How to Block Students from Doing Good Academic Writing

Mario Rinvolucri, UK, interviews Akvilina Ljungborg, Sweden

Mario Rinvolucri interviews Akvilina Ljungborg about her writing travails with her University department in Sweden. To give her the freedom of anonymity we have re-named her Akvilina Ljungborg, or Akvilina Heathercastle. At the time of the interview she was coming to the end of her university studies. All this took place some 15 years ago.

Mario: The other day you told me you didn’t find it easy to write and you said it went back to the time when you were at University. I was quite intrigued. Can you tell me something about that?

Akvilina: Yeah, basically, it was the time when I had to write that essay, because, well, everything just went too fast for me. It was new for me to have to write that kind of essay.....I’d never written an essay of that magnitude before......

Mario: How long was the paper supposed to be... and what was the topic?

Akvilina: It was supposed to be at least twenty five pages long and in the area of English Literature. It was meant to be written in a formal style. The whole thing went very quickly though I had plenty of time to prepare, you always do, I was not clear what it was supposed to look like. There was never a proper explanation and we were never gi ven an example of what the final result was supposed to be. So I went “ Ok, I’m going to write this essay about this topic”, while feeling totally at sea.

[ at this point Akvilina showed signs of being upset and her tears carried the message of what she was putting across yet more powerfully than her words.]

Akvilina: I wrote about ......I called it MONEY AND CORRUPTION IN DICKENS and I mostly discussed Oliver Twist and Great Expectations and how money corrupts people. I had the ideas figured out but I wasn’t clear about what it should look like......the level of it........that wasn’t clear to me. I had a tutor and we discussed my essay and I thought “ I’ve written what I was supposed to write” and well, I thought “ this is what I have to say on this topic.”

Mario: ...Yeah......

Akvilina: And then I realised they wanted a lot more, a lot more , a lot more and I didn’t......

Mario: They..... who were “they”?

Akvilina: One was my tutor and the other one was going to assess my essay..... My tutor was quite happy with my ideas but not the assessor. I realised that a lot more was expected of me and this gave me writer’s block. I didn’t know how and where to elaborate ‘cos I’d said what I had in mind to say.

Mario: Um.....could you explain a bit more what you mean by “writer’s block”?

Akvilina: Like I said before....I didn’t have anything else to say so I had no clue how to tackle the problem and it just grew and grew and grew and I sat there in my apartment staring at the wall ...just totally blank. [ Akvilina sobs....] Went on like this for months.

Mario: Months? My God!

Akvilina: So I failed to hand the essay in on time and lost the right to any more tuition. I couldn’t go and see a tutor. I was on my own and this didn’t help at all. In the end I did hand something in to the assessor person. When I went back to get my essay and see what she thought about it, she simply said: “ You’re wasting my time giving me this....” Well, that didn’t do much to boost my confidence, really. I thought that my tutor hadn’t said it was that bad.... OK, it’s not a finished essay but it wasn’t a waste of time. So that essay hovered over me like a black cloud all summer....it just ruined my entire summer. I had to get down to it. I managed to change a few things and I handed it in again. When she returned it to me it was with a deep sigh and instead of jotting things in the text, like: “change this”...., “or explain this more.....”, like I would have wanted her to, she had just crossed things out and replaced them with what I was supposed to write instead.

Mario: You mean she wrote in her text in on top of yours.....?

Akvilina: yeah, just that....... and I inserted her alterations, handed the thing back in and I passed. I got the pages back and looked at them, they were not my essay, I didn’t recognise the writing. Maybe you can see why I’m a bit distressed about writing. Whenever I try to write I don’t feel it’s good enough.

Mario: Have you tried since?

Akvilina: Yes, of course I have, of course I have! I was supposed to write my master’s dissertation. I have started the research, collected the material, I know what to write about.....but I just can’t..........

Mario: So , in other words she is blocking you from writing your final dissertation?

Akvilina: Yeah, yes.

Mario: For you, getting it down on the page is a nightmare! It is the same people in the department? So you’ll have to face the same people, the same gate-keepers?

Akvilina: Yes, I will and what’s more the dissertation is more demanding since I have to write it from the point of view of a literary theory. I have to do that. The subject I’m writing about .........I was going to write about HAPPINESS AND FEAR IN DYSTOPIAN 20TH CENTURY LITERATURE. I was going to concentrate on Brave New World and 1984. Then I was going to write about society and what it does to people. The literary theory that is closest to writing about society is the Marxist one. However I don’t agree with everything that Marxist literary theory says and I don’t fully agree with any of the other literary theories. Really I feel great resistance to just adopting something and writing though those eyes........

Mario: Putting your own things in......

Akvilina:.....No, it just builds up the pressure.

Mario: What would it take for you to be able to write happily?

Akvilina: Maybe if I could convince myself it was really worthwhile.

Mario: Has there ever been a time when you wrote something you really liked?

Akvilina: I wrote a lot of stories, stuff, but that’s just childish.

Mario: Can you remember the feeling you had then?

Akvilina: Yuh.

Mario: How was that feeling?

Akvilina: When you just wrote and wrote and wrote and it never seemed to end.

Mario: How about the text of this interview? What do you feel about it?

Akvilina: That’s just the thing: I wouldn’t think it was good enough.

Mario: Uhuh......” good enough” is a kind of hanging comparative.......good enough for what?

Akvilina: I don’t know.... It’s almost like maybe I’m afraid to be judged. What will people think? People I look up to, people who know more.

Mario: To my mind this is an important interview, first because you have expressed a little of your personal pain and emotion, but secondly because the text shows just how pedagogically hopeless some lecturers are within their University framework.

Akvilina: The Swedish higher education system is harsh as your grant money depends on how well you do academically. The year is divided into two semesters with twenty points each, forty in total. You have to get 75%, or 30 points over the year, or your grant money is stopped, and this also means you cannot continue with your studies. It really builds up the pressure: I know I have to pass the exam or it’s back to McDonalds.

Mario: Pressure, pressure, pressure . What you have said about your time at university to me feels quite scarey. Thank you, Akvilina, for your courage in talking to me and to the readers of HUMANISING LANGUAGE TEACHING in Scandinavia, in Europe and around the world. My guess is that some HLT readers may have experienced similar pain at University. If you have it would be good to hear from you.

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