College courses expose you to the thinking of scholars in many disciplines, such as those within the humanities (literature, music, art), the social sciences (psychology, anthropology, sociology), and the sciences (biology, physics, chemistry). No matter what you study, you will be asked to write for a variety of audiences in a variety of formats. In a criminal justice course, for example, you may be asked to write a policy memo or a legal brief; in a nursing course, you may be asked to write a case study or a practice paper. To write in these courses is to think like a criminologist or a nurse and to engage in the debates of the discipline.

Writing in any discipline provides the opportunity to practice the methods used by its scholars. Each field has its own questions, preferred types of evidence, language uses, and citation conventions, but all disciplines share certain expectations for good writing. Becoming a college writer means being able to reflect on earlier lessons learned about writing and to apply these lessons to the writing you are doing in any college course.