09/20/08 Greenwich Blogline

Mamas, don't let your sons/daughters become harmed by freshman writing professors



By Jane Genova



Writing is a learned skill, and not a easy one to acquire. We're just owning up to the reality vs. berating students who aren't making sufficient progress mastering this complex communications system. Even we kids who grew up to make our profession and living primarily from writing frequently struggled early in te game. That's why those freshman writing professors become part of our cellular memory. Their red-pencil marks, praise, and recommendations for revision are there forever. Forty-five years later that experience frames both my enjoyment of successes and despair over stale prose. I found out why beginning in May 2006....


... has been fueling that. I'm driven to continue to move along this road less traveled, not to own an McMansion in Greenwich, Connecticut. In fact, after five months of therapy with West Hartford, CT's Amy Karnilowicz [family.therapist@comcast.net, ...



...Fortunately, recent research on neuroplasticity indicates that there's an exit strategy from that past trauma. We can retrain our neural paths. We can hang around healthier human beings. We can engage in new kinds of thoughts and behavior. Dan Goleman writes a lot of popular stuff on that. For those of you who welcome heavier fare there's "Mirroring People" by Marco Iacoboni. He's one of the Italian researchers who discovered evidence that we can change our supposed hardwiring.


Another way to deal with this potentially traumatic situation is to prevent it. Parents can alert their sons and daughters about how much impact writing professors could have. If those profs seem unduly critical or abusive, hey, go to the dean. Learning writing is like learning to drive. It demands a patient, confident soul who believes in us.



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