A niche in a new community

The desire to fit in is almost an innate trait in human nature. It is the need to find a niche that is your own yet integrated within the larger community.  It starts in childhood, is exaggerated in the teenage years, and becomes nearly life-consuming in the transition to college.  When first starting college, students are immersed in a different culture, an academic world.  The rules are not the same as high school and the sooner this is discovered, the better.  This brings the concept of adapting to a new community,yet again finding your place.  This time the roles and the identities may not be as clearly defined or simple as in high school.  The rules are no longer clear-cut, and this is not just referring to curfew.  Ideas, concepts, and peers become broader and often more abstract.  This phenomenon be enlightening, frightening, or often a little of both.

Bartholomae captures this process of adapting to a new community in his writing "Inventing the University." He  outlines the struggles that first-year writers face as they attempt to fit  the academic discourse when writing. Since they may not feel ready to be included in this community and lack the experience they feel is necessary to fit in, students will alter their writing to fit what they feel is appropriate for the context in which they are writing.  It is a process of determining how to use different voices for different roles and allow each to develop.  This may require elimination of the "clean" shallow writing which may be safe but does not fit the ultimate discourse of academia.

He also discusses the struggle of writers to create truly original material.  When so much has already been said, the "off-stage" voices of previous writing and text mars the originality of most writing.  I think that this is why science fields are so intriguing to me.  After you spend time learning to do science and think science by studying what has already been done, lies an open frontier.  New discoveries retain originality and can be reported without overtones of other voices.  This opportunity for invention is why I am pursuing science.

However,  Bartholomae's idea that students must engage in "artificial work" before truly being integrated into the academic community holds for science as well.  Students must be subject to hours of "knowledge telling" before reaching the next level.  I wish this process could somewhat be altered to focus toward making larger connections between concepts.  Breaking through the glass ceiling between classroom and the field would be revolutionary to education and student knowledge.

Of course, this would involve overhauling our entire education system.

But it is a thought.

An intriguing thought.