9 How We Write Now: A Preliminary Study of the Culture of Writing on Campus during the Pandemic

Using qualitative approaches allowed us to uncover counterstories and paradoxes in students’ experiences as writers. We found themes across stories that are the source of our findings. We were interested in three main questions related to the broader question: to what extent has writing changed or remained the same for students during the pandemic? The first question we sought to answer was, “What were students writing?” In order to answer this question, we found that students had to make a decision for themselves about what constituted writing. Interestingly, their definitions were expansive. Students listed text messages, emails, academic papers, notes, social media posts, class reflections, journaling, and poetry, among others, as being “kinds” of writing. Students listed text messages, emails, academic papers, notes, social media posts, class reflections, journaling, and poetry, among others, as being “kinds” of writing. In other words, they reported engaging in a wide variety of personal, professional, and academic writing in their everyday lives.

We noted with surprise and delight that students seemed to have an internal definition of writing capacious enough to encompass these multiple genres. Such thinking aligns with scholars of rhetoric and composition who define writing as the “work of making meaning for particular audiences and purposes” and as work made by writers who “are always connected to other people” (Roozen 17). Yet when we asked students what made these genres of writing examples of “writing,” they did not have a specific and unifying definition at their fingertips. Students often initially saw academic and personal writing as separate activities, as opposed to the field’s perception of them as social activities written for different audiences and purposes. When pressed to think through their responses, they often arrived at more nuanced definitions, however. When our research team debriefed about this, we noted the value of peer-led conversations about writing to prompt metacognition vis-à-vis the writing processes. Such conversations appear to give writers deeper insight into writing—and themselves as agentive writers.

Take coding in computer science. One researcher asked James, a student writer^[2], “Is that writing?” When the computer science major was asked this question, he paused before responding, “Well, not exactly.” When pressed, it seemed that the key distinction between writing code and writing, say, for a politics class was the writer’s goal. Writing a paper on marginalized members of his community allowed James to better understand the hardships of community members’ everyday lives and later led him to draft a policy proposal to change California law. Behind this type of writing the student found a strong purpose: to convince others of a certain point of view. Like scholars in the field, James saw writing as the “work of making meaning for particular audiences and purposes” and, in his own writing, he came to see authorship as a position in which he was “always connected to other people.”

But James also encouraged the research team to think about forms of connection and response that are non-human. As he and his interviewer continued the discussion around the differences between coding and writing, James pointed out that coding and what he considered to be writing both sought to elicit an action or response. Yet the human element of writing became something that made writing ultimately feel more authentic to James. Persuading a human being to do something—to take action— is very different from, for example, convincing a machine to move, he concluded. Therefore, James ultimately wasn’t comfortable calling coding “writing.” Commanding a machine to conduct a Google search didn’t seem like writing to him because there was no conscious mind present to refute one’s arguments. The machine either understands the line of code, or it doesn’t. There’s no need for a machine to interpret or read between the lines. In this sense, James’ definition aligns with the field’s rather traditional schema, which sees writing as a social activity. It will be interesting to note if student perceptions of coding change in the wake of apps designed to interface with humans and machine-generated writing, which is growing more sophisticated by the day.

Whereas James thought his way into a more conventional definition of writing, other students started with more narrow definitions emphasizing its instrumental role. In her interview, Emily’s answer to “What do you consider to be writing?” was “Anything with a grade attached.” Indeed, Emily chose to submit samples of academic assignments she had written, a choice reflective of this definition. However, as the conversation continued, she offered the fact that she also writes outside of school and occasionally writes creative pieces in her journal, enlarging her definition as she spoke. Other students, like cognitive science major Zoe, excluded academic writing from their definition of writing, defining writing as work that is done on their own terms. “I don’t even consider school assignments [to be] writing because I do them because I have to do them,” Zoe emphasized.

That’s how I see it… like would I write a book review if I didn’t have to? Probably not. But would I do poetry if I didn’t have to? yeah I would…Would I do journaling if I didn’t have to? Yeah, I would still do it.

For Zoe, intrinsic motivation is the defining characteristic of “real” writing. She comes from a family of poets and writers who spoke out against past Iraqi regimes. Her sense of duty, both civic and artistic, influenced her perception of writing and its purpose. In the interview, she reported perceiving academic writing as a stepping stone, through a liberal arts education, to her future work. Zoe craved an audience beyond her professor. She needed to feel that her writing could generate community and change. If she perceived an assignment as falling outside of these parameters, it wasn’t “real” writing to her. She needed an agentive role in defining the purpose and audience of her work.

The above examples are illustrative of the range of definitions, implicit and explicit, that students hold of writing, even in the same conversation: writing as human, writing as transactional, writing as persuasive, writing as purposeful to one’s self or others. These different perceptions of writing reflect the diverse goals writers have for their work in college, goals that they often saw as linked to intersectional identities.

