“There’s no such thing as a natural-born good writer or bad writer. I think that’s the more important part: that there’s no such thing as someone who’s just a bad writer. And you know, I asked my students at the beginning of the semester for a reflection: do they consider themselves a good writer? What educational experience have they had with writing? And so many students have these really traumatic experiences or someone told them they were a bad writer, and so they continue to believe that they just don’t have access to the skill; that it’s a magical ability that some of us have and some of us don’t. So, I talked to them about that a few times to kind of help them unlearn that, so they can encourage themselves to improve their writing and become to see themselves as good writers.”
Psyche Ready is an Instructor in the English Department.