Haas and Bartholomae

"The inexperienced writer is left with a more fragmentary record of the comings and goings of academic discourse" (523). Bartholomae makes a good point that inexperienced writers have not had the opportunity to learn from being corrected by professors, and therefore will struggle to write in the authoritative acadmic discourse.

Haas similary understands experience as a key role toward becoming a better writer, but also a better reader. "As a senior, Eliza was trying to find or make a place for herself within an academic community, and she used reading to help her reach that goal" (371). Similar to writing experience, Eliza was able to learn from her reading what the academic language is.

Both of these quotes show that, for many students, pure talent is not what makes them a great writer or reader. It takes experience and practice in order to learn from mistakes and improve. If a student is involved in reading material that uses the language of the esteemed academic discourse, then they will learn to write that way. In the same way, if a student starts out as a basic writer, the only improvement on their writing will most likely be correlated to the number of papers they turn in and then have returned to them with teacher's comments and suggestions. I think that Haas makes it very clear that experience is of the utmost importance, since her study follwed a student who steadily improved her reading skills over a span of four years at a university.

Reflection on Bartholomae's Inventing the University

Honestly, the idea of Bartholomae reading and discussing my creativity essay is a little daunting. I could just see him saying, "Here is a prime example of a basic writer who uses commonplaces." It's difficult to say which of the sample essays mine most corresponds to because it's not as basic as the "White Shoes" essay, but my essay is also not as analytical as the "successful" music essay. It's somewhere inbetween. Perhaps my essay didn't have as much of an academic tone because I didn't think of my audience as a scholarly, powerful persona. In fact, I didn't really think of my audience at all.

I did explore the idea of creativity on an analytical level, but I could have dug deeper into the "why" of things. For example, I wrote that creativity is inspired by extreme emotion. I described an artist who is experiencing anguish as someone who would probably have the most creative ideas for making an intricate and abstract painting. What I didn't do, however, is discuss why people are creative when they're emotional. I don't really know why people are like that, but I could have at least tried to explore that "muddier" idea as though I was an expert on human emotion. On top of that, I could have thrown in some big words like the ones you have to memorize to get a high score on the GRE. Then, Bartholomae would have liked my essay.

I initially was a little perturbed by Bartholomae's Inventing the University, but after the discussions we've had, I'm beginning to have more of an appreciation for his ideas. He sounds a little offensive to the student reader at times, which is probably because he wrote Inventing the University to an audience of scholars rather than students. Although I'm not inspired to start writing in the discourse of "power and finesse" after reading his essay, I will take some points to heart such as "forming something to say out of what has been said and out of what [I] have been saying."