Another question in the interviews related to how students defined successful writing during the pandemic. As in pre-pandemic times, whether students considered a piece of writing successful or not was linked to their goals. These goals sometimes differed from their professors’, particularly when students were internally motivated. One student, Lennox, said;

Another student, Sam, stated:

Success in these contexts is linked to feelings of personal achievement or growth. It can mean using writing as a tool for discovering and actualizing transformative ideas.

For many students who were more internally motivated, journaling was described as the most impactful writing, and therefore the most successful because it was the most likely to induce pleasant feelings and promote clarity and self-discovery. In our study, we noticed a pattern whereby students shared feelings of passion, and even spoke for longer when asked about their personal writing. It appeared to be easier for them to describe what constituted success for them in this genre.

For others in our study, success was defined externally, either through grades given to an assignment or through feedback given by others. Leo stated, “if I’m writing for others, like in the sense that…like..I’m writing something with the intent that other people will read it, I know it’s successful when that strikes some kind of emotion in the person.” Leo’s goal for his writing is to have it move his reader in the way he intends. He strives to change the reader’s feelings more than their position, suggesting that writing for the student inhabits an affective space.

We asked nearly all the students interviewed, “Do you consider yourself a good writer?” Many students were too humble to admit they thought they were good writers (though they also rarely called themselves bad), even when the writing samples they submitted were quite strong. In externally motivated situations, like working for a grade in class, they noted that often it is incredibly difficult to know the instructor’s version of successful writing. In the absence of a full understanding of instructor expectations, they saw these criteria as idiosyncratic. Students were thus particularly uncomfortable using grades as their only judgment of success. At the same time, we found that students reported it was impossible to fully avoid grades as a metric for sharpening one’s self-image as a writer, a source of stress for many.

These findings point to a possibly missed opportunity in faculty teaching. Grades did not appear to be a meaningful measure of success for the writers because they were perceived as measuring expectations invisible to them or not tangibly connected to their own motivations as writers. Grades did not appear to be a meaningful measure of success for the writers because they were perceived as measuring expectations invisible to them or not tangibly connected to their own motivations as writers. Faculty may be able to engage students more deeply as learners by clarifying their assignment goals and providing more space for students to exercise autonomy and authority in defining the audience and shape of their writing.

This tension—between the faculty member’s goals and the writer’s—also manifested itself in conversations about how students construct and enact identities in their writing. Writing studies scholar Kevin Roozen describes the act of writing as “not so much about using a particular set of skills as it is about becoming a particular kind of person, about developing a sense of who we are” (51). In our research, we found that students often experienced that “particular kind of person” with unease when it was difficult to reconcile it with what they perceived as an authentic sense of self. When students were asked to adhere to a disciplinary set of writing conventions and values, they sometimes experienced such tasks as a personal affront or erasure of identity. Other times it seemed like an exercise in delivering on others’ idiosyncratic expectations of them. This may be because many of our interviewees were first- and second-year students new to disciplinary forms of writing. They may not have had time to find and practice participating in the kinds of conversations most compelling to them. Yet it’s striking that so many of the students we talked with did not connect the writing they were doing with meaningful forms of thinking in new fields, raising questions about a potential mismatch in the goals of faculty and students.

For example, Leo explained how, just prior to the pandemic, he had opted to take his first college history class. He was invigorated by the content and spent a lot of time and effort on his first writing assignment for the course. “[It] was like something I enjoyed writing and I thought I had some valuable insights,” he said. But his teacher reacted negatively to what he produced, giving him a grade he felt was unjustified. The next time Leo had to write for that class, his approach changed immensely:

Like Leo, we noticed a number of students attributed such expectations to the professor and not the field, in this case history writing. They also described learning to write as a means of gaining approval from someone they respected.

Another student, Elizabeth, described a similar experience. She took a class with one professor in both the fall and spring semesters. In the fall, she felt like she kept getting the same grade on all of her writing. At the same time, she was learning more about what this professor wanted her writing to look like: “This man does not like fluff, like transitions, not so important, don’t waste word space, these are short essays; just answer the question and you’ll do okay,” she explained. So this semester, she changed her approach.

Elizabeth, like Leo, reports learning how to adapt her writing to the expectations of her professor and experiencing success through that process.

We noted that both students interpreted writing assignments as exercises in what Paulo Freire calls the “banking model,” as opposed to opportunities for the kind of collaborative problem-posing that positions writers as “re-creators” of knowledge (71-86). They sometimes viewed feedback as an opportunity to be filled with the writing knowledge of their professors, but struggled to articulate how this feedback was integrated holistically into their identities as writers navigating different discourse communities. As students were asked to write differently in different contexts, they often described feeling like writing chameleons, adapting their approach to please their professors. Often seeing such writing negatively as conformity, they sometimes described writing as alienating. At the same time, participants demonstrated an awareness of the painful ways in which unexamined definitions of “good writing” can perpetuate linguistic discrimination that marginalizes identities and groups.

