I’ve had some recent bouts of FOMO over the last month, seeing college students begin their fall courses. I graduted a few years ago with my bachelors in English and Education and fully enjoyed my time in school. One of the things I loved the most was writing essays and doing research projects. You might be able to tell that from how many of my articles are structured, with hyperlinks and sources backing up my claims. While I don’t miss the busy class weeks that were also burdened with working 45+ hours a week between two jobs, I really truly do miss the art of academic writing.
Working on this blog for the last 16 months or so has really helped with this. I enjoy writing. I enjoy sharing my thoughts. And I enjoy structuring something that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. I get a lot of satasfaction from a piece being written well, and try to do that for you guys here. I’m not just blogging, but I’m composing as well.
That sounds a little pretentious, but it’s true. I try to find meaning in the things that I say because I think my thoughts deserve to be shared and understood. We all deserve that! For some, they manage this through personal expression, or through their art, or even just verbally. I think I really thrive in academic writing.
I’m not the only one. Research has been done that reports on the different ways that people enjoy writing. When the pressures of deadlines and grades are taken out of the equation, people enjoy the act of writing for a myriad of reasons. Some enjoy the atmosphere that they create in, be it a coffee shop or a library. They like being surrounded by other individuals who are working as they are. Some, like me, enjoy the process of a paper coming together. How it starts as scattered thoughts and becomes something concrete. For others, they like their creativity and curiosity being sated by the research. Enjoyment is just one of the reasons I miss academic writing (Janke et al).
I also know that academic writing is useful for my mind. Rarely do I feel smarter than when I’ve finsihed something that took a lot of brain power. The brain is a muscle, and it needs to be worked. I am guilty of spending hours scrolling Instagram Reels, and while I understand that a slop break is sometimes great for relaxing, I know I also need the exercise. I read a lot of books, which helps a ton, but writing is one of the best ways to build the brain. It uses lots of parts of the brain, for general thinking, as well as specific areas for things like grammar and spelling. Rereading and editing also works different areas. It’s important to keep our minds healthy and strong, even when we’re out of school. We don’t stop needing to think once we graduate (Beebout).
I also know that I become a better researcher when I write. Research is so incredibly important in the modern era. When we are constaltly bombarded by opinions, news, and misinformation, the skills we learn when we research are paramount. We need to check our sources, understand perspectives and goals, and remember that rhetoric triangle we studied but probably didn’t care too much about in school. I like researching because I learn while I do it. Call me crazy, but I like when my opinions change, because it means I’m learning. I can’t tell you how many times I researched a topic, only to discover my personal stances changing. Learning to be wrong (or learning to change at all) is an underrated skill. I think it’s something we all need to work on, and gathering our thoughts in an academic matter (even if it isn’t via an essay) is a great way to do this (Beebout).
Practicing writing on my own also helps me a lot for my career. Working with students means I need to stay familiar with what they do in their classes. If I forgot everything I ever learned about essay writing, I’d be a pretty poor teacher. But when I structure a paragraph, read and article, or formulate my thoughts on a book, I keep my skills sharp for helping them do the same. Teacher examples are essential to student understanding. I’ll never be done writing and learning, even if the reason is different than what it was when I was in school.
I miss academic writing for another reason. I am so tired of seeing AI being used every where I go. I hate not knowing if art pieces are generated or not. I’m sick of AI logos and advertisements. And I am so tired of being able to tell when captions, posts, articles, and student assignments are made with AI. I could rant for hours about all of the issues I see. And maybe I will soon. But for now, suffice it to say that I miss seeing well thought out human creativity in the wild. I want to see typos. I want to see imperfections. And I want to see the humanity in the world. When doing my students teaching, I had to explain to my students that if I cared about what Chat GPT thought about Of Mice and Men, I would have asked it myself. We are so worried about being correct and efficient that we are losing our ability to be thoughtful and connected to the world around us. Academic writing is just a small part of it, but it’s one that I personally miss dearly.
I think more people should adopt writing as a hobby. Writing doesn’t need to be all essays and novels. It can be purely for fun, or to learn something. With my cousins, we would occassionally do something I called ‘Secret Ranta’, where we gave someone a random topic to rant about. They would have time to gather their thoughts and send a message ranting about their topic, with as much evidence or talking points as possible. Most of the time, it was over something silly, but it was a fun way to share our thoughts on a new topic and have them be seen by someone. And just like some friend groups do PowerPoint nights, I think essay/speech nights could be fun. There’s nothing like taking center stage and forcing your friends to listen to you talk about something without interruption. Writing is more that just academic, it can also be fun.
I hope this mini-essay of sorts resonated in some part with you. I am a passionate advoctae for the importance of writing. I don’t think that we all need to be good at it, but I do think we all need to know how to do it. It follows us wherever we go. Being able to do research, understand context clues while reading, and making sure that our thoughts are able to be understood are all important skills, no matter our profession. And when we enjoy our topic or the presentation of it, that’s even better. I wish more people understood this. I wish we lived in a world less dependant on AI. And I wish I was back in a classroom, getting assigned papers on all manner of subjects. But for now, I’ll be content with what I have before me, and I’ll continue to express my thoughts and try to better understand the world around me. I hope you all will do the same.
Beebout, Kayla. “The True Importance of Academic Essays.” Purdue University Global Academic Success Center, 21 Nov. 2025, purdueglobalwriting.center/2025/11/21/the-true-importance-of-academic-essays/.
Janke, Kristin K et al. “A Journey to Understand Enjoyment in Academic Writing.” Innovations in pharmacy vol. 9,3 1-7. 24 Oct. 2018, doi:10.24926/iip.v9i3.1526
This content was written and created by a human, without the use of any artificial intelligence tools. The authors do not authorize this article’s usage in training AI tools. We proudly support the original works of creators and individuals over technology that steals and manipulates original content without consent of creators.
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