Letter to a Freshman

Vanessa Aguila

Stephanie Arechiga

Kaylin White

Professor Bonnie Garcia

Letter to a Freshman

Hey! It's your first day in college, you step onto this big college campus which is where you will spend another four years or so and begin to build your future. You look down at your class schedule and see English 1301, uh oh. I bet you are thinking that you’re unprepared to write a college level essay. You might feel as if all those twelve years of elementary, middle school, and high school English have completely gone down the drain. Trust me, when you sit down that's when you will know for sure that you are definitely unprepared to write a college level essay. Do not worry, you are among many first year college students who are unprepared to write their first college-level essay, many of them run into the struggles of writer’s block and lack of confidence. You suddenly start over thinking about how perfect the essay should be and what will the professor think about it. This is where I am going to tell you that, it is not your fault!

During my first college English course, I realized that I was unprepared to write my first college essay, and wondered if I was the only one with the fear of writing the essay. The majority of the first year college students, like me, tend to overwhelm themselves with the thought of perfectionism. Unfortunately, this is when first year college students find the need to prepare themselves for courses that require advanced writing skills. Now, I will give you a personal experience in which I came about with the conclusion that some of these struggles are faced by many other people and how they were able to overcome these struggles.

One day as I started to look back at all of the essays I have written in high school so effortlessly, I wondered why I was so terrified back when I wrote my first college essay. I wanted to know if there were any experts out there who understood the reasons these fears overcome the writing ability of first year composition students all over. As I started my search for some clarity I knew that I had to know exactly what I was looking for. I decided that I was looking to find out “What are some of the struggles that FYC students face while they write their first college essay?”

I knew that if I was going to look for information about the problems that all college students face as they enter a university. I stumbled across an idea that “Some of the first year college students enter college well-prepared for the academic and social challenges that await them; others arrive ill-suited to meet the expectations of post-secondary education. Most will survive their first-year at college and go on to graduate, but all too many will drop out before the freshman year is over”(Kidwell 253). I agree with this theory that some students arrive “ill-suited”(Kidwell 253). I see when my peers or myself, stress before class because we feel unprepared to take on our first english course. I often see how professors tend to try and implement different activities in which we can express ourselves and gain confidence in our English classroom the first days of school.

There I was then feeling like I needed more information about myths students have about college to be able to answer my question, so I read an article about common myths students have about reducing fear caused by common myths. Simard claimed, “We must begin with an approach that encourages an active awareness of the personal and individual nature of writing, and to do this, we must first dispel the preconception that recently have become institutionalized.” (Simard 101). After reading what this expert had to say, I came to the conclusion that we must find solutions that may help the various different types of students in both college and high school. Simard also explained that having the students write complex assignments may lead to the students holding back when expressing themselves in their writing.

Despite my failed attempts at finding what I was looking for I found an some ideas about the fear of a first year college student when writing his first essay. Since anxiety could be a reason for these fears first year college students face, I found that, “Students are affected by what happened to them and that writing self-efficacy is influenced not only by the student’s own physiological and emotional reactions to a task, but also by past experience and verbal feedback from others. Writing self-efficacy is defined as the belief in one’s ability higher writing and this would contribute to better writing performance.” (Martinez 352). After hearing this I decided to find more information about why first year college students feared the criticism and the perfectionism of their first college english essay. This idea that focused on students who tend to feel anxious because they think professors expect too much which is due to past experiences from high school.

Then, hoping for answer I kept looking for the answer to my question so I looked over the ideas in an article titled “Innovative Writing Instruction: When It Happens “Across”: Writing as Transformative and Expansive”, and in this article the idea that by applying yourself and your own thoughts into your writing as a student is always useful, especially when you constantly practice it and continue to do it for other courses the anxiety will eventually go away. This was that “We should individually and collectively (re)commit ourselves to critical and transformative literacy teaching and research that begin with, include, and acknowledge the lived and literature experiences of students.” (Kinloch 95). Writing and self-expression goes a long way, it isn't just in a composition class that we can learn to express our own way of writing but all the other courses as well. The idea focuses mainly on how to develop that confidence to express ourselves. Even though Kinloch’s answer was almost perfect and so close to answering what I was looking for, I knew that I had to keep looking.

The only thing that I was missing was information about the idea that students should be taking more complex courses in high school in order to prepare for college academics. This idea helped me determine that “Determine which reading, writing, and communication skills students will need and triple our efforts in middle and high school to see that an acceptable level of competence is achieved.” (Ivey 97). This idea explains to me why some students find it harder and overwhelming to be in a first year composition course, when some haven't taken any of those previous complex courses to be prepared for complex writing.

