28. Writing is hard.

In graduate school, you will be immersing yourself in a life of reading and writing, neither of which will be fun. For most people, writing of any kind requires effort, and writing well requires more, but academic writing is especially difficult. It is difficult because it is (rightfully) subject to scrutiny, and therefore every substantive factual assertion that you make in your writing will have to be based upon evidence that must be cited meticulously. You will seldom write a paragraph that lacks a citation, meaning that you will rarely have the opportunity to indulge in an enjoyable, free-flowing production of words unimpeded by constant pauses to consult sources and record attributions. Academic writing can be agonizingly slow.
   
Early in graduate school, you will probably be asked to write book reviews or other relatively short papers that require reference to a limited number of sources, but most of your writing will require a great deal of preparation before it even begins. Because your research contributions are expected to be original, you will have to acquaint yourself with the literature that has already been published on the subject about which you are writing. Then, you will have to find a way to incorporate the conclusions of your predecessors into your work before offering some kind of interpretation of your own—an interpretation that should be justified by evidence. Creativity—and one hopes that there will be some—has to be expressed within the template of what constitutes a sound academic argument. Scholarship is made better by high standards, but you should ask yourself if this is the kind of writing to which you want to devote a good portion of your life.