The writing disparity

“Context has played a huge role in my participation in academia. I chose Humanities over Science because I could not stand the way my siblings were breaking their head over medicine and engineering. Most schools in Kerala do not offer Humanities after Standard X. So I was compelled to take Commerce over Humanities. However, when my mother saw me sitting unfettered after classes, she made me strike a deal with her. I was told to go back to science, study well and then do whatever I liked after high school. And that is how I chose a B.A. in Literature at a state university in Kerala.

When I moved to EFLU for my Master’s, I was forced to shift from Literature to Linguistics. In the first year at EFLU, I wanted to continue with literature because I loved reading and writing. But in my first class, when there was a discussion on Foucault, I had no clue who he was. I realized then that the literature I did at a state college was vastly different from the literature that universities like EFLU had. So I switched from Literature to Linguistics. Although this switch helped me complete a Master’s at EFLU and later an MPhil at JNU, I did not feel confident about my place in academia. At both EFLU and JNU, we were given scant research training. Most of us were unaware of academic reading/writing practices and were imitating academic prose when we wrote. We would string together words and jargon to make claims that…