Anxious about writing for school?

If so, you are not alone. Here is what some other SNL students had to say about writing for school:

It’s a challenge, especially the writing. Pretty much just getting back into it. — Jessica

Yeah, I had mouth sores. — Sam

Jessica and Sam were two of twenty-five newly returned adult students whom I spent over sixty hours interviewing in the fall of 2008. Twenty-three of these students expressed significant anxiety about writing for school. Like Sam, some had anxiety so intense it produced physical symptoms like mouth sores and muscle spasms. The main sources of their anxiety were not knowing what to write because they had a hard time imagining the university and not knowing if they were writing well enough because they had a hard time imagining themselves in the university. As David Bartholomae has pointed out, “every time a student sits down to write for us, he has to invent the university for the occasion” (60). Because adult students are less likely to have the academic currency and cultural capital of their younger peers, inventing the university can be particularly challenging. As Sam put it, “I don’t fit in here; I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

Many students find that it helps to know that they are not alone in their anxiety about academic writing, so you can help yourself and your peers by sharing your concerns with them. You will also find resources to help you on this website.

The excerpt above is from SNL Writing Coordinator Michelle Navarre Cleary’s article, "Anxiety and the Newly Returned Adult Student," which appeared in Teaching English in the Two-Year College (TETYC) 39.4 (2012): 364-376. The article is available for download at: http://works.bepress.com/navarrecleary/6