Between Theory and Practice

Nobody really teaches you how to write. Not in the way you actually need to learn it. Sure, they teach you the alphabet, grammar rules, and how to structure a five-paragraph essay. But writing—the kind that demands clarity, depth, and actual engagement with ideas? That, you’re mostly left to figure out on your own. I mean you could say that it comes naturally to people... but I'm not talking about creative writing, I'm talking about actual professional - could be seen in big reputed journals - kind of writing.

There’s a weird assumption in English lit classrooms—both undergrad and postgrad—that at some point, without anyone actually teaching you, you’ll just know how to write an academic paper. Not a regular essay. Not an extended book review. A proper research paper, the kind that could be sent to a journal without the reviewers ripping it apart in a single glance.

I don’t know when that moment was supposed to happen for me, but it sure as hell didn’t happen in undergrad. And then suddenly, halfway through the first year of my MA, I was expected to start writing publishable research papers. Just like that. No real transition, no structured preparation—just a deadline looming over my head, and the expectation that I’d produce something that wasn’t complete garbage.

Now, to be fair, I did have classes on “academic writing.” But if you’ve ever sat through one of those, you know they mostly cover the absolute basics—formatting, citations, plagiarism warnings, and maybe a surface-level discussion on structuring a paper. All necessary, sure. However, those classes did not prepare me for what it actually meant to write an academic paper. Because that process? That’s an entirely different beast.

No one really talks about the how. How do you come up with a research question that isn’t just a slightly more complicated version of your class assignments? How do you engage with existing scholarship without just regurgitating it? How do you structure a paper so that it actually argues something, rather than just throwing a bunch of sources together and hoping for the best?

For me, that first research paper was a month of chaos. I spent more time second-guessing myself than actually writing. I went down a million research rabbit holes, read way more than I needed to, and still had no idea if I was doing it right. I rewrote entire sections because I wasn’t sure if my argument was “academic” enough. And in the end, I turned in something that was technically a research paper, but it felt more like a desperate attempt to sound smart rather than a confident contribution to a scholarly conversation.

And the worst part? This isn’t even an unusual experience. Most people I know had to figure it out the hard way—through trial and error, through feedback that was often vague or unhelpful, through reading published papers and trying to reverse-engineer what made them good. Some of us were lucky to have professors who gave actual guidance. Others were just left to fend for themselves.

I know I should be grateful that my college even had a course on academic writing because, for many students, even that is a luxury. But there’s still a gap between knowing the rules and actually knowing how to apply them. Between understanding how citations work and knowing how to build an argument that holds weight.

So, what’s the fix? Maybe universities need to stop treating academic writing as something students will magically “pick up” along the way. Maybe these courses should focus less on technicalities and more on thinking like a researcher—on how to craft an original argument, how to situate your work within existing debates, and how to actually write something that doesn’t feel like an awkward mix of pretentious vocabulary and imposter syndrome.

For a long time, I complained about this. About how the system doesn’t prepare us, about how we’re thrown into research writing with nothing but scattered guidelines. Until I realized—this is the only way to learn. Through trial and error. There is no textbook to it, no universal guide that can teach you how to write a strong academic paper. You just have to write, fail, rewrite, and keep going until something finally clicks.

I’m now at that point in life where academic papers are all I have to write. And yes, I’ve gotten some practice now through trial and error, but when are we going to correct the system? When are we going to stop leaving future researchers in the dark, forcing them to fend for themselves? Or maybe the better question is—should we?