For example, Anya perceived that her aspirations and standards for her writing were often overridden by expectations and external pressure. She spoke extensively about her relationship to the English language, which is her only language but not a first language for either of her parents.

Anya felt empowered by her proficiency in a certain kind of academic English, but the cost of such confidence was adopting a set of standards that she also experienced as alienating; pride in “mastery” supports a linguistic norm that marginalizes those who are held most dear. From the conversation, it appeared that Anya, too, never received instruction on how to set her own goals for her writing and reconcile those with the assignments before her.

As student researchers, we noted missed opportunities for empowering pedagogies that clarify instructors’ purposes in assigning and valuing writing in the ways that they do–and inviting students to help shape the assignment and the criteria that would be used to evaluate their work. Particularly during the pandemic, we noted that students desired to engage in writing that felt meaningful and urgent and inclusive of their multiple identities. They also felt that the pressure placed on their relationships with professors was also more intense amidst the isolation of the early pandemic. This meant that professors’ feedback also seemed to carry more weight. Jamie said, for example:

Jamie viewed her writing as an opportunity for social connection–response in the form of validation. In the absence of other interactions, feedback had an especially powerful impact on her self-confidence as a writer. Since the college experience had been largely reduced to coursework in the online environment, this created new pressures for writers and new vulnerabilities to their self-esteem.

These new pressures may be another reason why a number of students in our study turned to journaling during the pandemic, something instructors may wish to consider as they develop their courses.  We found that journaling throughout the pandemic allowed for students to disengage from external standards, deadlines, and assignments in the online environment.. Journaling allowed for students to be in tune with their thoughts, feelings, and changes over the COVID year. At the same time, other students reported disengaging from personal writing as they saw their capacity and love for writing wane amidst pandemic-induced constraints. A common theme among the daily journal writers who stopped journaling during COVID was the feeling that writing became more of an overwhelming task rather than something that could add meaning to their life. Prisha, for example, claimed,

Academic pressures felt intensified for Prisha, and she acknowledged the need to scale back.A lot of the feelings Prisha shared with us were felt by another student, Rosario. Being multilingual, a lot of the standards Rosario had to meet did not show flexibility nor acceptance of his own personal and cultural relationship with writing and language as a whole. With the academic stresses of writing during the pandemic—which he saw as a focus on product over process—Rosario understood that good writing in an academic setting is very dependent on others’ definitions of quality writing. He expressed the belief that a lot of these perceptions of what good writing is and who is allowed to be called a writer are strongly tied to classism. Rosario sees his writing identity as intertwined with his identities, including his ethnicity, gender, and positionality as a first-generation college student. He expressed that any universal standards that intersectional students like him have to meet further hinder and silence his voice, creativity, and contributions to public discourse.So how does writing affect the lives of people with identities that are underrepresented in academia? While our dataset is too small to draw definitive conclusions, in this study BIPOC students, especially those who are first-generation college students and multilingual, experience imposter syndrome and insecurity about their language capabilities in this context. At the same time, they are deeply aware that their perspectives are essential to the world-making enabled by the kind of writing that results in social change.

Discussion
Throughout the interviews, we noted that students reflected deeply on their identities as writers as they described what, how, and why they write. We were curious about the prevalence of identity in students’ reflections on their academic and creative lives. What are the variables that contribute to the context of the question: How do we write now? We found the COVID-19 pandemic was an important aspect of the environment our subjects were writing in. The pandemic exacerbated existing inequalities, making them more visible and pronounced. It also prompted collective introspection about what truly matters and invited a critical re-envisioning of work, including writing. In our student-led study, we expressed interest in investigating students’ experiences with writing in order to engage in research that might also be transformative.

• How can learning about students’ perspectives at this moment inform the teaching and tutoring of writing?
• How might academic writing be redefined to enable students to engage in work that feels authentic, inclusive, meaningful, and urgent?
• How can we create spaces that invite writers to reflect on their own goals and bring their whole selves to their learning?

In response to these questions, we have generated six recommendations, or action items, for faculty who assign writing across the curriculum. We recognize that these recommendations are not new, but we believe they can be powerful when framed in the context of local institutional assessments.

Such explicit conversations–and pedagogical transformations–might also help students new to a field see faculty expectations as connected to something larger: a vision of community inclusive of their perspectives within the shared language of the class and, possibly, the field. The pandemic, more than ever before, highlighted people’s need to see their identities as a form of living–not something that can or should be avoided or hidden. Skeptical of a culture of self-optimization and hegemonic ways of knowing and doing, the students in our study were eager to tap into the liberatory potential of other ways of working and being. Writing centers are uniquely positioned to re-envision knowledge practices as inclusive of these perspectives in the post pandemic future. Student-led assessments like this can feed back into institutional conversations with faculty, students, and staff, participating in a shift in the culture of writing and work on our campuses.

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