media Studies and director of the Center for Media and Citizenship, co-chaired the committee that designed the new five-year plan.

“Across the board, the undergraduate schools agreed to focus on students’ writing skills, making changes that will become institutionalized,” Archie Holmes Jr., vice provost for academic affairs, said.

The Academic and Professional Writing Program is already playing an integral role.