Bad Habits I Got from My Writing Degree

TL;DR

Jaylen credits her writing degree’s positive outcome to strong professors and a talented, supportive cohort, while still identifying habits that didn’t translate well after graduation.

Briefing Cornell Notes

Briefing

A writing degree can leave behind a set of habits that feel productive inside academia but become liabilities once a writer is back to working alone—especially when grades, workshop consensus, and external signals replace internal judgment. After years out of her undergraduate writing program, Jaylen says the program was overall positive, crediting excellent professors and a strong cohort. Yet she also identifies five “bad habits” she had to unlearn to keep writing with confidence and coherence outside the academic framework.

First, she describes a dependence on grades for validation. In school, performance metrics became a proxy for self-worth: a strong grade on a story could instantly make her feel like a “good writer,” while graduation removed the steady stream of reassurance. When the next external benchmark disappeared, she felt aimless and stalled—so she substituted another external signal, literary magazine acceptance, treating it like an “A” that arrives on its own timeline. The core problem wasn’t ambition; it was tying confidence to outcomes she couldn’t control.

Second, she says she lost the ability to judge when a piece was “done.” In workshops, professors’ scoring and feedback created a finish line, but after graduation she realized she had no internal mechanism for deciding when revisions were sufficient. She describes holding stories for months or even over a year, sometimes after receiving notes, because she waited for someone else to confirm readiness for submission.

Third, she points to difficulty trusting her instincts without workshop validation. Even when she felt certain about what a story needed, she couldn’t rely on that internal sense unless others agreed. If workshop feedback contradicted her instincts, she defaulted to the group’s judgment—an approach that can feel safe in a structured environment but undermines authorial confidence.

Fourth, she recounts editing as a checklist driven by workshop notes. Instead of filtering feedback through her own holistic goals for the piece, she tried to address as many points as possible. Over time, that approach produced disjointed writing—lines that felt jarring or dry because they existed to solve a specific comment rather than to serve the story’s overall truth. She notes that some workshopped stories later published still carried the “remnants” of this method.

Finally, she says she tended to make changes too drastically, believing that only dramatic overhauls proved effort and improvement. She now recognizes that small edits can create big shifts, but at the time she felt she needed large reframes to earn confidence in her revisions.

Taken together, the habits trace back to one theme: a lack of faith in her own judgment. The workshop environment provided a safety net, letting her “trust fall” into others’ feedback. Once that support vanished, she had to rebuild internal security—finding validation in her vision rather than in grades, consensus, or the need to overhaul every draft.

Cornell Notes

After graduating, Jaylen realized her writing degree left behind habits that worked in workshops but weakened her independence. She relied on grades (and later literary magazine acceptance) for validation, struggled to decide when a story was “done,” and found it hard to trust her instincts unless workshop feedback confirmed them. Her editing process became checklist-driven—trying to fix every workshop comment—leading to disjointed moments in later drafts. She also overcorrected by making changes too drastically, believing only major overhauls showed real improvement. The takeaway is that writers need a way to build internal judgment so confidence and revision decisions don’t depend on external scoring or group consensus.

Why did grades become a problem for Jaylen’s writing confidence?

She says she had relied on grades for validation since childhood, so university grading turned writing into another measurable source of self-worth. A good grade on a story could instantly make her feel like a “good writer,” and it even shaped how she felt about the piece itself. Once she graduated and stopped receiving grades, she felt lost and aimless—so she replaced that external validation with literary magazine acceptance, treating it like an “A,” even though acceptance timing is unpredictable.

How did Jaylen’s workshop environment affect her sense of when a draft is finished?

In school, she could treat the professor’s score and feedback as the signal that a piece was ready. After graduation, she lacked an internal finish line, so she kept stories in revision for long stretches—sometimes a month to over a year—even after getting notes. She had to build the ability to judge completion herself because no one was grading her work anymore.

What does “not trusting instincts without workshopping” look like in practice?

She describes writing with an internal sense of what the story needed, but feeling unable to trust that sense unless the workshop validated it. When workshop feedback contradicted her instincts, she followed the group’s direction rather than her own. Over time, she’s still working on trusting her judgment without a workshop to act as a safety check.

Why did checklist-style editing lead to disjointed writing?

Jaylen says she would turn workshop notes into a list of problems to fix, aiming to address as many comments as possible. She didn’t filter which feedback aligned with her story’s overall intention, so some changes served individual concerns rather than the piece’s holistic goals. She noticed jarring moments in later work—sentences that felt out of character or dry—because they were added to respond to a specific workshop issue.

What belief pushed Jaylen toward overly drastic revisions?

She felt that unless she could make dramatic changes, she wasn’t doing enough. She thought major overhauls were necessary to demonstrate effort and improvement, even though she now recognizes that small edits can produce large shifts in a story. The pressure came from needing external proof of progress while she was in an academic revision system.

Review Questions

Which external signals did Jaylen use to replace grades after graduation, and what emotional effect did that replacement have?
How does checklist editing differ from holistic editing, and what kind of writing problems can each approach create?
What specific behaviors show Jaylen’s difficulty trusting instincts, and how does she say she’s trying to change them?

Key Points

1
Jaylen credits her writing degree’s positive outcome to strong professors and a talented, supportive cohort, while still identifying habits that didn’t translate well after graduation.
2
Dependence on grades for validation can leave writers unmoored once scoring disappears, encouraging substitution with other external metrics like literary magazine acceptance.
3
Without workshop or grading signals, writers may struggle to decide when a piece is truly “done,” leading to excessive revision cycles.
4
Trusting instincts can erode in environments where workshop consensus becomes the default authority, even when a writer feels confident about a draft’s needs.
5
Editing as a checklist—fixing every workshop comment—can produce disjointed prose when feedback isn’t filtered through the story’s overall intention.
6
Believing that only drastic overhauls count as “real” improvement can cause unnecessary rewrites; small, targeted edits can achieve major effects.
7
Rebuilding internal confidence after school requires shifting from external validation and group judgment to faith in personal vision and judgment.

Highlights

Graduation removed the steady stream of grades that had anchored Jaylen’s self-worth, leaving her aimless until she replaced that validation with literary magazine acceptance.

Jaylen says she didn’t know how to judge drafts as finished without professors’ cues, sometimes delaying submissions for months or over a year.

Her workshop-driven editing process turned into a checklist, and she later recognized that this could create jarring, dry lines that didn’t fit the story’s core truth.

She describes a lingering tendency to make revisions too drastically, based on the belief that only dramatic changes prove effort—despite the fact that small edits can shift a story significantly.

Topics

Writing Degree
Workshop Feedback
Revision Habits
Creative Confidence
Editing Strategy

Mentioned

Jaylen