Ehh, I can do it tomorrow

In a column written by Stanley Fish titled "what should colleges teach, part 3", Professor fish expands upon the idea of sentence structure being the main problem and most significant thing a college student should focus on. I completely agree that sentence structure is hugely important, but I think that there is another issue that plagues college writers even worse than that. That problem being poor time management. When asked to write about what I think is most important to succeed in college writing, my mind instantly went to time management. Mostly because time management is something I struggle with really badly. But through my research, I learned the true importance of time management.

Explaining the process of writing 

For my research I made a survey, observed a tutoring session and interviewed a local English professor. Through all my research and interviews, i was able to realize that good time management allows for students to have time for the process of writing.  The process of writing can be broken down into these three steps: brainstorming, drafting and revising the final product. When a student has poor time management and procrastinates on their writing assignments, they can miss out or have to rush these crucial steps to writing.
 

waiting until last minute

The first process of writing is brainstorming. I consider this to be almost the most important part of the writing process. Brain storming is really when you form the whole direction you want to take your writing. You can actually form the majority of your paper in your head and let your ideas become clearer before you ever start writing. Imagine not giving yourself enough time for this process. We've all been there, two hours before a paper is due slamming or fingers on the keys in hopes to form something at least mediocre or passable. Without being able to form ideas and a solid direction for a writing assignment, you are forced to pick one idea and hope for the best. This can lead to writing that lacks direction and has no flow.

poor grades due to lack of time management 

   The last two steps of the writing process are drafting and revising. Drafting is essential to ironing out parts of your draft you might be unclear or fuzzy about. It allows for you to approach certain areas differently until you get it right. If you skip the drafting process you are essentially turning in a rough draft as your final paper. Which is never a good idea, and will most likely result in a very low grade on the assignment. Revising is like the final details and tweaks for your assignment. This can include finding a spelling mistake or finding an area that needs to be re worded. This process also allows for peer review, where others can read your work and help you catch mistakes that you may have missed. It would be detrimental for a student to miss out on this process.

I think where me and Stanley Fish differ is he chooses to look at the actual writing itself and how to create fundamentally sound sentence structure. I chose to look at the discipline and responsibility side of writing. I think that especially with new college students, having the freedom of being in college makes it difficult at times to have good time management and stay up on your assignments. It takes a lot of personal discipline to fight through the stress and distractions and make time for the process of writing. I believe that students that have good discipline with their time management succeed the most in college writing.