The Importance of Writing

Look, you may never write a fiction story in your life. But you’re going to have to write something, sometime, even if it’s only a grocery list. For heaven’s sake, please put the effort into learning how to construct a sentence. It’s not that hard, and it is worth it. Not only will your honey not return from the store with mysterious items interpreted from your chicken scratching, but your coworkers/students/everyone around you will be much happier.

I don’t care if you are only interested in the “Pure Language of the Sciences, Mathematics” as a fellow student proclaimed yesterday. If you are dealing with a homework assignment that makes exactly no sense because it isn’t a sentence, you aren’t going to be happy. I’m uttering a heresy, I know, but math is not enough.

So for all you STEM students out there, I know you hate that they are making you take such a squishy, fluffy class as composition, but there’s a reason for it, really there is. When I called it a fluff class? I wasn’t talking about my aspirations to take only “Smarty Classes” as another student informed me my track this semester ought to be called (she’s in teaching). I was referring to having been a professional writer for some time now. Learn to write in legible english, and we will all think you that much more brilliant.

I beg of you, oh science, math, and physics geeks. Absorb the beauty and the chaos that is the English language, and never commit these sentences in your assignments. “Find domain, zeros, and Vertical , Hporizontal, Slant Asymptote of the rational function. If Any. And draw graph.” Because while I can understand that command, at least, it makes me flinch to read it.

Now, I plan to stare at the whiteboard for an hour, muttering to myself and attempting to learn your language. Math is beautiful, too, and important. But what good is that if you can’t explain it to others?