To understand this article better please read "Differences Between Academic and Business Writing

What points are most difficult for new students?

I believe that there are three points that will be the most difficult to adapt to for new students and two for myself. I will list these points in order of appearance in the article Differences Between Academic and Business Writing.

Prompt

The first is Prompt which is the practice of writing what is given versus creating what needs to be written. I believe this will be one of the most difficult points to adapt for new students as well as myself because students have been trained not to go outside of the box. I remember my first week in college fresh from high school.

For 18 years my classmates and I, no matter the location from which we came, were required to carry a hall pass to go to the bathroom. We were scared into submission with the threat of detention and interrogation. Many teachers did not allow us to go or limited us to a certain amount of trips or minutes we could take to make the trip. Going to the bathroom was a big deal.

Then college happened and teachers were mad at us for interrupting them to ask to go to the bathroom, raising our hand, or even asking if there was a pass. In every class I took that first semester, someone asked to go to the bathroom and the teachers ranted. A person’s entire education is filled with experiences just like this. Not everyone is a rebel and that is why rebels are so enticing.

The people who follow the rules, whether it is for the pleasure and pride of doing well or simply to keep the peace, have been taught to obey authority assignment after assignment, day after day, year after year. A list of qualifications is set before us. Did we obey it to the t? A+. Did we deviate a little? B+. The more we deviate and think for ourselves the lower our score. Now we are faced with the unknown.

In the professional world, the only bullet points on our list of qualifications are to create your own qualifications, follow those, and do it well. The problem is the only thing we haven’t learned in school is how to make the list of qualifications. How do you graduate as a sheep and work as a wolf?

Design

The second is Design which is the practice of making a document aesthetically pleasing and appropriate to its audience. This is not something I will personally have trouble with as I had a class teaching this last term. However, it took the entire two months to fully grasp what was being asked of me.

At first, my writing was as usual. Bulky, boring, monotonous. Halfway through my writing was decorated with clipart and titles. By the end, I used full-resolution images, tactful font pairings, editing, chunking, and layering.

But this did not come naturally to me and it is a skill I am still working on. I would have never added this aesthetic touch to my professional writing if I had not taken this class and I fear anyone who does not take a class similar to this would not instinctually do this either.

Document Style

The third is Document Style which is the practice of citing verses boiler plating and paraphrasing. Going back to the idea of students going through training to be sheep in a world that runs with wolves, students are burned with the branding iron of plagiarism. A constant reminder that plagiarism will get you expelled is held over our heads. Citations, References, Bibliographies, APA, MLA, Chicago, and so much more are thrust into every assignment and response hand in hand with a threat of punishment unless perfectly encrusted into the body of our paper.

Yet in news and other resources of professional articles people are paraphrasing and authors of the articles themselves go unlisted and even undated. Having made hundreds of pages of citations I know the fear these unlisted pieces of information cause. Will I get in trouble because I couldn’t find this gem of information? A treasure hunt for resources as many people use different formats and placements.

And why are we trained to have a rush of adrenaline every time we gather information for a piece of our own when companies own the papers and don’t even contribute their own employees let alone embed citations into their articles? This is definitely going to be an adjustment for new students as well as myself.