Influence of Writing
Writing plays an important part in undergraduate life, no matter what major a student is following, or what year of study you are in. For this blog, I talked to someone in the aerospace engineering path (Dan King) and also the auditing path (Matt Gardner). Both students are juniors, and have taken a broad selection of classes covering a number of different subjects. When talking with them, I posed the same question to both; “How does writing shape your experience within the major, and also how does writing help enable your classes, co-ops, labs, and internships?” While both Dan and Matt are in entirely different paths, they shared surprisingly similar answers to this prompt.
Writing as a whole for both did not begin to take a particularly vital role until their sophomore year, yet has been growing in importance ever since. Writing, especially in lab work for example has just begun to take a large role, especially for Matt. “Up until now I have not really had to do any major writing in my classes, except for SAGES really. This fall I started an actual auditing class though, and has that changed. While calculations do play a roll of course, 95% of the work is all written analysis and personal views on these case studies; all of which are taken from the real world.” From the engineering corner I was hearing the same thing, albeit a little less rigorous from the sounds of things. “I mean writing pops up all the time in homework assignments, and especially in applications for co-op’s and internships…but I mean especially the companies that are offering paid positions care more about your ability to calculate, problem solve, and design more than your writing skills. I’ve met some world class engineers that are horrible writers, yet the have very few rivals in their field.” (Dan King).
It would seem that writing definitely does shape the experience that is had in an individual major, even if it is not perceived to help in the future. While Dan obviously thinks that writing takes a back seat once you leave the classroom, I can’t help but doubt that. For something that has such large amounts of time, effort, and practice put into it, it stands to reason that writing would not simply disappear as hinted at. Again though, this definitely does help draw attention to the importance writing does play in the undergraduate careers of students.
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