As my fellow college students might agree, keeping up with all of our literacies in this ever-evolving climate of writing in the modern classroom can be tiresome. Between formats such as MLA and APA along with the instructor’s own wants and preferences, balancing content with personal style can oftentimes seem impossible. Far easier would it be to simply default to cut-and-dry sentences that express the point and move on. Sure, it gets the job done. However, I’d argue that college is the best place for students to hone in on their writing abilities and find their personal voice in their academic work. Author Sister Molly Heine writes a piece entitled Find Your Style and Voice in which she gives students advice and encouragement on, well, finding their personal style and voice. She advises that while most classes will have you avoiding writing in the first person, it doesn’t mean that we have to lose our personal touch at the same time. Heine instead argues that for every paper that gets written, a piece of our personal voice gets injected regardless of how the paper itself is written. It’s impossible to fully silence ourselves when writing anything. Rather, the hard part is finding the right amount of our voice and style to place in any given assignment. Like learning how to get proficient with computers, and honing our browsing and typing abilities, most of our personal voice also gets developed outside the classroom. Things like texting and creating online posts or forums are what help students of the craft create their written voice. Students should be afraid to write a bit of themselves in their papers. It’s their voice that makes each and every piece unique and worth reading, after all.
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