With all of the other ideas I went over there was still something missing. None of the ideas that experts had to offer had any information about the first college and the fears that inexperienced first year composition students face while writing their first essay for a complex writing course. Not to mention, a lot of these ideas, came out long ago and are out of date, the way high schools taught are different than the way they do it now. This is what then led me to find my own answers and to start looking for the fears that first year composition students face.

With my question being left unanswered I decided that I would go around campus to ask students about some of the struggles other students may also run into during their first year. I wrote down all of the struggles I faced while writing my first essay. I then created a survey that was passed out 50 first year composition students, in hopes that I would be able to of find the answer to my question. The survey below is the survey that I passed out to the 50 students.

Here are the results, I had no idea that many students also face the same fears that I had to face. 80% of students faced writer’s block while writing their first essay, and I had no idea that so many students were faced with such a lack of confidence. This tool helped me to understand how many other students ran into the same issues I did as I wrote my first essay. This made me feel a little bit less insecure about the fears I had to deal with alone.

The survey that I handed out to fifty students helped me see actual numbers with real people who have gone through this situation. It helped me understand other students problems and how they were able to overcome them, this guided me to help find solutions in which I could help solve these problems. For instance, tutoring. Many students, especially fresh out of high school, tend to be too shy to ask for help in front of other FYC students, and tutoring helps them receive that one-to-one guidance they are looking for. Even though tutoring seems to be the most common way to solve almost any problem in school, it takes a lot for people to take time and assist to the tutoring sessions. Almost every professor offers these tutoring sessions or simply an appointment during their office hours to help the students receive

professional feedback. One of the students that gave the solution they used was to practice their writing, this stood out to me because I have never practiced my writing, to get better, I only wrote when I was assigned to and I did not think that practicing would help, but it helped one student who took the survey and it could possibly help many other students who are also scared of their first essay. There were a variety of different answers that we got from the fifty student who took the survey, from practicing to just having conversations with other good writers to get some writing tips. I personally also have problems with writer’s block but unlike the student above I find different ways to overcome writer’s block. Instead of practicing, I instead find something to take my mind off writing, if I sit there and continue to stress out about having to get something on the paper, nothing will get solved. So for me I go do something else, and then I find myself doing something irrelevant to writing and I get an idea, then I go sit at the computer and the words just flow out. My solution and the one of student I used as an example are two completely different answers, and this is where we have to understand that not all students face struggle the same way. It is important to find early on what works for you and what will help you overcome these struggles.

A second strategy that may help overcome these struggles would be to join a group in which you can make your voice be heard. Why? Well, as shown on the graph above, lack of confidence is a major struggle students go through. It is never too late to find ways in which your confidence may grow. Joining a sorority or even a club may help you grow as a person and help you speak about how you feel by gaining self-confidence. This will have a great impact in your writing, due to the fact that now you have joined a club in which you are constantly speaking about how much you're involved, it makes it easier to express yourself.

As first year college students we tend to overthink about how good our writing is going to be or could be. We over think and it disables us from writing what we actually feel or think. More so, I have come to the conclusion that we all have different problems when it comes to our form of writing but in the end we find our own ways to overcome these problems and fears. Although, we constantly grow as writers and we learn something new every day, we may learn how to write better, or even notice flaws that we did not see in our writing before. For a student who is struggling and can not find a way to get over their fears, it is important to be able to explore different solutions, just because something works so well for a friend does not mean it is going to work for you. Explore different ways to overcome this struggle that you are facing, and do not freak out if the first attempt to overcome it does not work.

Works Cited

Ivey, Gay. “Opening up the Conversation on Literacy, College, and Career”. Journal of

Adolescent & Adult Literacy 55.2 (2011): 96–99. Web...

Kidwell, Kirk S.. “Understanding the College First-year Experience”. The Clearing House 78.6

(2005): 253–255. Web…

Kinloch, Valerie. “Innovative Writing Instruction: When It Happens "across": Writing as

Transformative and Expansive”. The English Journal 100.5 (2011): 95–99. Web…

Martinez, Christy Teranishi, Ned Kock, and Jeffrey Cass. “Pain and Pleasure in Short Essay

Writing: Factors Predicting University Students' Writing Anxiety and Writing Self-efficacy”. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 54.5 (2011): 351–360. Web…

Simard, Rodney. “Reducing Fear and Resistance by Attacking the Myths”. College Teaching

33.3 (1985): 101–107. Web…