Quit Being an Outsider, Write Like a Professional

All the comments is based on the video below.

This piece of dialogue happened in a pharmacy and we have no idea what is the relationship between them.

The little man seems to have several complains about referring to others' articles and is tired of citing and paraphrasing. The female on the other hand is correcting his attitude by answering each of his questions.

In my opinion, this video is very realistic. Students do have problems like this little young man. "Why do I have to use all these text in my paper?" "What a waste of time citing all the sources." "Paraphrasing is difficult because I have to think of words and grammar forms." When you see students struggling against their writing assignments, this kind of complains is very common and tarries inside their head only to make writing even more difficult.

It is not hard to see the reason for this situation. Those students who have difficulties writing their paper because they do not understand what they are writing for. In their mind, they still think it is an assignment which have to be accomplished. The only reader they expect is just the professor. After they handed in the paper, they will have nothing to do with it any more, like a pair of old shoes put back in the farthest corner in the attic.

These kind of students are writing for the professor, not all the others in the academic area, neither themselves. That is why I would refer this kind of students as an "Outsider". They are not ready for becoming a part of the academic area they are in. They do not want to absorb information by learning different materials and abstract links and variations among them. Neither do they want to develop and express their own point of view.

Why do we write? What are we exactly writing for? In the blog, we write to express your point of view, just like what I am doing now. Academic writing is all the same. We are writing because we want to present our idea in a way which can be shared and understood by others. Human intelligence is amazing. We have been using it to build our civilization for thousands of years. However, this splendid civilization is not achieved by any individual. We are strong because we have collective wisdom by sharing and handing down all the sparks of intelligence lighted in our mind.

If you still think it is hard to write a paper, if you still find yourself paraphrasing word by word, you do not get the meaning of writing. We cite materials not because we are avoiding plagiarism, but because we are processing information from our position.Getting involved, that is the way to becoming a professional.