I’ve spent the last decade teaching literature to students who walk into my classroom convinced that analyzing a short story is somehow more intimidating than it actually is. They think there’s some secret formula, some hidden key that professors possess. There isn’t. What there is, though, is a process. And understanding that process changes everything. […]
I’ve read hundreds of term papers. Some were brilliant. Most were competent. A few were disasters. The difference between a paper that lands in the “competent” pile and one that actually stands out isn’t always obvious at first glance. It’s not just about length or citation count. There’s something else happening beneath the surface, something […]
I didn’t understand classification essays until I stopped thinking about them as rigid organizational systems and started seeing them as puzzles. The moment that clicked for me was during my third year of teaching writing at a community college, when a student named Marcus asked me why we couldn’t just write about things without putting […]
I spent three years teaching composition at a community college before I realized I’d been lying to my students. Not intentionally, mind you. I genuinely believed what I was saying. Every semester, I’d stand in front of a classroom and declare with absolute certainty that the hook must come first. It was rule number one, […]
I’ve been staring at essays for years now–my own, my students’, submissions from people desperate enough to ask strangers on the internet for feedback. And I’ve noticed something that most writing advice misses entirely. Convincingness isn’t about being louder or more authoritative. It’s about being honest in a way that makes readers feel like you’ve […]
I’ve spent the better part of a decade watching students panic over citation formats. The anxiety is real, and honestly, it’s somewhat justified. There’s something about the prospect of getting your citations wrong that makes even confident writers second-guess themselves. I’ve been there. I still remember my first research paper in college, frantically flipping through […]