I'm not sure if Reiff and Bawarshi's piece helped me understand the complexities of genre more, but it certainly inspired me to consider my own transition from high school to college writing classes. As an intimidated little 18 year old, how did I transfer my knowledge and experience with genres to a new wide world of academia?
I can't really pinpoint what "discursive resources" I brought with me to my first year writing courses, mostly because I didn't have first year writing courses... I never took English 101 or 102 because of my AP English exam score. AP English Literature was the only advanced placement class I bothered getting involved with in high school, and it ended up being super valuable. I had an amazing teacher who I'm actually still friends with to this day. (Shout-out to Paula Uriarte at Capital High!) My experience with writing in high school (at least junior and senior year) was similar to the students' described on page 322:
Students remarked on high school classes that "covered a little of everything"; senior English classes that exposed them to "different writing styles and different areas of writing"; or a comfort level established due to "writing several papers in high school programs."
I'm not sure if I would categorize myself that year as a "boundary crosser" or a "boundary guarder." In some ways I think I was more of a guarder, as this article defines it, in large part due to my "confidence level" (325). I knew the conventions of a decent amount of written, oral, and digital genres before I even stepped foot on campus. I felt like I was a really good writer - at least, better at writing than everything else. In a lot of ways, though, I was clearly inexperienced.
Further substantiating the distinction we draw between boundary guarders and crossers, their findings revealed that even though students confidently identified a range of genres and exhibited confidence in their incoming writing skills (taking an "expert" rather than "novice" stance), this confidence did not necessarily translate to genre performance. (331).
Some of the first writing courses I took here were creative writing, which I was already experienced in. I took two creative writing classes in high school, both from the same teacher I took AP English from, and I even helped form the creative writing club there. However, I started really struggling when I had to take more literature classes here. Despite my experience in high school, I wasn't that confident writing literary analysis papers. I knew what they had to look like, but could I produce a good one? Rarely.
Of course this all depended on the subject matter of the writing class and how invested I was in everything, but at this point in my education I found myself shifting more to the boundary crossing point of view. I realized I was more of a novice than I thought, so I had to adjust accordingly.
Your apparent struggle doing literary analysis jumps out here for me, in part because it seems like your AP Lit preparation provided the prior knowledge that would make that kind of writing easier, not harder? What was the disconnect? Your major "boundary crossing" experience in this class was the re-genre. Did the reading illuminate that experience in any way?
ReplyDeleteI relate a lot to your struggle of defining yourself as a boundary guarder or crosser; having the perception that writing is your strongest talent can lead to the dilemma of does that mean I am great at writing what is expected of me and conforming to what was established as convention before I got here, or does that mean I can write in the style i feel and still communicate effectively? Deep questions, man.
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