I recently read an article by Theresa MacPhail called The Confidence Gap in Academic Writing in which she points out a trend that she’s noticed among the graduate students that she advises. As a writing workshop instructor, it’s her job to advise all of her graduate students to overcome the obstacles that they encounter while writing their masters theses or dissertations, but she noticed that her women students kept coming up against a very specific obstacle that the men she advised rarely fought against. She found that women at that stage in their academic journey/writing career often were severely lacking in confidence, something that almost always showed up in their writing.
MacPhail offered four different tips in order to ward against this lack of confidence in your own writing, and the first two – make sure you’re not using words that signal you’re unsure, and not to hide behind the words of others regardless of how awesome they are, I found were extremely prevalent in my own writing, especially at the beginning of my college writing career. Take the essay I wrote first semester of freshmen year entitled Jon Krakauer: Reliable Narrator? Comparative Essay for example. 708 of the 2354 words in that essay were quoted. Roughly a third of my essay was Jon Krakauer’s words. Here is an example of a paragraph that does just that: |
“Krakauer makes this assumption through examining his own life. He was told by family members that as a youth he was “willful, self-absorbed, intermittently reckless, moody” (134). At that age “if something captured [Krakauer’s] undisciplined imagination, [he] pursued it with a zeal bordering on obsession” (134). Passion, Krakauer argues is normal for men of that age. He writes:
It is easy, when you are young, to believe that what you desire is no less than what you deserve, to assume that if you want something badly enough, it is your God-given right to have it. When I decided to go to Alaska that April, like Chris McCandless I was a raw youth who mistook passion for insight and acted according to an obscure, gap-ridden logic (155). It is this ‘gap-ridden logic’ that Krakauer believes greatly influenced McCandless’s journey. There is evidence to support that this was the case. As a child, Walt told Krakauer, McCandless was fearless: “He didn’t think the odds applied to him. We were always trying to pull him back from the edge” (109). Walt also comments that McCandless was “supremely overconfident” and whenever he tried to talk McCandless out of something, “He’d just nod politely and then do exactly what he wanted” (118-119). In the aspect of age, the characteristics of a restless man of twenty and those of Chris McCandless are very similar.” (Krakauer a reliable narrator?) |
I got a good grade on the paper, and thought highly enough of it at the time to also submit it as a writing sample for my application to become a Sweetland peer tutor, but looking at it three and a half years later the overreliance on Krakauer’s words reads as the confidence gap that MacPhail reveals is detrimental to academic writing. To understand the discrepancy between my grade and the lack of confidence my writing itself appears to display it becomes clear that at least in a first year writing course, a reliance on quotes is not actually a recipe for disaster.
In fact, English as a discipline requires, to a certain extent, a very close relationship between text and thought because the book we are reading/discussing is usually the only primary source, and sometimes only source we are permitted to use in a paper. In addition on every syllabus at this university is a very clear and specific definition of plagiarism, placing importance on attributing ideas and specific language to the person/people who wrote the texts we are analyzing. But we were also asked to create our own argument, to say something new using a finite amount of resources. Such parameters allow for and even celebrate a paper that 1/3 of the material doesn’t actually belong to the author. And because it did, I relied on these quotes. The process for every paper was to go through each book, collect all possible quotes that were relevant, form connections, use the language of the quotes to formulate my argument, string quotes together in order to lead readers through my line of thinking. Rather than making an explicit argument I making the quotes do the work for me. This worked for my English classes because I was trying to illuminate an angle of an author, or why an authorial choice was significant. But because I placed so much value on other voices and evaluating other voices, without that pool of evidence to sort through, without quotes to fall back on, I had a hard time determining my opinions outside of an English classroom. This phenomenon is demonstrated in a reflective exercise I did in the end of March my sophomore year at a meeting/first taste of the New England Literature Program (NELP)[1]. We had met in the arb, sectioned off into groups and then were told to journal (by hand as we would during the actual program) our thoughts. The first words I wrote were: |
“It smells good. Which sounds weird, but there’s something really wonderful about being out in nature and really just getting a moment to sit, relax and take in my environment. It’s tough to do when on campus, running from class to class, trying to get work done, trying to make Sophie happy and hang out with Jamie as much as possible without disrupting the social order.” (NELP Journal 1)
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I begin with a statement of opinion, but immediately qualify it with “which sounds weird,” which MacPhail would say signals that I’m unsure of the declarative sentence “It smells good.” It’s a benign sentence, but I find the need to dismiss it and then explain why I felt the need to say “It smells good.” The obstacles I site as stopping me from experiencing the wonder of being out in nature are external – classes, Sophie, Jamie, much like the quotes that I would uses as evidence in an English paper. And in this passage I’ve even established stakes: “disrupting the social order.”
