Typical example of college writing I see

[Ms. Toad]

22. What I got in law school was better . . . marginally.

A couple of thoughts:

First - I am currently working on a BFA. This semester was extremely rough on everyone. My school is being impacted by both state and federal changes to schools - and the faculty is in emotional upheaval (both politics, and we are losing approximately 50% of our faculty) - AND - rewriting the entire art school curriculum to accommodate the decrease in faculty). I think the students are more oblivious - to both politics and changes in the schools - but instruction this semester was certainly a lot rougher than I've seen it. About half of my advanced photography class was just barely making it through the semester - and any time unlimited project was effectively limited by the crunch of everything else. In my Fundamentals Review class, attendance had dropped to around 50% by last week.

So - it is worse than the writing I received as a law faculty member, but I'm guessing that it was rough everywhere as Universities were more impacted by the Trump administration than many other places (funding, academic freedom, and international students all being threatened).

Second - I suspect many art students have a harder time expressing themselves verbally. I know my daughter (valedictorian of her class, but her passion was art) struggles with writing - her take (as to school papers) is that the professor knows all of this stuff so she doesn't need to explain it. I don't get to read my peer's work - but some of them are clearly struggling during critique to describe their work. We're being asked for artist statements which describe process and meaning in 250 words. By 250 words I'm barely started - but when I asked if I could write more, my professor was really grateful someone wanted to write more. He says he usually gets 251 words. After doing a quick check on portfolios - literally just a glance - he told one student to make sure and use spellcheck. After the grades were back, and (from the discussion) one student had failed - in part because of the two required written descriptions - he told her that although he wasn't suggesting it (and no one heard him wink-wink-nod-nod) that she might run it through chatGPT to see if it could smooth out the spelling and grammar.

I'm taking my second art history class in the fall, BTW. In theory I'm an art history minor, although I just learned that I have to take 6 more hours than I had expected to because photography requires more art history hours than other art majors, and I have to have 9 non-overlapping hours. Bummer.