During this time in my life I was also asking big questions about identity. Unlike the works I was examining in my English classes, with quotes I could detract and analyze I couldn’t determine a clear sense of self and I was desperately searching for one. Once at NELP, I found myself in a peculiar place that was both oddly similar to an English classroom (we were reading and analyzing New England texts) and completely different because we were expected to make sense of our experiences both in the world and in relation to the books, only one of which I was comfortable doing. This resulted in disconnect between the academic sections and the reflective sections of my journal. A more traditional English response looking like this: |
“On page 9 there is a quote “it is this…that defines a shaman: the ability to readily slip out of the perpetual boundaries that demarcate his or her particular culture – boundaries reinforced by social customs, taboos, and most importantly, the common speech or language – in order to make contact with and learn from, the other powers in the land.” This is what the whole no technology at NELP is all about. In my History of the Book class we talked about how technology restructures consciousness and I also think the opposite is true. If we remove technology and get back to the basics – our consciousness will shift as well. I’m excited for that shift.” (NELP Journal 1)
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Responding to others words and putting them into a context had become my bread and butter. But when I’m commenting on my experience, just like the quote in the arb I’m quick to dismiss my opinions or initial writing impulses.
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“I was counting down the minutes until we would reach dry (?) land again (I don’t know why I’m referring to camp as though we were on water, which I would have much preferred)” (NELP Journal 1)
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This uncertainty was present almost every time I stated a specific opinion. I also use language such as “maybe I’m reading too much into this;” “I’m sure my questions aren’t unique;” “I can’t say I know enough about New England to pretend to have any authority on “New Englandness” (NELP Journal 1) etc. All of these disclaimers function as an active dismissal of my argument before I even posited my argument. I was conveniently letting myself off the hook.
In addition to the argument based dismissals, I was using the same language to quantify my abilities, specifically when comparing myself to other people. In the journal entry in the arb before NELP I write: |
“Also I really like Madeline’s hair. There is no way I would ever be able to pull that off, but she kills it. She also seems like the kind of person who I would love to be really close with but will never really happen because she’s so confident and self-assured and while I know a lot about myself, I’m not quite confident in that role yet.” (NELP journal 1)
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And later, while at NELP:
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“I’m not sure how to feel about him. He writes brilliant things and speaks incredibly eloquently, which I really respect. It’s not something I can do and yet I don’t feel like I can have a real conversation with him. [I’d be worried] that my ideas wouldn’t be nearly as coherent as his and that automatically makes his thoughts more valid than mine.” (NELP journal 1)
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At the mid-point of NELP my journal group leader read though my journal and wrote sticky-notes questioning this phenomenon in my writing. For example, for the entry above she drew an arrow pointing at my sentence “It’s not something I can do” and wrote: “Why do you say this like it’s fact?” In the conference about my journal Becky called me out on such things and told me explicitly that I had to quit with the disclaimers and that I should focus on taking up space and doing things that I was afraid of doing like making art in my journal and trying other genres of writing.
After the conference I immediately focused on erasing all disclaimers from my writing. But I also actively worked on taking up space and taking risks. These actions become ever present in NELP Journals 2-4. As my sense of conviction rings stronger I began to build a presence. After the graduation ceremony of throwing rocks into Lake Winnipesauke I wrote: |
“Everyone has a different throw, a different style but we all put ourselves in that lake tonight. And the clouds lay atop the trees, the mountains, mountains of their own and it was beautiful. So beautiful.” (NELP journal 4)
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NELP was just the launching pad for me – the largest moment of change. Becky’s feedback provided me with a new way to view myself and my writing and the next two years I explored taking risks specifically through my choice of classes/assignments. My first semester back from NELP (first semester junior year) I decided to try creative writing, and the semester after that, I took another step into what made me uncomfortable: a class called Ethnic Studies Inflected Creative Writing. A creative writing class focused on writing about identity. I was taking risks in the situations I put myself in, but when it came to actually write in such classes I found myself drawn to imitation. I felt connected to Toni Morison’s Paradise and did my best work writing creatively from the perspective of an established character. I was proud of this work, but again, I was hiding behind the words of others. One step forward and two steps back, but at least the steps are deliberate.
I haven’t closed the confidence gap in my writing yet, but I think I’m getting closer. In addition to the creative writing classes I took my junior year, I went on a writing retreat on scholarship the summer of junior year trying to immerse myself in an environment of writers. And my senior year I decided to venture into the world of art by taking a class at the art school called Color for non-majors last semester and this semester I’m working through a Graphic design for non-majors class. It’s a step. My capstone project is a gesture of the same sort – I want to study and do. I want to theorize and craft and bringing the craft typography, something I have always loved but for the longest time didn't believe I could create, together with the close reading skills that I have developed as an English major is my way of continue to chip away at the confidence gap. It’s my way to prove to myself and the world that I have something interesting, smart, and valuable to say. [1] NELP is a Thoreau inspired literature program where 40 undergrad students and 13 instructors leave Ann Arbor, and drive to New Hampshire to live and learn cooperatively for seven weeks without technology of any kind. |